Historic sale of a Gala Games Fantasy MMORPG in-game NFT item for US$800K

The creator was ex-Zynga, so of course it's largely built around a whale-first monetization strategy. Even more dangerously, it's inside of a game that appears to be largely vaporware, and has no high-profile company to give weight to the virtual items. At least you know Blizzard or Epic will be around for a while, these people could be bankrupt tomorrow and all you'd own is a worthless (and expensive) Ethereum transaction.

I'd also bet that this "sale" is an inside job, given that the virtual nonsense was purchased by another scammy blockchain gaming company via "Polyient Games Unity Tokens", and the $800K is based on the market cap of some obscure, illiquid token.

"and which are only accessible within that game" - this isn't correct. The concept of public blockchain allows these NFTs to be used anywhere that also uses that blockchain. They have mentioned this in another article on their ecosystem. https://gogalagames.medium.com/the-gala-games-node-ecosystem...

The fact that co-founder of Zynga and creative director of FarmVille 2 are behind this enterprise is extremely telling.

A few thoughts:

1. There is a small-but-non-trivial segment of gamers that are willing to spend huge amounts of money for in-game privileges.

2. There is a similar, somewhat-overlapping segment of gamers willing to spend huge amounts of time on a game, if that huge amount of time is rewarded with things that can't be accessed any other way (think grinding for top-tier rewards in a game like Path of Exile, some things just aren't accessible if you don't spend 1000+ hours)

3. Asia is driving the leading edge of game monetization now, and that leading edge is gacha games (lootbox mechanics/disguised digital slot machines).

Looks like a couple of experts on extracting money from casual gamers have turned their attention to the whale/core gamers, and this attempt is blockchain-flavored. As a sibling comment (duskwuff) pointed out, blockchain is irrelevant to the actual value in-game of the item. The devs can change the game world to make your $1k sword irrelevant, and based on how these kinds of games usually go, they probably will - and the whale gamers will gladly open up their wallets to gamble on the latest and greatest.

There is nothing innovative or exciting about Mirandus at all, unless you are looking for the fastest and most efficient way to fleece gamers - in fact, the Minecraft aesthetic feels like a little bit of a giveaway to the devs' real goals - lower the technical requirements to cast as wide a net as possible to pull in as many whales as possible.

Maybe I'm wrong and this is the start of an Ethereum-powered future where digital goods are freed from platforms, but I doubt it. Most likely this is a digital cash grab that will launch to massive early-backer-funded fanfare, but will sink into the abyss of forgotten gacha games, once the devs have made their millions and start looking for a new target. Just like all the others.

"Used anywhere" implies that an in-game item has a use outside that game. While it's technically possible that another game might decide to "honor" these items, in practice that's almost certainly not going to happen.

Non-Fungible Token. Which is the name of the protocol standard, and the abbreviation has evolved into a colloquialism in the art/game/collector world that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the protocol standard.

But it is referring to unique collectibles. The blockchain protocol aspect improves on the pricing and provenance of the asset, as one can prove when it was created (before or after another similar one, for proof of the original creation), and the exact amount paid for it at that time, to better illuminate prior market value. The art world has had trouble with all of this for millenia including in the present.