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“Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

paulbutler.org

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Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#461

Post by rank0 »

shkkmo wrote: post #396
lotsofpulp wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On one hand, these strategies can save companies many millions of dollars, but on the other, they really produce nothing of value and are just a product of the complexities of a (human designed) tax system Businesses that spend less money on taxes can spend more money on expenses, such as payroll and higher quality materials and land, or it can allow them to sell products/services at a lower price, providing a comp…

Tax avoidance just moves the tax burden around, it doesn't create value. Tax collection and tax compliance does create value, but spending time specifically figuring out how to pay as little taxes as possible creates no value. It see likely that some level of bullshit jobs are an unavoidable side-effects of value producing activities. The interesting part of the idea comes from thinking about how we can structure tho…

I disagree here. Instead of calling it “tax avoidance” let’s just talk about reducing your tax burden as much as possible. This is the prudent move for any individual or tax paying entity.

Taking advantage of your roth, 401k, homestead exemption, writing off losses, etc… absolutely provides value to the tax payer. The value is literally more money for the tax payer who can now further participate in the economy.

The accounting industry employs loads of people. Is that not “value?”

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#462

Post by throw_m239339 »

netcan wrote: post #42

As I was reading Graeber, it's useful to imagine useless job economies of the past. Is a medieval abbey "useless?" Clergy? Servants to the clergy? How about courtiers? Courtiers' dress makers? These classes represented a small part of most societies in the past, though not always that small. In any case, it's obvious that whatever needs these jobs serve are cultural. Don't underestimate culture. Money is a cultural c…

> Is a medieval abbey "useless?" Clergy? Servants to the clergy? How about courtiers? Courtiers' dress makers?

You're really misinformed. Monks have been producing goods like wine, cheese, keeping society's records for centuries, or even being involved in woodwork or construction work, providing useful services to their communities. What does it have to do with "bullshit jobs"? Nothing.

Your comment sounds like a gratuitous provocation.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#463

Post by JohnJamesRambo »

nlh wrote: post #38

A thought exercise you should undertake if you're thinking about / talking about crypto/NFT/web3-related projects: If the financial instrument that underlies the project were to stop going up in value XX% per month, would you still be interested in the project? I do this a lot because I've made the conscious (and perhaps financially foolish) choice to stay away from everything crypto/blockchain related (for now, at l…

If the SP500 stopped going up in value would you still be interested in the project?

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#464

Post by jerryoftheyear »

chii wrote: post #428
58x14 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds great. I'll create a DAO to collect funds so we can create this game. What should we call it? How about Recursion?

Since the name Second Life is taken, how about Third Life?

Try the other direction, call it "First Life".

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#465

Post by jkhdigital »

mertd wrote: post #414
q-big wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When you pay someone in BTC, you also have to pay the power company with something. The system is an inherently leaky bucket. The same holds for, say, transactions in US dollars. Here, you also pay your bank or your credit card company.

That's not a fundamental property of fiat money. There is no fee for exchanging cash.

Does cash just grow on trees? No, it is printed by a government that employs thousands of agents who have to make sure that no one is counterfeiting those bills. The fact that I can hand someone a $20 and walk away with my bag of groceries is the tip of a massive iceberg of regulatory and enforcement mechanisms.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#466

Post by bredren »

cardosof wrote: post #219
danShumway wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know a lot of people have fond memories of this kind of thing, but from a designer perspective, is it good that a game is so boring that players are willing to pay real-world money to skip parts of it? Runescape set up a system that was so grind-heavy that players broke server rules and wrote automated scripts to grind for them, and other players gave them money to do that. Because the minute-to-minute gameplay of…

I believe this is what happens with any open world MMO. There's no storyline to finish, there's no ending, and game devs have incentives to keep players playing forever (the more hours a player plays, the more likely he will spend more money). There's only two ways to keep players playing: new content and/or grinding mechanics. Grinding mechanics are way, way easier to create. You can even reuse sprites and just chan…

>Grinding mechanics are way, way easier to create. You can even reuse sprites and just change names - a lv10 tree, a lv50 tree, a lv100 tree. Real content is hard to do, requires imagination, development, testing.

Reuse of content in new context doesn’t have to be a boring clone.

Disney would regularly reuse animations of characters between animated films to save money. It did not necessarily take away from the wrapping content’s best moments or overall entertainment value.

For example dancing reveries and other sequences in Robin Hood used rotoscoping heavily. [1]

There’s no doubt the reuse was cheap but in some ways that allowed the designers to focus on new characters and scenes.

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/disney-reuses-animation-2015...

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#467

Post by jkhdigital »

mjr00 wrote: post #290
nightski wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You aren't talking about the intrinsic value of Bitcoin. You are talking about it's value relative to USD. These are completely different things. Bitcoin has intrinsic value outside of the fiat system. It can be used entirely independent of fiat. Whether that will become common is another matter, but the value of Bitcoin does not have to depend solely on it's value relative to USD.

> Bitcoin has intrinsic value outside of the fiat system. Not really, because even though the number of Bitcoins is limited, the number of cryptocurrencies is not. In any application that uses Bitcoin, you can substitute Litecoin, Dogecoin, or most other altcoins/shitcoins in existence, and there would be zero difference. In fact, Bitcoin's only advantage over those coins is extrinsic --it has more longevity, better…

> even though the number of Bitcoins is limited, the number of cryptocurrencies is not.

There will only ever be a single dominant SHA-2 PoW cryptocurrency, because mining power can be expended on only a single chain. Doesn’t matter how many new genesis blocks are minted, this is a natural monopoly and Bitcoin clearly is the monopolist.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#468

Post by danShumway »

themacguffinman wrote: post #247
danShumway wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know a lot of people have fond memories of this kind of thing, but from a designer perspective, is it good that a game is so boring that players are willing to pay real-world money to skip parts of it? Runescape set up a system that was so grind-heavy that players broke server rules and wrote automated scripts to grind for them, and other players gave them money to do that. Because the minute-to-minute gameplay of…

While I personally agree with your view that gameplay should always be actually fun, I think that misses the magic of games for a significant population of gamers. Is most of your real day-to-day life truly "fun" in a game-like sense? Most people would say "no", X hours in a day is a lot of time to be consistently having fun, yet a lot of people would still describe their lives as "rewarding" and therefore worthwhile…

> I think that misses the magic of games for a significant population of gamers.

I don't doubt that some people are enjoying this, and I think that's great; meditative games are fine. But I've never played a meditative game and been tempted to pay real money to turn it off.

I think there's a little bit of wishful, optimistic projection about player intention that happens during these conversations, because if everyone playing the games felt the way you describe, then the monetization model wouldn't work.

We have games that have chores in them (Animal Crossing springs to mind). And we have repetitive games. And we have MMOs where people like to grind. None of that is a failure of design. But what you notice is that in the best instances of these games where people actually like the grind, they pay money to play the game, not to stop playing it. When a player is earning $10 every 4-6 hours by automating chopping logs, that's a sign that some of your playerbase isn't enjoying what's happening to them. They're sending the clearest possible economic signal they can that the grind isn't a positive or rewarding experience for them.

We can talk about the people who do enjoy the grind or get something out of it, but I feel like we're all kind of lying to ourselves if we say that's the primary experience happening with the vast majority of players. Games wouldn't make money from microtransactions unless a nontrivial portion of their playerbase thought it was valuable to skip gameplay. You won't make very much money giving players ways to skip gameplay unless you're confident that a nontrivial portion of your playerbase won't find that gameplay rewarding.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#469

Post by danShumway »

jallen_dot_dev wrote: post #309
danShumway wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know a lot of people have fond memories of this kind of thing, but from a designer perspective, is it good that a game is so boring that players are willing to pay real-world money to skip parts of it? Runescape set up a system that was so grind-heavy that players broke server rules and wrote automated scripts to grind for them, and other players gave them money to do that. Because the minute-to-minute gameplay of…

Grinding is boring but it's also extremely satisfying when you finally achieve your desired level. It feels like a real achievement, and it lets you show off to other players because they know how much time you had to spend. If it was also fun, it wouldn't be as impressive. In that way it's sort of like Proof of Work in Bitcoin. If it wasn't a total waste (that is, if the work itself produced something useful that wa…

> It feels like a real achievement

I've mentioned this elsewhere, but if people can pay money to skip something, then I don't think doing it is a public/social achievement. At best, it's a personal achievement, which could hold value for some people. But you're not really signaling anything publicly by going through a grind if someone else can pay to skip it.

This is also why I'm kind of skeptical of NFT games as being about "earning" something in-game, or about showing off status. Why should anyone care about or respect someone for having an asset in a game that can just be bought?

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#470

Post by jkhdigital »

gitfan86 wrote: post #269
MetaWhirledPeas wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I must admit I don't understand why it is "cashflow negative". I'm not invested in any crypto, but I have thought about it, and my casual thoughts have come to the opposite conclusion. The higher the price of a cryptocurrency, the greater the interest in mining and investing. It seems like a positive feedback loop to me. Why is it not?

Imagine if you had the option of buying a piece of gold or a piece of land with good irrigation and good soil. You can plant vegetables on the land and sell those vegetables for other people to eat. Therefor your investment is generating profit and "cashflow". Gold on the other hand just sits there, and you may want to keep it in a safe at a bank and the bank will charge you a fee for storage making it negative cashf…

> Imagine if you had the option of buying a piece of gold or a piece of land with good irrigation and good soil.

Why imagine? Both of these things can be purchased in the real world. And yet we see that some people purchase farmland, and others purchase bars of gold. Why is that?

Turns out, people called economists have been pondering such questions for hundreds of years and have developed quite sophisticated and nuanced theories about how humans create, assign, and transact value.

Anyways, thanks for the lesson on “cashflow” but you might want to pick up an economics textbook, you might learn something.

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