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My main problem with this "you can own a video game asset!" argument is that you just don't. You own a token on the blockchain that currently points to somethi

by fvold 5y ago

My main problem with this "you can own a video game asset!" argument is that you just don't. You own a token on the blockchain that currently points to something. Tomorrow, it could point to something else. Let's take the "only sword that can kill a certain monster" thing, and have a look at the parts involved. The parts are: - The token on the blockchain - The art assets of the sword - The stats on the sword (including what it can and can't kill) - The list of games where this sword is a valid item Of those, the NFT will only let you own or in any way control the first point. Let's say I get The Sword Of Dragon Murder in game A, and it is currently also accepted in game B. Woohoo, metaverse! The company in control of game B will control what it looks and sounds like in game B, and they will also control what it does there. Maybe it only kills dragons there, but the game has no dragons? It doesn't even need to be called the same. For a joke, they could have it display as "The Toothpick of King Arthur" and using it will have your character do a "pick your teeth" animation. Zero dragon murders to be had, no matter what you paid for the NFT. Even worse is that you can't even control what the item does in the game you got it from. At any time, they can change the art assets so it looks like any ordinary sword, and remove the dragon murdering stats. We even see kind of that in games now: Power creep. When the next expansion comes out, your current gear is likely to be outdated, and you have to grind for the new stuff (or "microtransact" yourself up to date), and it doesn't matter if it's an NFT or a regular entry in a regular database, because your old stuff is still crap in the new area. In your favorite MMO, take a five year old "best item" and try to sell it on the auction house. You won't get "best item" sort of prices. Why would that magically change with NFTs? Why are they exempt from this? It seems obvious to me that the people talking about NFTs and secondary markets in games have not played any MMO for any length of time, or they'd know about nerfing and expansions.

acdha 5y ago
> It seems obvious to me that the people talking about NFTs and secondary markets in games have not played any MMO for any length of time, or they'd know about nerfing and expansions. The weirdest part is that origin story for Ethereum is literally what you're talking about but somehow everyone is pitching that as a solution despite it clearly not being capable of preventing the same thing from happening again: > I happily played World of Warcraft during 2007-2010, but one day Blizzard removed the damage component from my beloved warlock's Siphon Life spell. I cried myself to sleep, and on that day I realized what horrors centralized services can bring. I soon decided to quit. (https://about.me/vitalik_buterin https://about.me/vitalik_buterin)
- thedevelopnik 5y ago
  Wow, real comic book villain energy here. “A video game company messed with my favorite spell, so I decided to go all in on wrecking the planet in the name of capitalism.”
anm89 5y ago
I am FAR from an NFT apologist but I also dont think your answer represents an understanding of the reality of the technical constraints. The pointer in an NFT is truly permanent. the concerns for lack of permanence relate to if you put in an impermanent thing like an http URL in the pointer but there are also permanent things you could put in the url like a hash or more or less permanant things like a ipfs address. Judging a technology on an explicitly stupid use of that technology doesn't make sense.
- gilleain 5y ago
  > also permanent things you could put in the url like a hash A hash of what? The asset? Can you hash the look of a digital 'thing' as well as it's behaviour?
  - scrumper 5y ago
    You hash the bits that are the "thing". If it's one of these digital dresses the article talks about, there's some format for encoding that dress so it can be loaded into whatever environment supports an avatar's ability to wear it. So hash that. I don't think look and behavior are separable, they're both just attributes of the thing which are respected by whatever environment renders it.
    - gilleain 5y ago
      > I don't think look and behavior are separable, they're both just attributes of the thing Yes, they are both attributes, that have to then be interpreted by the 'rendering engine'. For example, the 'look' is based on the image format and the 'behaviour' is based on how the rendering engine interprets the rest of the attributes > which are respected by whatever environment renders it. But that is the entire point - _why_ should an environment respect those attributes? To make it concrete, the original discussion was about something like a 'sword of dragonslaying' - great, that's what it does in the original game. Let us simplify this to having an attribute "dragonslaying". Now what? How does the second game that the asset is transferred to 'respect' that attribute? Again, as several others have pointed out, this is not a technical problem that NFTs or blockchains solve. It is a question of game engine standards, and common rule sets, and so on.

by fvold 5y ago

acdha 5y ago

> It seems obvious to me that the people talking about NFTs and secondary markets in games have not played any MMO for any length of time, or they'd know about nerfing and expansions. The weirdest part is that origin story for Ethereum is literally what you're talking about but somehow everyone is pitching that as a solution despite it clearly not being capable of preventing the same thing from happening again: > I happily played World of Warcraft during 2007-2010, but one day Blizzard removed the damage component from my beloved warlock's Siphon Life spell. I cried myself to sleep, and on that day I realized what horrors centralized services can bring. I soon decided to quit. (https://about.me/vitalik_buterin https://about.me/vitalik_buterin)

thedevelopnik 5y ago
Wow, real comic book villain energy here. “A video game company messed with my favorite spell, so I decided to go all in on wrecking the planet in the name of capitalism.”

anm89 5y ago

I am FAR from an NFT apologist but I also dont think your answer represents an understanding of the reality of the technical constraints. The pointer in an NFT is truly permanent. the concerns for lack of permanence relate to if you put in an impermanent thing like an http URL in the pointer but there are also permanent things you could put in the url like a hash or more or less permanant things like a ipfs address. Judging a technology on an explicitly stupid use of that technology doesn't make sense.

gilleain 5y ago
> also permanent things you could put in the url like a hash A hash of what? The asset? Can you hash the look of a digital 'thing' as well as it's behaviour?
- scrumper 5y ago
  You hash the bits that are the "thing". If it's one of these digital dresses the article talks about, there's some format for encoding that dress so it can be loaded into whatever environment supports an avatar's ability to wear it. So hash that. I don't think look and behavior are separable, they're both just attributes of the thing which are respected by whatever environment renders it.
  - gilleain 5y ago
    > I don't think look and behavior are separable, they're both just attributes of the thing Yes, they are both attributes, that have to then be interpreted by the 'rendering engine'. For example, the 'look' is based on the image format and the 'behaviour' is based on how the rendering engine interprets the rest of the attributes > which are respected by whatever environment renders it. But that is the entire point - _why_ should an environment respect those attributes? To make it concrete, the original discussion was about something like a 'sword of dragonslaying' - great, that's what it does in the original game. Let us simplify this to having an attribute "dragonslaying". Now what? How does the second game that the asset is transferred to 'respect' that attribute? Again, as several others have pointed out, this is not a technical problem that NFTs or blockchains solve. It is a question of game engine standards, and common rule sets, and so on.