5 ms·

> A week of boba, crypto What has crypto got to do with game development?

by tus666 5y ago

bnchrch 5y ago
Pretty natural. A lot of games already have to think about economics (e.g. wow). Now with crypto you can have an in game economy that can extended beyond your game making your users real money and incentivizing adoption.
- jandrese 5y ago
  ...by gold farmers. You missed a bit at the end of the last line.
- justinhj 5y ago
  This is something that nobody in the industry wants so it will likely never happen
- DonHopkins 5y ago
  >incentivizing adoption You mean promising that some day other people will pay you for playing an un-fun game instead of actually making a fun playable game in the first place.
  - hunterb123 5y ago
    So if it was a fun game (subjective) you would have no issue? It's a benefit for players to be able to earn coins ingame and exchange them with other currencies. The current status quo is you can only buy virtual currency in games, not sell them. Crypto in game gives more power to users.
rdtwo 5y ago
Crypto allows you to easily print in game assets and sell then for cash equivalent tokens
- bombcar 5y ago
  Too bad Team Fortress 2 was before the era of Crypto, they could have made tons of money selling hats or something.
- woodruffw 5y ago
  Does anybody seriously believe that creating and selling game assets wasn't previously possible and easy? My understanding is that it's been Valve's bread and butter for decades. (I've heard that NFTs will make assets "transferable" between games, which I also understand to be currently possible when the games cooperate. I've yet to receive an explanation for how NFTs solve the NxM "graph" problem of sharing an asset across random games that don't share the same engine, network protocols, or basic asset formats.)
  - astrange 5y ago
    > I've heard that NFTs will make assets "transferable" between games, which I also understand to be currently possible when the games cooperate. Of course, it still doesn't work when you lose the license to the asset. https://kotaku.com/f1-formula-1-one-delta-time-nft-crypto-cursed-shut-down-1848748953 https://kotaku.com/f1-formula-1-one-delta-time-nft-crypto-cu...
  - vmception 5y ago
    Nobody building in the NFT space believes that. Just roll with it, start referring to any random online world as a metaverse (or better yet, the singular metaverse) and move on. Its not about solutions its about capital, the technology comes with some interesting things. I dont view that as controversial. If people want to spend their money on that, sell that.
- astrange 5y ago
  Mr. patio11's explainer on mobile game accounting makes me doubtful it actually helps at all if you ever want to recognize revenue. https://bam.kalzumeus.com/archive/accounting-for-saas-and-swords/ https://bam.kalzumeus.com/archive/accounting-for-saas-and-sw...
s-lambert 5y ago
Crypto scam artists are always trying to stick their greedy fingers into everything, of course crypto is trying to invade video games too.
- conorcleary 5y ago
  Oh, real innovative comment in this day and age. Scams exist throughout history, at least crypto's goal is authenticity and transparency.
  - s-lambert 5y ago
    There's nothing wrong with crypto on its own but crypto in video games is 100% a total scam. There are no realistic use cases for it other than tricking people out of their money.
    - 0des 5y ago
      It would be applicable for in game currency and in game assets. What comes to mind is a game like CS:Go. Tournament prizes paid in currency, in game items like weapon skins and knives as NFT. I'm not likely to use it as I don't play games, but it is easy to see the application for it. (Unless biases preclude that)
      - s-lambert 5y ago
        You technically could do that but there's no real advantage to it, having an external store for a game's data isn't useful; a database is a better fit in all use cases. A game's economy doesn't exist without the game's balance and the same goes for items within that game. Trying to make some pie-in-the-sky "+4 str +4 stam leather belt" NFT is just nonsense.
        0des 5y ago
        I didn't say it was essential, I was filling in the details that the parent post was not able to understand. I do not play games, and I do not believe either of the two necessitates the other, I just have a knack for understanding simple concepts.
ycombinete 5y ago
Gamers have already been groomed into a neat little group of gamblers by loot boxes etc. crypto makes sense.
- hajhatten 5y ago
  Not really sure if you're joking here or not.
  - vmception 5y ago
    If you hang out in the NFT communities it is a lot of gamers who have the same behaviors co-opted for revenue. People that self-identify as gamers are just a gatekeeping irrelevant subsection of the gaming market. They protested “don't you all have phones” while the actual company accurately knew they were making revenue from mobile users who would practically never be at the gaming conference or see the memes. Lootboxes are in, microtransactions are in, presales are in…. you really think all this protesting over NFT’s is going to make them … not in? They’re the same things, an extension of the same trends. (If you haven't seen these parts of the NFT market yet and have a different conception of NFTs, the above parts have been the biggest parts of the NFT space for the last year)
    - hajhatten 5y ago
      Just look at how the recent news in how big gaming publishers have announced large NFT / Crypto projects. The latest one being Ubisoft. The reactions from the broader gaming community has been nothing but pure hatred.
hunterb123 5y ago
I'd be hard pressed to find something that fits better. PayPal and Stripe do not allow virtual currencies due to them being high risk of chargebacks / credit card fraud. Crypto is sometimes the only way to accept payment for virtual currencies / ingame items. It's nice for the developers as chargebacks are very common in the industry and expensive. Generally you get a bonus % when you pay in crypto because of this. You could even do away with the redundant virtual currency and embed a crypto currency directly into your game, linking your games natural economy that forms to your coin value. A game like an MMO usually get's a natural economy driven by supply and demand. Depending on how long it takes to farm gold, how rare the item is, etc. Using a crypto coin in your game would visualize that value and allow your players to earn it in game and exchange it for its value in Bitcoin for example. Items would be NFTs, the rarity and attributes of the item is already there, just make a token for it. When players trade items the NFT is transferred from one character (wallet) to another. The value of the item/NFT is what people assign to it. Items and virtual currencies are just NFTs and tokens that aren't on the blockchain. By moving them to a blockchain you allow them to be exchanged.
- DonHopkins 5y ago
  >Using a crypto coin in your game would visualize that value and allow your players to earn it in game and exchange it for its value in Bitcoin for example. So why use crypto, when games already use fonts, and numeric digits, commas, and dollar signs, and string formatting functions, and binary to decimal conversion routines, and text rendering libraries, all existing technologies for visualizing value?
  - hunterb123 5y ago
    You misunderstood and took the statement too literally. Let's say you have an MMO and players are selling gold for $5 per 10k. The people selling the gold are essentially creating an exchange of a virtual currency for fiat currency. Crypto cuts that middleman out and allows everyone to exchange to and from the gold with other coins. The visualization is instead of seeing 3rd party gold sellers giving an estimate of how much your gold is worth, your coin is the direct value. Did that clear things up?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
pewpew2020 5y ago
Crypto is a solution looking for a problem to solve. It is like a parasite, which will latch onto any existing tech and enable scams on the same.
somenameforme 5y ago
Think about crypto in terms of what it fundamentally is: a decentralized append-only ledger with validation. And so think of anything relying remote storage, but without the need of centralization. There are two big general benefits: 1) Games can have online features without having to rely on centralized servers. It's an increasing shame that many games which have rich online options end up becoming crippled, if not killed, once the servers inevitably are taken offline. "Crypto" can solve this problem in some cases by being able to decentralize certain types of online features. 2) The decentralization aspect can enable various features to be used independent of a single game. Of course the same is also true of a single server but then you're in an even worse scenario with the servers going offline issue where a single server going down could end up killing multiple dependent titles. As well, with a decentralized solution, competing companies that may not want to depend on one another but might want to share in-game content could do so. Dragon's Dogma, which was full of relatively innovative features, has at least 2 great use case scenarios. In the game players can use your character as an NPC ally within their game, a 'pawn'. With crypto you could create a decentralized cache of these pawns with the usual benefits: they can theoretically be used in games besides just DD, the pawn system keeps working long after Capcom kills the servers. Another example was the final optional boss. No individual player can kill it, instead it has a shared hp pool that players chip away at until it dies and each player that contributed is then rewarded. Again a perfect example of something that could be done in a decentralized way that has some possibility of even doing things like having the same boss in multiple games, and of course also working even once the servers are taken offline. Basically it's just another tool that you can do neat things with.
flohofwoe 5y ago
NFT scams, basically.

> A week of boba, crypto What has crypto got to do with game development?

by tus666 5y ago

> A week of boba, crypto What has crypto got to do with game development?

Pretty natural. A lot of games already have to think about economics (e.g. wow). Now with crypto you can have an in game economy that can extended beyond your game making your users real money and incentivizing adoption.

jandrese 5y ago
...by gold farmers. You missed a bit at the end of the last line.
justinhj 5y ago
This is something that nobody in the industry wants so it will likely never happen
DonHopkins 5y ago
>incentivizing adoption You mean promising that some day other people will pay you for playing an un-fun game instead of actually making a fun playable game in the first place.
- hunterb123 5y ago
  So if it was a fun game (subjective) you would have no issue? It's a benefit for players to be able to earn coins ingame and exchange them with other currencies. The current status quo is you can only buy virtual currency in games, not sell them. Crypto in game gives more power to users.

rdtwo 5y ago

Crypto allows you to easily print in game assets and sell then for cash equivalent tokens

bombcar 5y ago
Too bad Team Fortress 2 was before the era of Crypto, they could have made tons of money selling hats or something.
woodruffw 5y ago
Does anybody seriously believe that creating and selling game assets wasn't previously possible and easy? My understanding is that it's been Valve's bread and butter for decades. (I've heard that NFTs will make assets "transferable" between games, which I also understand to be currently possible when the games cooperate. I've yet to receive an explanation for how NFTs solve the NxM "graph" problem of sharing an asset across random games that don't share the same engine, network protocols, or basic asset formats.)
- astrange 5y ago
  > I've heard that NFTs will make assets "transferable" between games, which I also understand to be currently possible when the games cooperate. Of course, it still doesn't work when you lose the license to the asset. https://kotaku.com/f1-formula-1-one-delta-time-nft-crypto-cursed-shut-down-1848748953 https://kotaku.com/f1-formula-1-one-delta-time-nft-crypto-cu...
- vmception 5y ago
  Nobody building in the NFT space believes that. Just roll with it, start referring to any random online world as a metaverse (or better yet, the singular metaverse) and move on. Its not about solutions its about capital, the technology comes with some interesting things. I dont view that as controversial. If people want to spend their money on that, sell that.
astrange 5y ago
Mr. patio11's explainer on mobile game accounting makes me doubtful it actually helps at all if you ever want to recognize revenue. https://bam.kalzumeus.com/archive/accounting-for-saas-and-swords/ https://bam.kalzumeus.com/archive/accounting-for-saas-and-sw...

s-lambert 5y ago

Crypto scam artists are always trying to stick their greedy fingers into everything, of course crypto is trying to invade video games too.

conorcleary 5y ago
Oh, real innovative comment in this day and age. Scams exist throughout history, at least crypto's goal is authenticity and transparency.
- s-lambert 5y ago
  There's nothing wrong with crypto on its own but crypto in video games is 100% a total scam. There are no realistic use cases for it other than tricking people out of their money.
  - 0des 5y ago
    It would be applicable for in game currency and in game assets. What comes to mind is a game like CS:Go. Tournament prizes paid in currency, in game items like weapon skins and knives as NFT. I'm not likely to use it as I don't play games, but it is easy to see the application for it. (Unless biases preclude that)
    - s-lambert 5y ago
      You technically could do that but there's no real advantage to it, having an external store for a game's data isn't useful; a database is a better fit in all use cases. A game's economy doesn't exist without the game's balance and the same goes for items within that game. Trying to make some pie-in-the-sky "+4 str +4 stam leather belt" NFT is just nonsense.
      - 0des 5y ago
        I didn't say it was essential, I was filling in the details that the parent post was not able to understand. I do not play games, and I do not believe either of the two necessitates the other, I just have a knack for understanding simple concepts.

ycombinete 5y ago

Gamers have already been groomed into a neat little group of gamblers by loot boxes etc. crypto makes sense.

hajhatten 5y ago
Not really sure if you're joking here or not.
- vmception 5y ago
  If you hang out in the NFT communities it is a lot of gamers who have the same behaviors co-opted for revenue. People that self-identify as gamers are just a gatekeeping irrelevant subsection of the gaming market. They protested “don't you all have phones” while the actual company accurately knew they were making revenue from mobile users who would practically never be at the gaming conference or see the memes. Lootboxes are in, microtransactions are in, presales are in…. you really think all this protesting over NFT’s is going to make them … not in? They’re the same things, an extension of the same trends. (If you haven't seen these parts of the NFT market yet and have a different conception of NFTs, the above parts have been the biggest parts of the NFT space for the last year)
  - hajhatten 5y ago
    Just look at how the recent news in how big gaming publishers have announced large NFT / Crypto projects. The latest one being Ubisoft. The reactions from the broader gaming community has been nothing but pure hatred.

hunterb123 5y ago

I'd be hard pressed to find something that fits better. PayPal and Stripe do not allow virtual currencies due to them being high risk of chargebacks / credit card fraud. Crypto is sometimes the only way to accept payment for virtual currencies / ingame items. It's nice for the developers as chargebacks are very common in the industry and expensive. Generally you get a bonus % when you pay in crypto because of this. You could even do away with the redundant virtual currency and embed a crypto currency directly into your game, linking your games natural economy that forms to your coin value. A game like an MMO usually get's a natural economy driven by supply and demand. Depending on how long it takes to farm gold, how rare the item is, etc. Using a crypto coin in your game would visualize that value and allow your players to earn it in game and exchange it for its value in Bitcoin for example. Items would be NFTs, the rarity and attributes of the item is already there, just make a token for it. When players trade items the NFT is transferred from one character (wallet) to another. The value of the item/NFT is what people assign to it. Items and virtual currencies are just NFTs and tokens that aren't on the blockchain. By moving them to a blockchain you allow them to be exchanged.

DonHopkins 5y ago
>Using a crypto coin in your game would visualize that value and allow your players to earn it in game and exchange it for its value in Bitcoin for example. So why use crypto, when games already use fonts, and numeric digits, commas, and dollar signs, and string formatting functions, and binary to decimal conversion routines, and text rendering libraries, all existing technologies for visualizing value?
- hunterb123 5y ago
  You misunderstood and took the statement too literally. Let's say you have an MMO and players are selling gold for $5 per 10k. The people selling the gold are essentially creating an exchange of a virtual currency for fiat currency. Crypto cuts that middleman out and allows everyone to exchange to and from the gold with other coins. The visualization is instead of seeing 3rd party gold sellers giving an estimate of how much your gold is worth, your coin is the direct value. Did that clear things up?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

pewpew2020 5y ago

Crypto is a solution looking for a problem to solve. It is like a parasite, which will latch onto any existing tech and enable scams on the same.

somenameforme 5y ago

Think about crypto in terms of what it fundamentally is: a decentralized append-only ledger with validation. And so think of anything relying remote storage, but without the need of centralization. There are two big general benefits: 1) Games can have online features without having to rely on centralized servers. It's an increasing shame that many games which have rich online options end up becoming crippled, if not killed, once the servers inevitably are taken offline. "Crypto" can solve this problem in some cases by being able to decentralize certain types of online features. 2) The decentralization aspect can enable various features to be used independent of a single game. Of course the same is also true of a single server but then you're in an even worse scenario with the servers going offline issue where a single server going down could end up killing multiple dependent titles. As well, with a decentralized solution, competing companies that may not want to depend on one another but might want to share in-game content could do so. Dragon's Dogma, which was full of relatively innovative features, has at least 2 great use case scenarios. In the game players can use your character as an NPC ally within their game, a 'pawn'. With crypto you could create a decentralized cache of these pawns with the usual benefits: they can theoretically be used in games besides just DD, the pawn system keeps working long after Capcom kills the servers. Another example was the final optional boss. No individual player can kill it, instead it has a shared hp pool that players chip away at until it dies and each player that contributed is then rewarded. Again a perfect example of something that could be done in a decentralized way that has some possibility of even doing things like having the same boss in multiple games, and of course also working even once the servers are taken offline. Basically it's just another tool that you can do neat things with.

flohofwoe 5y ago

NFT scams, basically.