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I’ve had quite a bit of fun playing Gods Unchained which is like Hearthstone but on Ethereum. What does that actually mean? The cards are NFTs so you can buy an

by exdsq 4y ago

I’ve had quite a bit of fun playing Gods Unchained which is like Hearthstone but on Ethereum. What does that actually mean? The cards are NFTs so you can buy and sell them. You can also buy card packs with regular micropayments like other TCGs. However because you can sell cards it suddenly becomes a lot more interesting - you can make real money from your legendaries. Not much but I heard earlier in the year people were making $50 a week. The market for high value cards is driven by people wanting to get win streaks for more packs to unlock rare cards to sell, people buy packs from the store because it’s a TCG and that money is in the ecosystem to invest in new card designs/run tournaments/etc… it genuinely works quite nicely and I’m against microtransactions in general because you can get it back out again.

nerdponx 4y ago
I always thought that this was the worst aspect of TCGs! People complain about "pay to win" business models in PC games, but it's 100x worse in dead-tree games. Maybe you spend a few bucks here and there on some kind of premium subscription, whatever, things cost money. But having to physically buy cards always really sucked, especially as a young person without a lot of money, and it was one thing that kept me away from getting more into games like Magic: The Gathering. There was some thrill in collecting, sure, but I would rather have the collecting be an optional side activity, not an essential part of the game. I do see what you are saying about micro transactions though, and about the player's ability to re-capture some of their investment after they are done with the game or ingame item.
- exdsq 4y ago
  Yeah TCG's get really expensive. Not as bad as Warhammer, but definitely up there! My only real point is that it's a use case where I'm going to probably buy packs anyway, but now I can buy specific cards & sell cards I get that I don't want to recoup some money. I think I'm actually $7 positive which is pretty weird, I don't know any other game I've played before where I'm cashflow positive. As another commenter said this is all perfectly possible without NFTs and blockchains and stuff, it's just nice to get web stores, payment processing, and creator fee percentages on resale all for free with very little coding/cost.
  - LargeWu 4y ago
    The reason you're positive, probably, is that the marketplace is P2P and you're getting fair value when you sell, rather than the typical "Sell to a gaming store at a discount". YMMV.
    - exdsq 4y ago
      Or I get a pack of cards I don't want and my only option is to "convert them to dust" or whatever the game allows. At least here I can sell them to the community in case someone else wants one!
- anon23anon 4y ago
  100% agree w/ this. Started playing Hearthstone years ago. I like getting cool cards but would rather that be a fun/collecting part and not tied to winning the actual game.
- adamsmith143 4y ago
  Having played the game at a somewhat high level it definitely feels pay to win adjacent at minimum. There are websites out there where you can see estimates of an opponent's deck cost and it's disheartening losing to multi thousand $ decks. I also had the same experience as a kid playing a tcg in tournaments and losing to adults who were buying 50 packs at a time.
- dfxm12 4y ago
  TCGs being expensive is overblown. Certain formats might be, I think this is expected when the prize pool for official tournaments can be $250k... Just like pro level whatevers need to spend big bucks on training or gear, part of the reason most of these cards cost money is because they can make money. But there's a ton of ways to play these games. Of course, you can always play limited. $10-15 for 4-5 hours of entertainment is a great deal. Get enough cards and you have a cube you can draft whenever.
InitialLastName 4y ago
> it genuinely works quite nicely and I’m against microtransactions in general because you can get it back out again. Until new people stop coming in and the value crashes. Sounds like every other Ponzi scheme.
- exdsq 4y ago
  How’s it a Ponzi scheme? I’m playing a video game I enjoy and would maybe spend money on anyway. Just so happens I can buy cards directly from people like an IRL trading card game, and microtransactions feel slightly less wasteful than in other games where you can only sell them back to the game for dust when you can sell them for cash to others. Yes if no one plays the game the value of cards would crash, just like in real life with YuGiOh. Would you call that a ponzi scheme?
  - viccuad 4y ago
    In physical card games you can use proxies (fake or invented cards). And if they stop selling the game, you own a physical object so you can keep teaching friends and playing with them like any other tabletop game.
    - exdsq 4y ago
      Sure! So if this was a regular digital game you'd be screwed because the assets are tied to the game. As an NFT they're tied to the account, so you could actually make your own game use those assets and keep playing with them :) So that's closer to a physical card than an online-only game like MTG or Hearthstone?
      - easrng 4y ago
        NFTs don't actually give you a license to use the assets unless the person who made them licensed them that way which AFAIK is quite uncommon.
        mattdesl 4y ago
danaris 4y ago
None of that requires NFTs. As I understand it, Magic: The Gathering Online allowed real-money sales of cards to other players years ago. In fact, "Mt Gox," now best-known for its Bitcoin connections, was originally the MTG Online Exchange. NFTs add nothing to this except hype and extra processing power required to mint them. Without the game, the NFTs are worthless; without the NFTs, the game could work exactly the same.
- exdsq 4y ago
  You're right that this could be done without NFTs, for sure! You could have them as digital assets within the game, like MTG: Online, and trade them. The main benefit of using a blockchain is that you don't have to build a store and manage payment processing yourself. Edit: Also, if the games servers died so would your collection of cards. If for whatever reason the devs killed Gods Unchained someone could build a fork and we'd be able to take our cards over there because the asset is decoupled from the game. Bit of an edge case but in a world where people complain that digital ownership is false (such as ebooks) then it could be a fun solution.
  - redisman 4y ago
    Most platforms already provide the store and payments processing for you. iOS, PS store, Steam etc And they have orders of magnitude mmore consumers with their credit cards set up than people who use MetaMask or whatever
  - vmception 4y ago
    Just a slight nitpick and an area I would like to see developers improve and communities scrutinize more: are you sure that the NFT images and metadata are stored in a way that would perservere? Like on IPFS or Arweave? I've seen many NFTs actually store everything on the project's own domain! What does getImageUri() return?
  - gerardvivancos 4y ago
    > The main benefit of using a blockchain is that you don't have to build a store and manage payment processing yourself Here by “you”, do you mean the player or the developer? If you mean the former, that’s solvable if implemented in the game (MTGO, diablo 3’s auction house, and how could I forget Artifact). If you mean the latter, I don’t see this as an advantage to me as a player at all. In fact I could argue that having to purchase eth would be an extra hassle to me. > Also, if the games servers died so would your collection of cards. If for whatever reason the devs killed Gods Unchained someone could build a fork and we'd be able to take our cards over there because the asset is decoupled from the game I don’t think I’m understanding this right. Is the game open source? What’s the asset that’s decoupled from the game? The ownership data on the blockchain? If the game logic is not fork-able as well, I don’t see the value in forking the chain. Your collection will be lost as cards in the sense of gaming cards. I edited my post because in the paragraph above I compared that to “the Hearthstone team releasing the card art to the players once they shut down the game”, but I’ve since realized that if the fork is about the ownership, the art would also be lost unless it was either released to the public or already public. In any case I can’t see the value in keeping original ownership information about (a copy or instance of) public digital art. I’m asking in good faith just to be clear.
reflexco 4y ago
"I’ve had quite a bit of fun playing Gods Unchained which is like Hearthstone but on Ethereum." To be more precise it's like Hearthstone, but with a marketplace running on a centralized Ethereum L2. 1. The game doesn't run on Ethereum. The only web3 part is that the game pulls the info about what cards a player own from an Ethereum rollup. Except from that, it's just a normal online client-server game! 2. Immutable X and Starknet are centralized for now but they should hopefully become properly decentralized soon. All we get at the moment is the ability to trustlessly verify card ownership but not much else.
scoofy 4y ago
>Not much but I heard earlier in the year people were making $50 a week. Why does it always have to involve some kind of passive income. I mean, the concept of online cash is fine, and possibly useful, but again, every single implementation is about creating passive income via "gaming." There are applications for blockchain that could just, you know, use a ledger for other things, like voting for rule changes or upgrades.
- exdsq 4y ago
  I just like the idea you can join a game, play it, collect some cool stuff, and sell your assets at the end to recoup some of your expenditure when you're done. Also nowadays people are trying to earn money by streaming or competitive playing - I found it novel that they built an ecosystem that can pay out from the game itself without these extra layers on-top.
percentcer 4y ago
Artifact (Steam's DotA CCG) had this at launch, it just uses Steam's marketplace. The game itself didn't do very well but the trading aspect was really seamless.
- exdsq 4y ago
  Cool! Yeah I'm not saying this is blockchain exclusive, but it is nice to get all the components to do this for relatively cheap (and with additional perks like no Steam fees, creator payments on resell, etc).
koolba 4y ago
> Not much but I heard earlier in the year people were making $50 a week. How does that work out in practice when the transaction costs are already at that level? $100 sale with $50 of gas fees?
- exdsq 4y ago
  Yeah tx fees on Eth suck. Some chains are better, PoS might improve it, but yeah. This is on a Layer 2 chain that has lower fees which helps.
umvi 4y ago
> Not much but I heard earlier in the year people were making $50 a week. Soon: "California introduces new bill to force company of Gods Unchained to give full health benefits and pay a living wage to its players who make less than $50/week on average"
- exdsq 4y ago
  Haha, having moved to Palo Alto last year I think you might be 100% right there.
goosedragons 4y ago
I was doing this a decade ago in Magic online... Artifact as big of a failure as it was also had this. Honestly I spend more time and less money on Magic Arena than Magic Online. I can everything I want for free and it's actually easier to get specific cards. Wizards loss I guess.

by exdsq 4y ago

nerdponx 4y ago

I always thought that this was the worst aspect of TCGs! People complain about "pay to win" business models in PC games, but it's 100x worse in dead-tree games. Maybe you spend a few bucks here and there on some kind of premium subscription, whatever, things cost money. But having to physically buy cards always really sucked, especially as a young person without a lot of money, and it was one thing that kept me away from getting more into games like Magic: The Gathering. There was some thrill in collecting, sure, but I would rather have the collecting be an optional side activity, not an essential part of the game. I do see what you are saying about micro transactions though, and about the player's ability to re-capture some of their investment after they are done with the game or ingame item.

exdsq 4y ago
Yeah TCG's get really expensive. Not as bad as Warhammer, but definitely up there! My only real point is that it's a use case where I'm going to probably buy packs anyway, but now I can buy specific cards & sell cards I get that I don't want to recoup some money. I think I'm actually $7 positive which is pretty weird, I don't know any other game I've played before where I'm cashflow positive. As another commenter said this is all perfectly possible without NFTs and blockchains and stuff, it's just nice to get web stores, payment processing, and creator fee percentages on resale all for free with very little coding/cost.
- LargeWu 4y ago
  The reason you're positive, probably, is that the marketplace is P2P and you're getting fair value when you sell, rather than the typical "Sell to a gaming store at a discount". YMMV.
  - exdsq 4y ago
    Or I get a pack of cards I don't want and my only option is to "convert them to dust" or whatever the game allows. At least here I can sell them to the community in case someone else wants one!
anon23anon 4y ago
100% agree w/ this. Started playing Hearthstone years ago. I like getting cool cards but would rather that be a fun/collecting part and not tied to winning the actual game.
adamsmith143 4y ago
Having played the game at a somewhat high level it definitely feels pay to win adjacent at minimum. There are websites out there where you can see estimates of an opponent's deck cost and it's disheartening losing to multi thousand $ decks. I also had the same experience as a kid playing a tcg in tournaments and losing to adults who were buying 50 packs at a time.
dfxm12 4y ago
TCGs being expensive is overblown. Certain formats might be, I think this is expected when the prize pool for official tournaments can be $250k... Just like pro level whatevers need to spend big bucks on training or gear, part of the reason most of these cards cost money is because they can make money. But there's a ton of ways to play these games. Of course, you can always play limited. $10-15 for 4-5 hours of entertainment is a great deal. Get enough cards and you have a cube you can draft whenever.

InitialLastName 4y ago

> it genuinely works quite nicely and I’m against microtransactions in general because you can get it back out again. Until new people stop coming in and the value crashes. Sounds like every other Ponzi scheme.

exdsq 4y ago
How’s it a Ponzi scheme? I’m playing a video game I enjoy and would maybe spend money on anyway. Just so happens I can buy cards directly from people like an IRL trading card game, and microtransactions feel slightly less wasteful than in other games where you can only sell them back to the game for dust when you can sell them for cash to others. Yes if no one plays the game the value of cards would crash, just like in real life with YuGiOh. Would you call that a ponzi scheme?
- viccuad 4y ago
  In physical card games you can use proxies (fake or invented cards). And if they stop selling the game, you own a physical object so you can keep teaching friends and playing with them like any other tabletop game.
  - exdsq 4y ago
    Sure! So if this was a regular digital game you'd be screwed because the assets are tied to the game. As an NFT they're tied to the account, so you could actually make your own game use those assets and keep playing with them :) So that's closer to a physical card than an online-only game like MTG or Hearthstone?
    - easrng 4y ago
      NFTs don't actually give you a license to use the assets unless the person who made them licensed them that way which AFAIK is quite uncommon.
      - mattdesl 4y ago

danaris 4y ago

None of that requires NFTs. As I understand it, Magic: The Gathering Online allowed real-money sales of cards to other players years ago. In fact, "Mt Gox," now best-known for its Bitcoin connections, was originally the MTG Online Exchange. NFTs add nothing to this except hype and extra processing power required to mint them. Without the game, the NFTs are worthless; without the NFTs, the game could work exactly the same.

exdsq 4y ago
You're right that this could be done without NFTs, for sure! You could have them as digital assets within the game, like MTG: Online, and trade them. The main benefit of using a blockchain is that you don't have to build a store and manage payment processing yourself. Edit: Also, if the games servers died so would your collection of cards. If for whatever reason the devs killed Gods Unchained someone could build a fork and we'd be able to take our cards over there because the asset is decoupled from the game. Bit of an edge case but in a world where people complain that digital ownership is false (such as ebooks) then it could be a fun solution.
- redisman 4y ago
  Most platforms already provide the store and payments processing for you. iOS, PS store, Steam etc And they have orders of magnitude mmore consumers with their credit cards set up than people who use MetaMask or whatever
- vmception 4y ago
  Just a slight nitpick and an area I would like to see developers improve and communities scrutinize more: are you sure that the NFT images and metadata are stored in a way that would perservere? Like on IPFS or Arweave? I've seen many NFTs actually store everything on the project's own domain! What does getImageUri() return?
- gerardvivancos 4y ago
  > The main benefit of using a blockchain is that you don't have to build a store and manage payment processing yourself Here by “you”, do you mean the player or the developer? If you mean the former, that’s solvable if implemented in the game (MTGO, diablo 3’s auction house, and how could I forget Artifact). If you mean the latter, I don’t see this as an advantage to me as a player at all. In fact I could argue that having to purchase eth would be an extra hassle to me. > Also, if the games servers died so would your collection of cards. If for whatever reason the devs killed Gods Unchained someone could build a fork and we'd be able to take our cards over there because the asset is decoupled from the game I don’t think I’m understanding this right. Is the game open source? What’s the asset that’s decoupled from the game? The ownership data on the blockchain? If the game logic is not fork-able as well, I don’t see the value in forking the chain. Your collection will be lost as cards in the sense of gaming cards. I edited my post because in the paragraph above I compared that to “the Hearthstone team releasing the card art to the players once they shut down the game”, but I’ve since realized that if the fork is about the ownership, the art would also be lost unless it was either released to the public or already public. In any case I can’t see the value in keeping original ownership information about (a copy or instance of) public digital art. I’m asking in good faith just to be clear.

reflexco 4y ago

"I’ve had quite a bit of fun playing Gods Unchained which is like Hearthstone but on Ethereum." To be more precise it's like Hearthstone, but with a marketplace running on a centralized Ethereum L2. 1. The game doesn't run on Ethereum. The only web3 part is that the game pulls the info about what cards a player own from an Ethereum rollup. Except from that, it's just a normal online client-server game! 2. Immutable X and Starknet are centralized for now but they should hopefully become properly decentralized soon. All we get at the moment is the ability to trustlessly verify card ownership but not much else.

scoofy 4y ago

>Not much but I heard earlier in the year people were making $50 a week. Why does it always have to involve some kind of passive income. I mean, the concept of online cash is fine, and possibly useful, but again, every single implementation is about creating passive income via "gaming." There are applications for blockchain that could just, you know, use a ledger for other things, like voting for rule changes or upgrades.

exdsq 4y ago
I just like the idea you can join a game, play it, collect some cool stuff, and sell your assets at the end to recoup some of your expenditure when you're done. Also nowadays people are trying to earn money by streaming or competitive playing - I found it novel that they built an ecosystem that can pay out from the game itself without these extra layers on-top.

percentcer 4y ago

Artifact (Steam's DotA CCG) had this at launch, it just uses Steam's marketplace. The game itself didn't do very well but the trading aspect was really seamless.

exdsq 4y ago
Cool! Yeah I'm not saying this is blockchain exclusive, but it is nice to get all the components to do this for relatively cheap (and with additional perks like no Steam fees, creator payments on resell, etc).

koolba 4y ago

> Not much but I heard earlier in the year people were making $50 a week. How does that work out in practice when the transaction costs are already at that level? $100 sale with $50 of gas fees?

exdsq 4y ago
Yeah tx fees on Eth suck. Some chains are better, PoS might improve it, but yeah. This is on a Layer 2 chain that has lower fees which helps.

umvi 4y ago

> Not much but I heard earlier in the year people were making $50 a week. Soon: "California introduces new bill to force company of Gods Unchained to give full health benefits and pay a living wage to its players who make less than $50/week on average"

exdsq 4y ago
Haha, having moved to Palo Alto last year I think you might be 100% right there.

goosedragons 4y ago

I was doing this a decade ago in Magic online... Artifact as big of a failure as it was also had this. Honestly I spend more time and less money on Magic Arena than Magic Online. I can everything I want for free and it's actually easier to get specific cards. Wizards loss I guess.