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“Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

paulbutler.org

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Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#181

Post by rapind »

58x14 wrote: post #32

In the late 2000s, as a teenager, I was gifted a Runescape account. This account had level 80+ woodcutting, allowing one to chop magic trees - which would produce the most expensive lumber in the game. It took a staggering number of real hours to achieve this skill level, we're talking several hundred hours minimum. At some point I had realized that there were different sketchy websites that would buy and sell the in…

In my early 20s I played an MMO called Asherons Call. I discovered a vendor in one high level area that would sell bows for less than a specific vendor in a low level area would buy them, netting you a small margin per bow.

Being a programmer I wrote a script that used two different teleport skills (lifestone and portal recall I think?) and a bit of movement and clicking based on pixel (Color) matching to deal with latency, tweaking it over time, and started printing in game money. I would come home from work to a backpack full of D notes (unit of currency I adapted my script to convert).

Then I would sell these D notes on eBay. Did this for a few months. First month I made over 7k USD (I shit you not). 2nd month about 3.5k, maybe 1k third month, so basically the market collapsed and I moved on (to other fun exploits… once you’ve been bitten by the exploit bug…).

In retrospect I regret it.

I’m a total hypocrite saying this, but I think this sort of crap has ruined MMOs, and gotten far more advanced and efficient over the years.

The fun I had in AC before I started doing this stuff is something I wish more people could experience, but I suspect has been lost.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#182

Post by jonathan-adly »

jayd16 wrote: post #161
jonathan-adly wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very similar story here.. I had a few party hats in Runescape which made the whole NFT thing and to a lesser extent Bitcoin so much easier to understand.

I still don't get it. We already sold digital assets so why do we need NFTs or Blockchain? What does it add here?

Party hats served no purpose whatsoever in the game except as a status symbol (arguably even!). Yet, was worth a lot of money in the game (and a god sum in real life for a high schooler)

Humans are emotional animals, utility is a very poor approximation of value.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#183

Post by jayd16 »

Selling digital goods for real money is pretty well tread. What does web3/crypto add here?

Game assets can't be used in another game. You need full support from the game developer. The devs could much more easily and cheaply sell the assets direct or support trading.

If the game is distributed or has private servers or something that might warrant defi trades, but wouldn't gamers just hack their own items? If they control the server code, surely it's possible.

Seems like a marketing gimmick at best. What am I missing?

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#184

Post by stale2002 »

beaconstudios wrote: post #101
smugglerFlynn wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just for the record, some of the examples Graeber uses include airline desk staff who calm passengers whose bags do not arrive, middle management, and corporate compliance officers. You can call these jobs “bullshit” if you rely on an oversimplified version of the world where perfect airlines, perfect employees, and automatically enforced laws exist. Unfortunately, that’s also the exact view I often see in tech, wher…

David Graeber is an anarchist, his criticism of bullshit jobs is about sustaining the centralisation of power, not techbro idealism. There is no reason outside of power dynamics why airline desk staff need to exist to comfort disgruntled passengers, because the existence of disgruntled passengers who need to be shooed off is a consequence of the airline industry.

> is a consequence of the airline industry

So then yes you are assuming that anarchism can wave a magic wand and make it so airlines never lose people's bags, or that it won't ever create any extra work to track down those bags.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#185

Post by beaconstudios »

stale2002 wrote: post #184
beaconstudios wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

David Graeber is an anarchist, his criticism of bullshit jobs is about sustaining the centralisation of power, not techbro idealism. There is no reason outside of power dynamics why airline desk staff need to exist to comfort disgruntled passengers, because the existence of disgruntled passengers who need to be shooed off is a consequence of the airline industry.

> is a consequence of the airline industry So then yes you are assuming that anarchism can wave a magic wand and make it so airlines never lose people's bags, or that it won't ever create any extra work to track down those bags.

No, but that airlines hire essentially customer service reps to face the brunt of people's anger while the company changes nothing to prevent the problems is a classic corporate strategy. They exploit customers and neglect their responsibility and then hire some poor mug to get shouted at.

I don't know if that's David Graeber's specific criticism but it is mine.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#186

Post by smolder »

jayd16 wrote: post #161
jonathan-adly wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very similar story here.. I had a few party hats in Runescape which made the whole NFT thing and to a lesser extent Bitcoin so much easier to understand.

I still don't get it. We already sold digital assets so why do we need NFTs or Blockchain? What does it add here?

A somewhat hard to erase record of which url "belongs" to whom. That, and it gives them the appearance of having some high tech magical properties that will lead to an explosion in value, helping to justify asking prices to the marks.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#187

Post by user-the-name »

bagels wrote: post #140
user-the-name wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you not understand that people find it pleasurable to listen to music, or what?

And, inexplicably, people find pleasure (or are merely addicted to) in digital coins in a game too.

The two are in absolutely no way whatsoever comparable, don't be ridiculous.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#188

Post by WJW »

freeone3000 wrote: post #175
WJW wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For Proof-of-Work coins, the miners need significant amounts of electricity. Electricity is not free, so maintaining the network costs a significant amount of money. This money is "reimbursed" to them through mining rewards, but since electricity companies typically can't be paid in cryptocurrencies the miners will need to sell (a part of) their mining reward to pay the power bill. This means that there is always a m…

Is ransomware that rare an occurrence? I could see ransomware being the taxes of web3.

If ransomware ever becomes big enough to rival the cumulative tax bill of a nation state, you can bet that combating it would get a lot more priority. Spec ops teams raiding office buildings in foreign nations type priority.

Countries are very protective of their cash flows.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#189

Post by Dowwie »

sokoloff wrote: post #94
beambot wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally refers to decentralized technologies that somehow benefit from blockchain-like data structures. For example, you can compost these three technologies to build a decentralized webserver. - Filecoin & AR Weave: decentralized file storage. Spend tokens to store files, earn tokens by storing others' files. - ENS (Ethereum Name Service): DNS-like system for addresses. - Smart Contracts of various sorts (e.g. Eth…

> you can compost these three technologies to build a decentralized webserver I don’t know if you meant “compose” or “compost”, but it works both ways.

Going to need to mulch more carbon-rich material and introduce digital worms to work through the pile
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