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> ... the NFT community is not interested in remaining a subculture. NFT community leaders believe that they are just early to understand that the future lies i

> ... the NFT community is not interested in remaining a subculture. NFT community leaders believe that they are just early to understand that the future lies in virtual worlds, and that normies will embrace the metaverse in good time. An alternative explanation is that they _are_ the normies who have bought into the techno-grift in exchange for social status in a small community of believers. > Like, right now, if I have a sword in a video game, I only have it in one game. But if we had a metaverse, then I could take it anywhere, and it would still be mine. And maybe it’s like, the only sword in the whole world that could kill a certain monster. That would be really cool. The idea that game companies will allow players to share resources between games with NFTs is both technically questionable and financially absurd. --- If you can spare the time, I highly recommend watching Line Goes Up - The Problem with NFTs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g . It's a bit long-winded, and I suspect I'm preaching to the choir regardless, but it's worth it.

wedn3sday 5y ago
I second your recommendation. I've been following the Folding Ideas channel for a while, and deeply enjoy his long form video format. Where most online videos like to do a brief touch on a topic, covering the surface level detail before moving on, the guy behind that channel goes deeeeep in a way I find very satisfying.
netsharc 5y ago
I suppose if (insert luxury fashion label here, let's say... Gucci) has an online store on Zuckverse, and also has one on TimCookVerse (where the plebian green bubble people don't come), they would allow owners of virtual Gucci bags free copies of their virtual bag on 2 different platforms. Yeah, it's a ridiculous idea of the future, where people who currently walk around with $5000 purses ($20 for the utility of "it carries my things", $4800 for the brand name) will in the future be pixels on your VR googles walking around with $5000 pixel representation of purses, which you can right click, click "Properties" and confirm the digital certificate of. I've so far been an NFT-ignorant, but are those NFT exchanges the ones who want to be the digital certificate authorities? Couldn't Zuck or Cook just roll out their own?
- rdrey 5y ago
  Yeah. I imagine there being "metaverse clients" that don't enforce any NFT DRM and will allow you to copy whatever 3D asset you see as well. I would definitely connect with a jailbroken client / choose the "Indie Metaverse" in which none of the NFT nonsense is enforced.
  - netsharc 5y ago
    Joining an indie metaverse seems like insanity, I'd rather just keep socializing in the real world. Damn, have I reached "Get off my lawn"-age? The rich and famous would still hang out in the "officially sanctioned" metaverse(s) though, but I guess going into the indie ones would be like going to the dodgy parts of town. Where the famous Hollywood/Netflix/Onlyfans/Twitch stars have alternative logins to go incognito. And maybe the sanctioned metaverses will have exploits so "hackers" can still participate in it. My imagination of this future is a lame imitation the Matrix movies.
- stickfigure 5y ago
  They absolutely will roll their own and charge Gucci for the privilege. There's plenty of historical precedent. The Sims Online somewhat controversially contained McDonalds kiosks, paid for by McDonalds.
cableshaft 5y ago
I could see there eventually being some NFT project that gets implemented kind of like a shared library in a bunch of games, but I agree that it won't be most NFT projects (probably just one or two "winners", and probably no existing project that's out there right now, I'm betting, most are profile pic centered and not object/weapon-centered) and it certainly won't be all games that do it. There could come a time where it makes good marketing sense to include support for certain ones, though. I agree that right now it would not make much financial sense as there's a lot of vehement hatred of NFTs out there and I don't think any project is yet big enough to recoup the time and investment spent, unless it's on some really basic level, like supporting importing of the images and putting them on the walls of a house or something (I've seen something similar like that already). I do agree that people buying these things thinking everything they're buying they'll be able to take to every single virtual place they go to and be able to hold a 3d model of it and wield it in the future are likely just deluding themselves, unless there's eventually some software library that builds these things automatically without artists having to manually build them or developers having to put code in to support, it in the future. And even then it will likely butt heads with various limitations of the game engine unless controlled, like number of polygons it can handle and not clipping through environments/animations, not being able to be much more than a static model without more metadata included/manual effort involved, etc. Although perhaps for anything manual that is involved that person that owns the NFT could hire someone to adjust things so it works better in the game they're wanting to play, assuming there are tools included with the game to do so. Like there's already NFT projects out there making 3D models of certain NFTs specific for certain game worlds using their existing tools, or the owners currently commissioning new art based on their NFT art, etc. Just taking it as it is currently on a profile pic level, we see that Twitter supports NFTs officially now with Twitter Blue, and Discord seems to be on the verge of supporting it, and possibly more sites in the future, and even if other sites don't support it officially, unofficially you could use an NFT as a picture anywhere (even those you don't own of course, but most people in these spaces do seem to stick with those they own). That's taking an NFT and using it in multiple platforms, and companies having a financial incentive to include support for it, right there. It's not that much of a stretch to see that happening for some games in the future, especially those built with support of high levels of customization or with prior knowledge of the NFT space and trying to incorporate it from the start of development, which some of these metaverse-like games are definitely doing with Decentraland and Sandbox (albeit right now at the detriment of gameplay, imo. They're pretty boring spaces at the moment, mostly just run around and talk to people).
vsareto 5y ago
>The idea that game companies will allow players to share resources between games with NFTs is both technically questionable and financially absurd. I don't think that's necessarily absurd. The sword in question would just have to be converted to work with the game itself, or you get a representation of it. Some games like RPGs have item budgets that determine how many stats are associated with it. So your NFT's "value" could convert to this item budget. Maybe instead of being a literal sword in a sci-fi game, it becomes a ship or a gun with the same name/description. I think game companies are going to try it. It's not like they haven't tried charging players for silly things in the past.
- Jcowell 5y ago
  How would a game know how to render this foreign element ? Assets and all and for each “supported” NFT.
- mc32 5y ago
  And why wouldn’t the game developers issue these rare swords rather than a foreign non gaming) entity whose sole value is in creating made up scarcity. Game developers can do this themselves without grifters.
- acdha 5y ago
  > I don't think that's necessarily absurd. > The sword in question would just have to be converted to work with the game itself, or you get a representation of it. “just” is doing a lot of work in that sentence. For that to happen, you need all of the following to be done: 1. The second game's developers need to license the rights to use the first game's assets, which may not be possible at any price short of taking a controlling interest in the first game's owner. 2. The developers need to convert the assets into a format used by their engine: converting images, animations, sounds to the format they use (e.g. the major game engines don't even agree on which direction is up); things like 3-D meshes need to be imported and adjusted to the right size; sounds need to be normalized to match the rest of the game's assets. 3. Any custom behaviors (which are often why you care about this thing in the first place) need to be implemented and tested. 4. The item needs to be balanced so it's not too weak (the “owner” won't like that) or too powerful (everyone else won't like pay-to-win). 5. Game B needs to know that you hold that item in game A, and yank it if you sell it. All of that costs real money, which means that the developers of game B are going to need to charge you even though you already paid a premium for it in game A. The part that NFTs can do is by far the easiest part and can be done far more cheaply in any scenario where step #1 has happened. If you do the easiest one (cosmetic only), it's still more expensive in terms of artist time than almost anyone is going to want to pay. In all cases, the big question is opportunity cost: if game B's developers are going to spend a million dollars implementing something, do they spend it chasing items which game A's made the profit on hoping they can convince whatever fraction of the people who own game A but were unlikely to buy game B to change their minds, or do they build something they can sell to as many people as possible without having to share the profits?
munchbunny 5y ago
> An alternative explanation is that they _are_ the normies who have bought into the techno-grift in exchange for social status in a small community of believers. I don’t think it’s just a small community. And I say this as a heavy skeptic of cryptocurrency and NFTs. I think the article’s author has a point. With or without NFTs, conspicuous consumption of digital goods is already a normalized thing of minor social consequence in the form of video game cosmetics. It started out as a freemium monetization model, but games like Fortnite, Destiny, etc. have solidly cemented the link between spending real money and digital self expression, including the implied social status that comes with specific rarer cosmetics vs. more accessible ones. And to some extent the social status part follows you back into the real world if you all know each other in person. I don’t think it’s a large leap to a scenario where people pay for designer avatars to bring into digital spaces if online, immersive socialization in some grand unified space becomes a thing. I don’t like that idea, but I think it’s not that much of a stretch.
- kmlx 5y ago
  > I don’t think it’s just a small community. it’s the smallest of communities: > Between late February and November [2021], there were 360,000 NFT owners holding 2.7m NFTs between them. Of those, about 9 per cent — or 32,400 wallets — held 80 per cent of the value of the market, Chainalysis found. from: https://www.ft.com/content/e95f5ac2-0476-41f4-abd4-8a99faa7737d https://www.ft.com/content/e95f5ac2-0476-41f4-abd4-8a99faa77...
- dsign 5y ago
  > I don’t think it’s a large leap to a scenario where people pay for designer avatars to bring into digital spaces if online, This already happens routinely for VRChat, a popular VR socialization platform. In their defense, users mostly don't care about NFTs, they just trade avatar design services (sans NFT) or design their own monstrosities. Tbh, for many in VRChat making their own avatar could be the first time ever that they use a computer for a creative endeavor of any kind, and they may even learn about "textures" "normal maps" and "non-photorealistic shaders". So, not the worst outcome ever.
  - 5y ago

wedn3sday 5y ago

I second your recommendation. I've been following the Folding Ideas channel for a while, and deeply enjoy his long form video format. Where most online videos like to do a brief touch on a topic, covering the surface level detail before moving on, the guy behind that channel goes deeeeep in a way I find very satisfying.

netsharc 5y ago

I suppose if (insert luxury fashion label here, let's say... Gucci) has an online store on Zuckverse, and also has one on TimCookVerse (where the plebian green bubble people don't come), they would allow owners of virtual Gucci bags free copies of their virtual bag on 2 different platforms. Yeah, it's a ridiculous idea of the future, where people who currently walk around with $5000 purses ($20 for the utility of "it carries my things", $4800 for the brand name) will in the future be pixels on your VR googles walking around with $5000 pixel representation of purses, which you can right click, click "Properties" and confirm the digital certificate of. I've so far been an NFT-ignorant, but are those NFT exchanges the ones who want to be the digital certificate authorities? Couldn't Zuck or Cook just roll out their own?

rdrey 5y ago
Yeah. I imagine there being "metaverse clients" that don't enforce any NFT DRM and will allow you to copy whatever 3D asset you see as well. I would definitely connect with a jailbroken client / choose the "Indie Metaverse" in which none of the NFT nonsense is enforced.
- netsharc 5y ago
  Joining an indie metaverse seems like insanity, I'd rather just keep socializing in the real world. Damn, have I reached "Get off my lawn"-age? The rich and famous would still hang out in the "officially sanctioned" metaverse(s) though, but I guess going into the indie ones would be like going to the dodgy parts of town. Where the famous Hollywood/Netflix/Onlyfans/Twitch stars have alternative logins to go incognito. And maybe the sanctioned metaverses will have exploits so "hackers" can still participate in it. My imagination of this future is a lame imitation the Matrix movies.
stickfigure 5y ago
They absolutely will roll their own and charge Gucci for the privilege. There's plenty of historical precedent. The Sims Online somewhat controversially contained McDonalds kiosks, paid for by McDonalds.

cableshaft 5y ago

I could see there eventually being some NFT project that gets implemented kind of like a shared library in a bunch of games, but I agree that it won't be most NFT projects (probably just one or two "winners", and probably no existing project that's out there right now, I'm betting, most are profile pic centered and not object/weapon-centered) and it certainly won't be all games that do it. There could come a time where it makes good marketing sense to include support for certain ones, though. I agree that right now it would not make much financial sense as there's a lot of vehement hatred of NFTs out there and I don't think any project is yet big enough to recoup the time and investment spent, unless it's on some really basic level, like supporting importing of the images and putting them on the walls of a house or something (I've seen something similar like that already). I do agree that people buying these things thinking everything they're buying they'll be able to take to every single virtual place they go to and be able to hold a 3d model of it and wield it in the future are likely just deluding themselves, unless there's eventually some software library that builds these things automatically without artists having to manually build them or developers having to put code in to support, it in the future. And even then it will likely butt heads with various limitations of the game engine unless controlled, like number of polygons it can handle and not clipping through environments/animations, not being able to be much more than a static model without more metadata included/manual effort involved, etc. Although perhaps for anything manual that is involved that person that owns the NFT could hire someone to adjust things so it works better in the game they're wanting to play, assuming there are tools included with the game to do so. Like there's already NFT projects out there making 3D models of certain NFTs specific for certain game worlds using their existing tools, or the owners currently commissioning new art based on their NFT art, etc. Just taking it as it is currently on a profile pic level, we see that Twitter supports NFTs officially now with Twitter Blue, and Discord seems to be on the verge of supporting it, and possibly more sites in the future, and even if other sites don't support it officially, unofficially you could use an NFT as a picture anywhere (even those you don't own of course, but most people in these spaces do seem to stick with those they own). That's taking an NFT and using it in multiple platforms, and companies having a financial incentive to include support for it, right there. It's not that much of a stretch to see that happening for some games in the future, especially those built with support of high levels of customization or with prior knowledge of the NFT space and trying to incorporate it from the start of development, which some of these metaverse-like games are definitely doing with Decentraland and Sandbox (albeit right now at the detriment of gameplay, imo. They're pretty boring spaces at the moment, mostly just run around and talk to people).

vsareto 5y ago

>The idea that game companies will allow players to share resources between games with NFTs is both technically questionable and financially absurd. I don't think that's necessarily absurd. The sword in question would just have to be converted to work with the game itself, or you get a representation of it. Some games like RPGs have item budgets that determine how many stats are associated with it. So your NFT's "value" could convert to this item budget. Maybe instead of being a literal sword in a sci-fi game, it becomes a ship or a gun with the same name/description. I think game companies are going to try it. It's not like they haven't tried charging players for silly things in the past.

Jcowell 5y ago
How would a game know how to render this foreign element ? Assets and all and for each “supported” NFT.
mc32 5y ago
And why wouldn’t the game developers issue these rare swords rather than a foreign non gaming) entity whose sole value is in creating made up scarcity. Game developers can do this themselves without grifters.
acdha 5y ago
> I don't think that's necessarily absurd. > The sword in question would just have to be converted to work with the game itself, or you get a representation of it. “just” is doing a lot of work in that sentence. For that to happen, you need all of the following to be done: 1. The second game's developers need to license the rights to use the first game's assets, which may not be possible at any price short of taking a controlling interest in the first game's owner. 2. The developers need to convert the assets into a format used by their engine: converting images, animations, sounds to the format they use (e.g. the major game engines don't even agree on which direction is up); things like 3-D meshes need to be imported and adjusted to the right size; sounds need to be normalized to match the rest of the game's assets. 3. Any custom behaviors (which are often why you care about this thing in the first place) need to be implemented and tested. 4. The item needs to be balanced so it's not too weak (the “owner” won't like that) or too powerful (everyone else won't like pay-to-win). 5. Game B needs to know that you hold that item in game A, and yank it if you sell it. All of that costs real money, which means that the developers of game B are going to need to charge you even though you already paid a premium for it in game A. The part that NFTs can do is by far the easiest part and can be done far more cheaply in any scenario where step #1 has happened. If you do the easiest one (cosmetic only), it's still more expensive in terms of artist time than almost anyone is going to want to pay. In all cases, the big question is opportunity cost: if game B's developers are going to spend a million dollars implementing something, do they spend it chasing items which game A's made the profit on hoping they can convince whatever fraction of the people who own game A but were unlikely to buy game B to change their minds, or do they build something they can sell to as many people as possible without having to share the profits?

munchbunny 5y ago

> An alternative explanation is that they _are_ the normies who have bought into the techno-grift in exchange for social status in a small community of believers. I don’t think it’s just a small community. And I say this as a heavy skeptic of cryptocurrency and NFTs. I think the article’s author has a point. With or without NFTs, conspicuous consumption of digital goods is already a normalized thing of minor social consequence in the form of video game cosmetics. It started out as a freemium monetization model, but games like Fortnite, Destiny, etc. have solidly cemented the link between spending real money and digital self expression, including the implied social status that comes with specific rarer cosmetics vs. more accessible ones. And to some extent the social status part follows you back into the real world if you all know each other in person. I don’t think it’s a large leap to a scenario where people pay for designer avatars to bring into digital spaces if online, immersive socialization in some grand unified space becomes a thing. I don’t like that idea, but I think it’s not that much of a stretch.

kmlx 5y ago
> I don’t think it’s just a small community. it’s the smallest of communities: > Between late February and November [2021], there were 360,000 NFT owners holding 2.7m NFTs between them. Of those, about 9 per cent — or 32,400 wallets — held 80 per cent of the value of the market, Chainalysis found. from: https://www.ft.com/content/e95f5ac2-0476-41f4-abd4-8a99faa7737d https://www.ft.com/content/e95f5ac2-0476-41f4-abd4-8a99faa77...
dsign 5y ago
> I don’t think it’s a large leap to a scenario where people pay for designer avatars to bring into digital spaces if online, This already happens routinely for VRChat, a popular VR socialization platform. In their defense, users mostly don't care about NFTs, they just trade avatar design services (sans NFT) or design their own monstrosities. Tbh, for many in VRChat making their own avatar could be the first time ever that they use a computer for a creative endeavor of any kind, and they may even learn about "textures" "normal maps" and "non-photorealistic shaders". So, not the worst outcome ever.
- 5y ago