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> The big pitch was that you could have non-copyable items which you could move between virtual worlds. The whole "moving objects between virtual worlds" thing

> The big pitch was that you could have non-copyable items which you could move between virtual worlds. The whole "moving objects between virtual worlds" thing is one of the most ridiculous concepts I see pushed by the crypto/NFT/web3 community. As you've outlined there is a potential for this functionality in non-game/metaverse environments - even if NFTs fail to do it properly. However, when this gets applied to video games at large, I really start to roll my eyes. Even if you could magically hand-wave away all the technical issues that go along with trying to implement something like this - why would developers even bother? Game economies have to be tightly controlled to combat things like RMT, botting, and unsanctioned item trading. Letting people transfer in any item they want basically makes that impossible.

dvt 4y ago
> Letting people transfer in any item they want basically makes that impossible. This is missing the forest for the trees. Of course it wouldn't be a carte blanche, but it would be trivial to let people transfer in cosmetic items (think stickers, color schemes, etc.) based on another ecosystem/game/achievement/etc. Cosmetic digital items (e.g. non-gameplay-impacting) are like a hundred-million-dollar+ industry.
- highwaylights 4y ago
  What's in it for the game developers? They don't profit from the scam so why would they support it?
  - cinntaile 4y ago
    They could be paid a fee when transferring your item to a different game universe. Please don't poison the well by calling it a scam. edit: -4... Time for some of you to read the HN guidelines I guess.
    - giantrobot 4y ago
      So an item you bought/found/won now costs you more money to move to a different game. Not only would you have it cost money but there's no guarantee the OrcFucker2000 in Game A has any meaningful ability in Game B. If that's not a scam is certainly is wearing a scam's uniform.
      - cinntaile 4y ago
        He asked how it could be done. I explained one possible way, there are probably more ways. I don't get why people get upset about this, it's a bit weird. It could be cheaper than buying a similar item on the new game. I don't see how that is a scam, I just use the definition that's in the dictionary. Who is being deceived and defrauded here? Why do you assume the item you transfer needs to have an ability? I don't make that assumption, lets keep it simple and assume it's just a cosmetic display item without any abilities and that it's possible to display this item in the other game. edit: You could for example display the rank you have in one game in another game, assuming the possibility to do this exists of course.
        giantrobot 4y ago
        > I don't make that assumption, lets keep it simple and assume it's just a cosmetic display item without any abilities and that it's possible to display this item in the other game. Since it costs thousands of dollars to store any significant amount of data on the major blockchains, any game item will just be some reference stored on the blockchain. Unless every game developer builds an appropriate model for every possible item there's no "simple" importing of an asset. Even if a full asset was shared between games no two games are guaranteed to display even a texture the same way. Even your example of "rank" is meaningless. Rank in one game doesn't have anything to do with rank in another game. The number of goblins you killed in a fantasy RPG has no meaning to a racing game. As for these being scams, there's no reason any of these things require a blockchain. Games have at various points supported custom player models, skins, spray decals, and all sorts of other shit. None of it needed the added rent extraction of a blockchain. The only reason to add a blockchain is to get players to prop up whatever shitcoin blockchain is being used. They get vague promises of asset reusability but actually just get normal scammy in-app purchases.
  - throw_nbvc1234 4y ago
    - All the kids like <random viral NFT> we'll get publicity if we implement it. - Our game is inspired by <Genre defining game> we will pay homage to this game by including <Genre defining game NFT> in our game. - Our game supports modding and enough people care about <NFT> that someone is willing to implement that NFT in the game via mods. There's an order of operations here. These examples rely on the NFT already being meaningful in some community before it gets added in. Anything that a random person creates that nobody cares about would never be ported in.
    - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
      But why does it need to be an NFT? Why not just sell a DLC themselves? As we're all aware, the NFT isn't the art.
      - throw_nbvc1234 4y ago
        I don't think it needs to be an NFT. The integration of "check if thing is in wallet" has a low barrier for entry for the needed operations: creation of the various NFT's, the checking of ownership, and cross platform (windows, playstation, steam, Nintendo) support. The key points are the digital wallet decoupled from the usecase and "tokens" that anyone can create which go in the wallet. I would guess that if "Web3" becomes the thing crypto people aim for, GCP, Azure, and/or AWS will implement "public ledgers" that have a very similar interface and may or may not rely on blockchain underneath. Any decentralized blockchain would be forced to compete with those centralized offerings.
      - TimJRobinson 4y ago
        I think of NFTs as a DB entry on a shared database. The benefit is someone else can make a marketplace, analytics or other tools that work for many items across many games without you having to spend time implementing them yourself or creating and maintaining an API for this data.
        SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
        But why would I want them taking stuff out of my game? I can see the appeal of putting stuff in the game, but then again, if I wanted to put stuff in the game I could just put it in the game, the NFT doesn't' mean anything to me.
- amluto 4y ago
  > Cosmetic digital items (e.g. non-gameplay-impacting) are like a hundred-million-dollar+ industry. Exactly. If I were a game studio given a choice between letting my users bring in objects from anywhere or forcing them to buy my objects, I would pick the latter.
- SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
  > but it would be trivial to let people transfer in cosmetic items (think stickers, color schemes, etc.) based on another ecosystem/game/achievement/etc. It would not. Every one of those items would need to be intentionally added by the game devs. Every piece would need to be created, modeled, textured, and animated. I suppose it would be trivial if you created a pile of uninteresting and uninspiring games with the exact same engine, assets, and art style, like so many NFT's of depressed-looking monkeys
  - CactusBlue 4y ago
    I mean, file formats like VRM are a thing, which allows sharing avatars across many games.
  - dvt 4y ago
    > Every one of those items would need to be intentionally added by the game devs. There are plenty of games that support user-created assets. There's like zillions of skins in CS:GO that don't need to be "manually created, textured, and animated" by Valve (by design). Your argument just betrays a complete non-understanding of modern game engines and how cosmetic items work/are created.
    - lentil_soup 4y ago
      Gamedev here. Each engine and each game will have vastly different asset pipelines, you can't just copy something across and it just works. Models, textures, shaders, animations, etc usually go through several stages of internal tools before making it into the game. Of course, games with user generated content will make tools available to create things for that particular game, but you can take that and use it somewhere else. And that's just the technical side, design and art would be horrified if you have no control on what can be added to a game.
    - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
      Ok, so it's just textures, not new game objects, models, or animations? That's even more like the sad NFT monkey images than before! You can't put those CS:GO skins into Skyrim. It would probably be easier, like I said, to move it to another source engine game with the same art style and the exact same models, but that's it.
- ALittleLight 4y ago
  There are a lot of examples where it's trivial to do this now. For example, Diablo III and Immortal are owned by the same company and run through the same portal - can I transfer gems, skins, or titles between the games? If I'm a Master's SCII player could that show up in Overwatch somehow? Maybe I could play as a Zealot! If this "transfer between games" thing is such a killer feature why isn't it happening now? Shouldn't we be seeing stuff like this in Steam games where Steam could easily expose your progress between other Steam games.
  - duskwuff 4y ago
    > Shouldn't we be seeing stuff like this in Steam games where Steam could easily expose your progress between other Steam games. Amusingly, Valve has already experimented with this (and, as far as I can tell, given up on it). There were a handful of in-game items in Team Fortress 2 which were given to players as a reward for purchasing certain games, or for completing specific achievements in those games.
    - astrange 4y ago
      This made TF2 unplayable for me - I have a rare item (iPod earbuds) from the initial Mac launch, and the next few times I signed in I couldn’t get away from people spamming me to trade them. This is one reason you wouldn’t be a crypto billionaire no matter how prices went up; you’d probably sell first.
      - TimJRobinson 4y ago
        This was an argument why email will never work too. Spam filtering will get better over time.
        duskwuff 4y ago
        Maybe for email. TF2's spam filtering got worse -- the game is now overrun with malicious bots, and is unplayable on public servers.
        4y ago
highwaylights 4y ago
Exactly. Why is Epic going to design and support a Fortnite version of your hat NFT when they get nothing out of it? Stupid. Ponzi. Crap.
- dvt 4y ago
  > Why is Epic going to design and support a Fortnite version of your hat NFT when they get nothing out of it? They do though. The argument is two-pronged: (a) developers earn secondary fees on open markets, and (b) players get to resell stuff they don't want. It's literally a win-win.
  - jagger27 4y ago
    Disclosure: the above poster is the co-founder of an NFT-based gaming project.
  - kibwen 4y ago
    Epic can make more money by locking players into their walled garden. Nothing short of government regulation would convince them to spend more money implementing exponentially more items into their game while also taking a smaller cut of each item's purchase and resale.
    - highwaylights 4y ago
      Know what’s better than 5% of a resale? 100% of every sale! Tim Sweeney knows.
    - TimJRobinson 4y ago
      You forgot what drives every good for consumer thing a company does: competition. If every games company is allowing users to resell their items, and Epic is not, they just look evil. We're not there yet but when we are you don't want to get the reputation of being the evil company that seeks profits above all else.
      - leereeves 4y ago
cecilpl2 4y ago
Roblox already supports this on a centralized platform. You can buy items/cosmetics on the platform, and then use them in any game.
chemmail 4y ago
"Game economies have to be tightly controlled to combat things like RMT, botting, and unsanctioned item trading. Letting people transfer in any item they want basically makes that impossible. " Except in Diablo 3. Where all that killed the game.
Animats 4y ago
The amusing thing is the people who actually are drafting standards to move objects between virtual worlds have nothing to do with NFTs.[1] That group includes Epic, Unity, NVidia, W3C, Autodesk, Microsoft, Meta... The people who make stuff work. [1] https://metaverse-standards.org/ https://metaverse-standards.org/

dvt 4y ago

> Letting people transfer in any item they want basically makes that impossible. This is missing the forest for the trees. Of course it wouldn't be a carte blanche, but it would be trivial to let people transfer in cosmetic items (think stickers, color schemes, etc.) based on another ecosystem/game/achievement/etc. Cosmetic digital items (e.g. non-gameplay-impacting) are like a hundred-million-dollar+ industry.

highwaylights 4y ago
What's in it for the game developers? They don't profit from the scam so why would they support it?
- cinntaile 4y ago
  They could be paid a fee when transferring your item to a different game universe. Please don't poison the well by calling it a scam. edit: -4... Time for some of you to read the HN guidelines I guess.
  - giantrobot 4y ago
    So an item you bought/found/won now costs you more money to move to a different game. Not only would you have it cost money but there's no guarantee the OrcFucker2000 in Game A has any meaningful ability in Game B. If that's not a scam is certainly is wearing a scam's uniform.
    - cinntaile 4y ago
      He asked how it could be done. I explained one possible way, there are probably more ways. I don't get why people get upset about this, it's a bit weird. It could be cheaper than buying a similar item on the new game. I don't see how that is a scam, I just use the definition that's in the dictionary. Who is being deceived and defrauded here? Why do you assume the item you transfer needs to have an ability? I don't make that assumption, lets keep it simple and assume it's just a cosmetic display item without any abilities and that it's possible to display this item in the other game. edit: You could for example display the rank you have in one game in another game, assuming the possibility to do this exists of course.
      - giantrobot 4y ago
        > I don't make that assumption, lets keep it simple and assume it's just a cosmetic display item without any abilities and that it's possible to display this item in the other game. Since it costs thousands of dollars to store any significant amount of data on the major blockchains, any game item will just be some reference stored on the blockchain. Unless every game developer builds an appropriate model for every possible item there's no "simple" importing of an asset. Even if a full asset was shared between games no two games are guaranteed to display even a texture the same way. Even your example of "rank" is meaningless. Rank in one game doesn't have anything to do with rank in another game. The number of goblins you killed in a fantasy RPG has no meaning to a racing game. As for these being scams, there's no reason any of these things require a blockchain. Games have at various points supported custom player models, skins, spray decals, and all sorts of other shit. None of it needed the added rent extraction of a blockchain. The only reason to add a blockchain is to get players to prop up whatever shitcoin blockchain is being used. They get vague promises of asset reusability but actually just get normal scammy in-app purchases.
- throw_nbvc1234 4y ago
  - All the kids like <random viral NFT> we'll get publicity if we implement it. - Our game is inspired by <Genre defining game> we will pay homage to this game by including <Genre defining game NFT> in our game. - Our game supports modding and enough people care about <NFT> that someone is willing to implement that NFT in the game via mods. There's an order of operations here. These examples rely on the NFT already being meaningful in some community before it gets added in. Anything that a random person creates that nobody cares about would never be ported in.
  - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
    But why does it need to be an NFT? Why not just sell a DLC themselves? As we're all aware, the NFT isn't the art.
    - throw_nbvc1234 4y ago
      I don't think it needs to be an NFT. The integration of "check if thing is in wallet" has a low barrier for entry for the needed operations: creation of the various NFT's, the checking of ownership, and cross platform (windows, playstation, steam, Nintendo) support. The key points are the digital wallet decoupled from the usecase and "tokens" that anyone can create which go in the wallet. I would guess that if "Web3" becomes the thing crypto people aim for, GCP, Azure, and/or AWS will implement "public ledgers" that have a very similar interface and may or may not rely on blockchain underneath. Any decentralized blockchain would be forced to compete with those centralized offerings.
    - TimJRobinson 4y ago
      I think of NFTs as a DB entry on a shared database. The benefit is someone else can make a marketplace, analytics or other tools that work for many items across many games without you having to spend time implementing them yourself or creating and maintaining an API for this data.
      - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
        But why would I want them taking stuff out of my game? I can see the appeal of putting stuff in the game, but then again, if I wanted to put stuff in the game I could just put it in the game, the NFT doesn't' mean anything to me.
amluto 4y ago
> Cosmetic digital items (e.g. non-gameplay-impacting) are like a hundred-million-dollar+ industry. Exactly. If I were a game studio given a choice between letting my users bring in objects from anywhere or forcing them to buy my objects, I would pick the latter.
SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
> but it would be trivial to let people transfer in cosmetic items (think stickers, color schemes, etc.) based on another ecosystem/game/achievement/etc. It would not. Every one of those items would need to be intentionally added by the game devs. Every piece would need to be created, modeled, textured, and animated. I suppose it would be trivial if you created a pile of uninteresting and uninspiring games with the exact same engine, assets, and art style, like so many NFT's of depressed-looking monkeys
- CactusBlue 4y ago
  I mean, file formats like VRM are a thing, which allows sharing avatars across many games.
- dvt 4y ago
  > Every one of those items would need to be intentionally added by the game devs. There are plenty of games that support user-created assets. There's like zillions of skins in CS:GO that don't need to be "manually created, textured, and animated" by Valve (by design). Your argument just betrays a complete non-understanding of modern game engines and how cosmetic items work/are created.
  - lentil_soup 4y ago
    Gamedev here. Each engine and each game will have vastly different asset pipelines, you can't just copy something across and it just works. Models, textures, shaders, animations, etc usually go through several stages of internal tools before making it into the game. Of course, games with user generated content will make tools available to create things for that particular game, but you can take that and use it somewhere else. And that's just the technical side, design and art would be horrified if you have no control on what can be added to a game.
  - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
    Ok, so it's just textures, not new game objects, models, or animations? That's even more like the sad NFT monkey images than before! You can't put those CS:GO skins into Skyrim. It would probably be easier, like I said, to move it to another source engine game with the same art style and the exact same models, but that's it.
ALittleLight 4y ago
There are a lot of examples where it's trivial to do this now. For example, Diablo III and Immortal are owned by the same company and run through the same portal - can I transfer gems, skins, or titles between the games? If I'm a Master's SCII player could that show up in Overwatch somehow? Maybe I could play as a Zealot! If this "transfer between games" thing is such a killer feature why isn't it happening now? Shouldn't we be seeing stuff like this in Steam games where Steam could easily expose your progress between other Steam games.
- duskwuff 4y ago
  > Shouldn't we be seeing stuff like this in Steam games where Steam could easily expose your progress between other Steam games. Amusingly, Valve has already experimented with this (and, as far as I can tell, given up on it). There were a handful of in-game items in Team Fortress 2 which were given to players as a reward for purchasing certain games, or for completing specific achievements in those games.
  - astrange 4y ago
    This made TF2 unplayable for me - I have a rare item (iPod earbuds) from the initial Mac launch, and the next few times I signed in I couldn’t get away from people spamming me to trade them. This is one reason you wouldn’t be a crypto billionaire no matter how prices went up; you’d probably sell first.
    - TimJRobinson 4y ago
      This was an argument why email will never work too. Spam filtering will get better over time.
      - duskwuff 4y ago
        Maybe for email. TF2's spam filtering got worse -- the game is now overrun with malicious bots, and is unplayable on public servers.
      - 4y ago

highwaylights 4y ago

Exactly. Why is Epic going to design and support a Fortnite version of your hat NFT when they get nothing out of it? Stupid. Ponzi. Crap.

dvt 4y ago
> Why is Epic going to design and support a Fortnite version of your hat NFT when they get nothing out of it? They do though. The argument is two-pronged: (a) developers earn secondary fees on open markets, and (b) players get to resell stuff they don't want. It's literally a win-win.
- jagger27 4y ago
  Disclosure: the above poster is the co-founder of an NFT-based gaming project.
- kibwen 4y ago
  Epic can make more money by locking players into their walled garden. Nothing short of government regulation would convince them to spend more money implementing exponentially more items into their game while also taking a smaller cut of each item's purchase and resale.
  - highwaylights 4y ago
    Know what’s better than 5% of a resale? 100% of every sale! Tim Sweeney knows.
  - TimJRobinson 4y ago
    You forgot what drives every good for consumer thing a company does: competition. If every games company is allowing users to resell their items, and Epic is not, they just look evil. We're not there yet but when we are you don't want to get the reputation of being the evil company that seeks profits above all else.
    - leereeves 4y ago

cecilpl2 4y ago

Roblox already supports this on a centralized platform. You can buy items/cosmetics on the platform, and then use them in any game.

chemmail 4y ago

"Game economies have to be tightly controlled to combat things like RMT, botting, and unsanctioned item trading. Letting people transfer in any item they want basically makes that impossible. " Except in Diablo 3. Where all that killed the game.

Animats 4y ago

The amusing thing is the people who actually are drafting standards to move objects between virtual worlds have nothing to do with NFTs.[1] That group includes Epic, Unity, NVidia, W3C, Autodesk, Microsoft, Meta... The people who make stuff work. [1] https://metaverse-standards.org/ https://metaverse-standards.org/