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“Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

paulbutler.org

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Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#501

Post by oldsecondhand »

shkkmo wrote: post #380
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #348

Some random thoughts - bullshit jobs is a term for jobs that have not yet been automated. Jeff Bezos pays a Uber driver to turn a steering wheel until the robot can, and he pays a Amazon Project Manager to make graphs until the Perl Script can. - such jobs don't exist because the "elite" are scared of proletariat, they exist because organisations are badly designed hurriedly put together and really hard to dismantle.…

> bullshit jobs is a term for jobs that have not yet been automated This is not what the term is intended to mean. "Uber Driver" (or taxi driver) is a job that performs a necessary function but one that may not necessarily need to be done by a human. A bullshit job is one that does not really need to be done, one that provides no value to society at large and exists because of zero-sum games, ego, tradition, etc... I…

By this definition being a soldier is a bullshit job, because the only reason it's needed is because other countries have soldiers as well (i.e. zero sum). But I don't think most people would agree that it can be done away with. Zero sum games are just an unavoidable part of life.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#502

Post by aww_dang »

danShumway wrote: post #170
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…

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…

If people care enough to exploit your game or buy items in your game economy, your game is a success. If it was truly boring, they wouldn't bother.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#503

Post by danShumway »

jallen_dot_dev wrote: post #498
danShumway wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 bei…

You can buy your way into a prestigious school. I don't see how some people paying to skip the work denies the achievement of those who don't skip it.

> You can buy your way into a prestigious school.

And is that something our society encourages? Are we rooting for prestigious schools to offer more pay-to-enter mechanisms like that, do we have a contingent of teachers arguing that this is the future of schooling? Or do a lot of people get really mad about those bribery scandals, and do those prestigious schools actually loose a small amount of social prestige in the public eye whenever a new scandal comes out?

People aren't happy with Harvard when they engage in nepotism, no one goes around calling that a bold new innovative model for college admissions.

Of course, paying money or hacking your way through an experience doesn't rob other people of the intrinsic personal achievement of doing something hard, and it doesn't mean their experience was less meaningful. But common shortcuts certainly make all of these achievements less valuable as a social signal, which is something that NFT-based games claim that they can provide.

In your earlier comment you write:

> it lets you show off to other players because they know how much time you had to spend

But no, it doesn't, because those other players don't know if you legitimately got the achievement/asset, they have no idea how much time you spent on it. If you personally find it rewarding to get that asset then great, but in a play-to-earn game or a game with tradable NFT assets, most of the achievements that are publicly displayed by players won't have been earned, so you're not really socially/publicly showing off anything to other players unless you're also adding a text box underneath them saying "don't worry, I did actually earn this."

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#504

Post by dmingod666 »

larsiusprime wrote: post #144
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…

I did a report on this game for a client a few months back -- the amount of daily earnings a player can expect has crashed significantly over the past few months, and it's only gotten worse ever since. https://twitter.com/larsiusprime/status/1459191090100244483

That's pretty impressive. What do you know what caused the May 2021 spike? what is your feel of how 'sustainable' the whole eco-system of this game is..

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#505

Post by aniforprez »

Liron wrote: post #250

Here's patio11's thread: https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1459682519360491523 I was shocked to see A16z recently investing $150M in Axie Infinity and doubling down on their justification of play-to-earn as a coherent concept, as if it's not fundamentally a pyramid scheme. It's lowered my expectation of what passes for thought leadership in our industry.

Oh my god. That podcast with the Axie dude made me recoil with disgust. The way they're selling the pay-to-earn concepts comparing it to mobile games is absolutely vile especially when mobile games are equally predatory

Sometimes I wish I didn't have any scruples so I could mint money from misery like this

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#506

Post by jallen_dot_dev »

danShumway wrote: post #503
jallen_dot_dev wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can buy your way into a prestigious school. I don't see how some people paying to skip the work denies the achievement of those who don't skip it.

> You can buy your way into a prestigious school. And is that something our society encourages? Are we rooting for prestigious schools to offer more pay-to-enter mechanisms like that, do we have a contingent of teachers arguing that this is the future of schooling? Or do a lot of people get really mad about those bribery scandals, and do those prestigious schools actually loose a small amount of social prestige in th…

Ok I see your point now and I agree. If there is no way for others to distinguish between grinding and pay-to-win then social signaling ceases to be a motive and you're only left with personal satisfaction.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#507

Post by cblconfederate »

mintplant wrote: post #332

> People have made money by selling virtual goods acquired in-game at least as far back as Second Life in 2005. So I basically grew up on Second Life, back when "the Metaverse" was just a geek thing no one cared about. The comparison doesn't really work here, because the virtual items people sold on SL were (generally) their original creations: 3D modeled, animated, programmed, etc. Not simply doled out by pre-progra…

come to think of it, i wonder why SL has not converted SLL to a cryptocurrency

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#508

Post by sva_ »

danShumway wrote: post #170
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…

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…

> is it good that a game is so boring that players are willing to pay real-world money to skip parts of it?

The things that people are willing to spend money on in games are usually interesting for people for the exact reason that those things are scarce. So it is, from my experience, all about showing off.

Saying this as someone who exploited a lot of games and made some large passive income from that, "back in the days". I'd say 95% of -- "end-customers" (as opposed to resellers which you need if you move a lot,) bought stuff just to show off.

So if those things were readily available and didn't require grinding, people wouldn't desire them. It's almost a bit of a paradox, I guess.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#509

Post by Talanes »

meowface wrote: post #492
cardosof wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>There's only two ways to keep players playing: new content and/or grinding mechanics. You neglected what's by far the funnest and most important and user-retaining aspect of open world MMOs: player-to-player interaction - be it friendly, neutral, or hostile. The absolute most enjoyable open world MMOs I've played had essentially no content. Players forged their own content in the form of geopolitics, war, economics,…

> I'm convinced the best MMOs to come out over the next 20 years will have very little content and very sparse grinding mechanics.

Current open world survival games use grind as a main mechanism for driving emergent game-play and creating player differentiation/conflict, so I don't see it ending completely. Game designers have gotten much better at making grind that isn't actively unfun though.

Re: “Play-to-Earn” and Bullshit Jobs

#510

Post by zubairq »

I think so much of life is already gaming: sports, bowling, football, watching sports on TV/YouTube/cable. Many of these so called time wasters existed outside of the digital world and people have already consumed a lot of time and attention for hundreds of years. In fact empire building and war are probably two of the oldest sports known to humankind
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