Board 8 > So what is your thoughts of NFT/Crypto in videogames?

(+) Yeah! (+)

I didn't even knew about NFT's about until a few months ago and now all companies are into it and some like Ubisoft have already put them into their games. But here is the thing. What do NFT and crypto do to me as a gamer? I will tell you.

Nothing! Oh I get a cool hat with a unique code in a game? Wow! I can sell it to another person for maybe some money and the value is well whatever anyone wants? And it doesn't really do anything! And don't tell me that people buy cosmetics all the time. They don't do anything. Plus does it matter if it has a unique code or something? Also what happens when the game closes? Do they transfer? Don't think so.

Cryptos are ever worse. Because companies say that you play, you earn their cryptocurrency and it will have value in the future! Maybe! Never mind that there are thousands of cryptos and only like 5 are worth it. But no better put anything into game and it might have value.

I don't like all these. To me it seems it is another way for companies to ask for money from consumers and not offer anything of real value.

shit sucks

I saw a dude arguing that we "deserve some of the profits instead of them going to the top" and I'm like dude I am here to have fun (which apparently is a weird idea to square) not work another job

Safer_777 posted...

They don't do anything. Plus does it matter if it has a unique code or something?

Welcome to NFTs

Yeah it may all sound bad and pointless to us, but have you thought about how nice all those buzzwords sound to the board members and investors?

Blizzard was ahead of their time in implementing the RMAH.

just one step closer to the crash

i already hated TF2 hats

we're going from horse armor DLC to horse armor NFTs.
every single page of an artbook is gonna be an NFT to charge extra.

Literally completely meaningless integration to please investors or, worse, plunge the depths of how to maximize monetization of the medium at any and all cost. Pretty much anyone seriously discussing it - or, more recently, breathlessly talking about the potential in a shocking tone-deaf manner - deserves the shitstorm that will no doubt swiftly be upon them.

Dumb as fuck

Ive heard of them, but dont know too much about them. I dont plan to ever spend money on any so whatever I guess?

Better track this topic to figure out who to block - so far, all rational responses.

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZM8Kvrdgj/

i haven't seen any game NFT pitch that would benefit both the company and the players enough to justify it, but there could be some theoretical ones

consider MTGO. players have paid thousands of dollars to own the game's digital cards. unfortunately, MTGO is slowly transitioning to third party management and will eventually close for good. and even today, there are shinier and more appealing game clients

if those cards were NFTs, players could maintain and use those collections in other MTG engines beyond the death of the game. it seems like something nice a company could do towards the end of its life cycle rather than as an initial pitch

why don't players just play on cockatrice for free with whatever cards they want instead? i'm not sure. why does anyone bother playing MTGO in the first place when cockatrice is already available? probably the same reason people buy pokemon games when they can play 100% accurate pokemon battle simulators on the internet

but another question- why would a company spend the time creating a more complex feature that only helps players if the game fails or ends?

the dark souls series uses p2p instead of dedicated servers. they do this not for any gameplay or performance reason- it's purely to save on server costs

a game trying to save money on servers might want to run a P2P marketplace (aka a blockchain) rather than a hosted one

another potential use case might be more on the invisible b2b side. rather than companies creating and consuming multiple APIs owned by each dominant company on a platform (like Steam, Sony, Microsoft, Google, Apple, Nintendo, Epic, even middle layers like EA or Ubisoft, etc), they could use an open blockchain to share achievements, trophies, collectibles, etc between companies and games

regardless, i haven't seen any actual games pitched that sound at all reasonable. they're blatant cash grabs

banananor posted...

i haven't seen any game NFT pitch that would benefit both the company and the players enough to justify it, but there could be some theoretical ones

Yeah, basically this. I'm not saying it's never going to work, but until there's an actual good implementation, I don't see the benefits of NFTs.

Nowadays it's just buzzwords.

xp1337 posted...

just one step closer to the crash

damn, beat me to it

I don't get why companies keep doing this when there's a massive backlash every time, but I think at this point they're just going to collectively keep cramming it down our throats until we give up.

If I could snap my fingers and suddenly all the pro-NFT people were homeless I would do so.

If a game I was planning to buy had NFT implementation announced I would no longer plan to get it, and if I was really interested in it I would just watch it on Twitch or something

You guys know you can just not buy the NFTs, right?

redrocket posted...

You guys know you can just not buy the NFTs, right?

topic asks what our thoughts on NFTs are

we answered what our thoughts on NFTs are

redrocket posted...

You guys know you can just not buy the NFTs, right?

Doesn't change how stupid they are or how bad they are for the environment.

redrocket posted...

You guys know you can just not buy the NFTs, right?

This is like saying "You know you can just not buy the Jeep, right?"

I say "one of the stupidest things I've ever heard" a lot, but NFTs are actually one of the stupidest ideas I've ever heard

GuessMyUserName posted...

topic asks what our thoughts on NFTs are

we answered what our thoughts on NFTs are

I mean talk of blanket boycotts against all games with NFTs seems an overreaction.

redrocket posted...

I mean talk of blanket boycotts against all games with NFTs seems an overreaction.

It's really not because of how utterly damaging they are - both to the environment and quite potentially to the medium at large if people take a "well just don't buy them lol" approach.

From what I understand of it they're just a scam.

i think they are things that COULD be cool but they wont be because of greed.

I don't really follow Penny Arcade anymore, but:

https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2021/12/08/digits

NFTs are a psyop by eco-fascists to make the rest of crypto look bad imo

NFTs might actually be one of the worst things to happen in the history of the internet.

They have single-handedly set comedy back about three years. If I had a dollar for every "SCREEN SHOT RIGHT CLICK SAVE HURRR" joke I've seen I could afford every NFT ever made.

realistically its probably not true, but I want to believe the theory that the implementation of NFTs in Ghost Recon Whatever is so shitty because the actual developers are trying to sabotage the concept so the higher ups stop trying to do more NFTs

as of a couple weeks ago, they hadnt sold enough to even offset the cost to mint them on the blockchain or whatever

Now Square Enix announced NFT's in gaming too. Damn!

There is a lot to say about NFTs, and there are a lot of different "sectors" within NFT spaces and they are not remotely created equally.

It stands to reason that if you haven't come to terms with the existence of cryptocurrency in general that you don't belong in the NFT conversation. Before you can even weigh in on NFTs you need a general understanding of crypto.

But assuming you have cleared that very low bar, there are still a lot of different areas with incredibly varying degrees of viability.

In my opinion the least viable NFT sub section on average is the PFP projects. These are the projects that often consist of 10,000 randomly generated Profile Picture images and are themed in some way. Unless you were one of the very first iterations (CryptoPunks) or one of the early "high quality" PFP projects to gain name recognition (Bored Ape Yacht Club) the simple fact is that there cannot possibly be enough demand to drive value to the sheer number of projects that exist. Throw in the fact that 99% of new PFP projects are low quality cash grabs and you have a sector where very few of the projects will every be able to find and sustain traction. These projects tend to profit the few at the cost of the many and generally prey on over eager people who are trying to find the "next" crypto punk and get in on the ground floor. But people are going to keep making them because with next to no investment even a "failure" of a PFP project that has almost no adoption and quickly becomes value-less will net it's creators tens of thousands of dollars. And projects where the entire 10k images get minted can land it's creators hundreds of thousands.

.

And in my opinion the most viable NFT sub section is collectibles, sports in particular. Sports cards, for example are an example of an asset whose value has stood the test of time. It is only the extrinsic value that we apply that causes a sports card to be worth more than the cardboard it's printed on. Whose card is it? When was it made? Was it the first card available for that player? How many of that card are in circulation? These contribute to the value of a sports card. And with the exception of "what condition is it in?" all of the extrinsic value questions for sports cards can be successfully applied to sports NFTs. Not only that, thanks to the blockchain forgery becomes impossible unlike the Pokemon Cards that Logan paul paid 3.5M for which may actually be fake. (still waiting for more information about that emerging story).

Within sports NFTs though, there are several varied examples of them being implemented. You have NBA Top Shot, which creates NFTs out of highlights from NBA games. This is a good use of the digital nature of the blockchain to create a sports asset that's more than just a static image. And sure anyone can look at the same 10 second clip that you "own", but in that same way anyone can pull up the same exact picture of mickey mantle that was used for his baseball card. The series 1 release of Top Shot has held it's value very well and I see no indication that moments from that first set will be losing value any time soon. One thing that Top Shot is not doing as well though (in my opinion) is that they seem to have oversaturated their newest sets. I understand the reasoning that they want to make their marketplace as accessible as possible and $2 is a very attractive entry point to own an NFT, but there really doesn't need to be 60,000 copies of a Bradley Beal layup:
https://nbatopshot.com/listings/p2p/e7b9646c-9997-46c8-909f-2a2b67389023+a6de2694-3f4a-4767-9679-7697b538f6d3

The other thing they do that I'm not overly fond of is gating all the new releases behind "collection score" requirements. Many of the better releases of packs require a high enough collection score which just creates a rich-get-richer aspect to their marketplace. But overall NBA Top Shots is the Official implementation of NBA digital assets and that officialness gives value to these assets.

In contrast you have Topps which badly mismanaged the release of their own sports NFTs. Their NFT drops tended to simply be static images that were identical to the physical cards that they created and their support/communication for those releases has been decidedly poor. Topps got bought out by Fanatics yesterday and Fanatics already has it's own NFT Company (Candy Digital) so it remains to be seen what will happen with the existing MLB Topps NFTs. But I am incredibly bullish on Candy Digital NFTs and have been for some time. They are the future of MLB Digital Assets, they released some Play-of-the-Day NFTs starting with the most recent playoffs (example: https://mlb.candy.com/collectibles/afbc105a-2a07-4a2a-be86-a4da4eaae9e8 ) and released a collection of NFTs that walk the line between being a card and being a video called their MLB Icons set. (example of an Epic: https://mlb.candy.com/collectibles/da59b000-0336-4906-9f3e-12aa21a00b57 and example of a Common https://mlb.candy.com/collectibles/e39dae68-ded5-407d-a1d4-c6d1e8e3adc8 ) Candy's own marketplace for these assets is launching on January 15th and I'm personally very excited for it.

And in the middle of PFP and Sports you have things like Gaming NFTs and other Art NFTs that vary widely across a spectrum depending on how exactly they are being implemented. If a popular digital artist decides to create a set of NFTs with their artwork it can be a good way for people who enjoy their artwork to support that artist. This provides some level of ownership for the purchaser, and it allows the artist to have a mechanism to get properly compensated for their work. All too often you hear of photographers and artists who see their work being used without their permission or without them being compensated and while that will still happen (obligatory "right click + save lololol") there will be others who will jump at the chance to support something of high quality. It's like how you can watch someone streaming on twitch for free or you can choose to pay $5 to be a subscriber and support the content that you aren't required to pay for.

There are entire games where NFT assets are integral to the functioning of the game. Most well known would be Axie Infinity, which is a strategic pet-battling game similar to pokemon where you have to own the asset of the pet to be able to participate in the game. And once you are playing the game you can earn rewards that can be sold to other players for a profit. In Axie in particular there is a large enough playerbase and demand for game assets that people in countries with a low enough cost of living have been able to actually make a living playing Axie full time. But similar to cryptopunks this is the exception and not the rule. Many other projects simply put "making a game" on their road map to make people believe it's the next Axie when in reality their team doesn't have the technical knowledge required to create something on that scale or have a large enough player base to be self-sustaining. If nobody is playing the game the money for it's economy wont exist. Or if a game has a lot of players, but they are ALL trying to earn+sell their assets there wont be anyone to sell to. It's similar to WoW gold, if nobody is buying the gold the price goes way down.

A promising looking NFT-Game project that is launching this year (beta for their gameplay is coming soon) is Avarik Saga (https://www.avariksaga.com/) which will be a turn-based JRPG style game. Currently there are 8888 characters and to play the game when it launches you will need to own at least 3 to make a party. You will earn in-game currency for owning the NFTs and for playing the game, and the plan is for the currency to be usable to breed the characters so there will eventually be more than the current 8.8K. When the project first released it's initial 8.8k characters (late september) it cost 0.1 ETH each to mint one. They sold out pretty quickly, but as often happens with these projects people who expected to make tens of thousands immediately became unwilling to hold so the price dropped throughout october and november until the floor price for the cheapest available avarik was around 0.015 ETH (only 15% of the original cost). As the game has released more project updates and appears to be getting closer to release the price has rebounded with the cheapest avarik currently being 0.092 ETH, but many of the more rare ones selling for several times that amount.

But for every NFT Game like Avarik, which seems poised to actually deliver a quality product, there are dozens of others that fail to delivery anything. And these are just the small start-up game projects that will utilize blockchain assets as a core component of their gameplay. It sounds like this topic is more talking about the trend of AAA gaming companies trying to shoehorn a digital asset into their game without really understanding the space. For example Ubisoft Quartz, creating an in game skin or item that will function exactly the same for everyone is not something that particularly needs a blockchain asset to verify unique ownership of.

The bottom line is there are simply too many different examples of good and bad implementations to make a sweeping statement about the future of NFTs one way or the other. All you can do is identity the projects that are the good examples and figure out what they are doing right to drive the technology in a positive direction, and steer clear of the vast majority of projects that are little more than FOMO inducing cash grabs. Personally I navigated the space fairly well in 2021 and showed a profit on the year for the NFTs I bought and sold, but it's very easy to lose money if you aren't being cautious.

FD, do you have anything to say about the environmental impact of NFTs?

Proof of Work is garbage and needs to become a thing of the past.

With that said the environmental impact of NFTs will be largely mitigated when Ethereum transitions to Proof of Stake.

Also if we now aggressively transition to cleaner energy sources that will help too. We would be less concerned about energy usage if we had clean electricity to spare.

FD, other than pointless digital scarcity/potential for profit, what do NFTs actually provide that cant be accomplished in other ways?

Why make a cardboard collectible that you can make digitally without having to waste the resources in paper and ink and binders and cases and shelves?

Which one of these things is more wasteful?

One issue I have is that very little actually exists on the blockchain itself. A receipt saying you own something on someone's server means little if that server disappears

Source? My understanding is that the decentralized nature of the blockchain results in secure redundancy.

There isn't a single server somewhere called "Ethereum Mainnet" that could be destroyed and result in a loss of information. It's a shared record across many nodes that hold each other accountable to ensure accuracy.

Unless you're talking about specific sites or NFT marketplace that use custodial wallet accounts? Because that's a different discussion altogether. If you have an asset in a wallet that you have personal, non custodial, ownership of then I don't see how that could simply disappear.

The blockchain itself is secure, but its functionally a public ledger with just a URL or hash, and because its public you dont actually own anything unique. Hence right-click memes.

Also if the domain the URL links to expires, someone else can literally just replace itwhich has happened plenty of times already.

That is true. But that's also the sort of problem that will become less common and another reason to stick to trustworthy assets.

If the NBA Top Shot servers go away, your Lebron James GIF goes away with it. All you're left with a receipt saying "NBA clip #3058935" or whatever. Seems less worthwhile to me than a physical card that will always remain the same.

Lazy Tiger Wood Cub #7,894 is a lot more likely to disappear someday than an NBA asset.

I understand the concern, but it's not a likely problem for reliable projects/assets, and I imagine there will be some future solutions at some point as well.

https://twitter.com/therichardkarn/status/1478504258148257794?s=21

Forceful_Dragon posted...

Lazy Tiger Wood Cub #7,894 is a lot more likely to disappear someday than an NBA asset.

I understand the concern, but it's not a likely problem for reliable projects/assets, and I imagine there will be some future solutions at some point as well.

the issue with your whole point about collectibles and such is that it's fundamentally significantly less cool to have an obscure digital certificate whose procurement probably comes from somebody impersonally chucking money at somebody than to have an actual rare physical thing, or something that got at least some kind of real attention from somebody important by getting signed. I'm sure that they'll build some sites so that you can feature your truly owned NFTs as badges or whatever, and there are whales who'll buy anything, but that's significantly more niche in a lot of ways than the collectible situation we have now... and it's definitely almost entirely non-intersecting with the modern use-case of NFTs anyhow. I definitely don't see it as something worth championing over the scummy bullshit they are now

I don't really see how your thoughts on NFT games is anything meaningfully different than what we have now. Like, why does having a virtual pet need to be an NFT instead of just like a generic gacha purchase