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Justin Kan: Web3 games don’t need to lure players with profit

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Re: Justin Kan: Web3 games don’t need to lure players with profit

#41

Post by duskwuff »

thr0wawayf00 wrote: post #28
mark242 wrote: post #20

You look at the biggest games of the year: God of War, Elden Ring, Stray, etc. Shoehorning in NFT-style assets into these games is just a ridiculous proposal, especially ones with any kind of "marketplace" that you would have to support. All of the time and effort and maintenance and customer service, all of that would hit the bottom line of the game. The better studios -- that is, the ones who make game-of-the-year…

> There is absolutely zero chance of, say, EA and Activision collaborating on a spec to share assets across brands. Zero, no matter how much you could spin it to executives. We're seeing the startup mentality being applied to generate these new markets within gaming and people just aren't buying it. It's such an intellectually dishonest argument to make that players want to be able to share assets across games as you…

And the closely related concept of being able to transfer functional game items between games, or sell them on the open market, is even more ridiculous. Not only is it completely incompatible with any concept of game balance, but it's really just a roundabout way of saying that every game should be pay-to-win (by buying items outside the game) -- which is a mechanic which most gamers hate.

Re: Justin Kan: Web3 games don’t need to lure players with profit

#42

Post by m00dy »

edm0nd wrote: post #39
swalsh wrote: post #33

In theory, I actually like the idea of games connected to the blockchain. The issue is, now your little funtime activity has serious tax implications. Imagine this, there's a neat little space pirates game. You buy an NFT ship, you buy some space missles, some fuel, contract a crew, and you go out. Maybe the dollar cost of all this was $60. Cool. You go out, you blow up the first ship you found. You spent 3 missles a…

From my experience, these play-to-earn games (like Axie Infinity) are mostly played by people in poor 3rd-world countries like Vietnam[1] or Cambodia. Where if they can earn $5/day that's enough to live off of and replace any type of local job they could get. I highly doubt they care about nor pay taxes. 1 - https://fortune.com/2022/05/04/axie-infinity-sky-mavis-vietn...

I'm not sure we still call them 3rd-world, especially on the new world order. Do they still 3rd-world or now upgraded some levels ?

Re: Justin Kan: Web3 games don’t need to lure players with profit

#43

Post by duskwuff »

eli wrote: post #25
Judgmentality wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So basically blockchain is going to coincidentally solve a problem that it's not explicitly needed for? Honestly I can see this happening, but regardless of it being blockchain or a vanilla API it's worthless without everybody (game developers, game publishers, gamers, marketplace owners) agreeing to work on it together. The assets only have value if they're portable, and they're only portable if everybody agrees the…

My question is: is this even a problem worth trying to solve? How much more will customers pay for a skin that works in multiple games (assuming that's possible)?

> My question is: is this even a problem worth trying to solve?

And even if it is, why would we need The Blockchain to solve it?

Re: Justin Kan: Web3 games don’t need to lure players with profit

#44

Post by ryanSrich »

swalsh wrote: post #33

In theory, I actually like the idea of games connected to the blockchain. The issue is, now your little funtime activity has serious tax implications. Imagine this, there's a neat little space pirates game. You buy an NFT ship, you buy some space missles, some fuel, contract a crew, and you go out. Maybe the dollar cost of all this was $60. Cool. You go out, you blow up the first ship you found. You spent 3 missles a…

Yep. This isn’t some harmless thing you can just not report either. If the current administration has shown anything, it’s that they’re fully bought into finding every single tax dollar they can, even if it means hiring 100s of thousands of IRS workers.

Your only hope in this situation is some tax software add on for the game. I’ve used current crypto tax software, and it’s a complete joke. You might as well just assume you’re going to be audited if you do anything with crypto.

Re: Justin Kan: Web3 games don’t need to lure players with profit

#45

Post by robotnikman »

swalsh wrote: post #33

In theory, I actually like the idea of games connected to the blockchain. The issue is, now your little funtime activity has serious tax implications. Imagine this, there's a neat little space pirates game. You buy an NFT ship, you buy some space missles, some fuel, contract a crew, and you go out. Maybe the dollar cost of all this was $60. Cool. You go out, you blow up the first ship you found. You spent 3 missles a…

Yeah I'll just stick to my one time purchase space pirate game on steam

Every time a company comes around mentioning buying NFT's in games it sounds more dystopic than innovative, and games in general which require you to spend actual money on every little thing in game.

Re: Justin Kan: Web3 games don’t need to lure players with profit

#46

Post by Animats »

"Top crypto VCs are constantly touting the potential of video games as one of the most compelling use cases for blockchain technology. Andreessen Horowitz partner Arianna Simpson, for example, who led the firm’s investment in crypto game Axie Infinity, has given countless interviews citing the play-to-earn model as a key catalyst to attracting “hundreds of millions” of people into web3."

Axie Infinity is a Ponzi scheme in the collapse stage. It has two tokens - AXS (peak around US$150, today US$18), and SLP, the one gamers earn (peak around US$0.36, today $0.0048.) Anybody plugging Axie at this late date is either clueless or in on the scam. Probably the latter.

“There’s a lot of cultural momentum around people equating blockchain with openness and trusting things that are decentralized on the blockchain.”

Now that's an insightful remark. The blockchain crowd has convinced many people that they have something decentralized when, in fact, it's usually very centralized. Try, as Moxie Marlinspike did, to do something with NFTs that OpenSea doesn't like. The people buying "virtual land" don't get anything that can't be taken from them by the system operator. It's possible to host NFT images on IPFS, which is distributed, but someone usually has to keep up the payments on the IPFS bill.

As for trust, that ship has sailed.

Re: Justin Kan: Web3 games don’t need to lure players with profit

#47

Post by Kaze404 »

swalsh wrote: post #33

In theory, I actually like the idea of games connected to the blockchain. The issue is, now your little funtime activity has serious tax implications. Imagine this, there's a neat little space pirates game. You buy an NFT ship, you buy some space missles, some fuel, contract a crew, and you go out. Maybe the dollar cost of all this was $60. Cool. You go out, you blow up the first ship you found. You spent 3 missles a…

Taxes are the least soul-sucking aspect of this. I've spent an unreasonable amount of my life playing MMOs, especially the Korean ones, where most of the time the goal is to make (in game) money to get strong enough to take on the next piece of content. This is fun because it works like a version of capitalism without, well, everything else. Seeing numbers go up is fun, be it my character's Critical Damage or the funny number at the bottom of my inventory, and having a safe environment where that can be done at my leisure is fun.

But here's the catch: it doesn't stop there. Any of these games where progression is only gated by in-game money and player trading is enabled, will eventually grow an underground market of RMT (real-money trading). The second you're aware of this, it becomes impossible to think of the in-game money in a vacuum. Suddenly you go from playing for 8 hours to make 10 Million Mesos / Zenny / Alz / Whatever to working for 8 hours to make less than half you would working at McDonalds and trading that money for in-game money. This absolutely destroys any enjoyment you could possibly get out of the game, as it is no longer a game.

This isn't even to mention the people who literally automate the game to play itself to make passive income through hacks / bots, though admittedly that can be fun if you're the type of person who's drawn to breaking computers.

Tangent: my latest discovery solves this by just completely axing trading between players. You can collaborate in bosses for loot that gets split between everyone, but you can't just give anyone money directly. It's great!

Re: Justin Kan: Web3 games don’t need to lure players with profit

#48

Post by kawaiikouhai »

mark242 wrote: post #20

You look at the biggest games of the year: God of War, Elden Ring, Stray, etc. Shoehorning in NFT-style assets into these games is just a ridiculous proposal, especially ones with any kind of "marketplace" that you would have to support. All of the time and effort and maintenance and customer service, all of that would hit the bottom line of the game. The better studios -- that is, the ones who make game-of-the-year…

I don't think even the Crypto VCs are approaching this from the angle of making a compelling video game. They don't need to. This is all about creating the next platform for ingame digital consumerism. Think Genshin impact rather than any GoTY title.

And the unfortunate thing (for them that is), is that they haven't even figured out how do to that yet. Nobody buys web3 games, and it's been ~2 years. Until they figure out the MVP of it enhancing digital consumerism, all other promises are just a marketing spin.

Re: Justin Kan: Web3 games don’t need to lure players with profit

#49

Post by duskwuff »

edm0nd wrote: post #39
swalsh wrote: post #33

In theory, I actually like the idea of games connected to the blockchain. The issue is, now your little funtime activity has serious tax implications. Imagine this, there's a neat little space pirates game. You buy an NFT ship, you buy some space missles, some fuel, contract a crew, and you go out. Maybe the dollar cost of all this was $60. Cool. You go out, you blow up the first ship you found. You spent 3 missles a…

From my experience, these play-to-earn games (like Axie Infinity) are mostly played by people in poor 3rd-world countries like Vietnam[1] or Cambodia. Where if they can earn $5/day that's enough to live off of and replace any type of local job they could get. I highly doubt they care about nor pay taxes. 1 - https://fortune.com/2022/05/04/axie-infinity-sky-mavis-vietn...

Even there, Axie was effectively a sophisticated Ponzi scheme. Players were lured into the system with the promise that they could make big money by playing the game -- except that the money was all coming from new players who had to buy items to get started. No value was created by playing the game, and the vast majority of participants ended up losing money to pay the small number of players who did make a profit.

Re: Justin Kan: Web3 games don’t need to lure players with profit

#50

Post by vitaflo »

Mo3 wrote: post #27
eli wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A metaverse where these skins are transportable game to game. I question how desirable that even is. So like some rich kid buys a golden suit and can wear it in a bunch of games...I mean, sure, ok? Not really groundbreaking stuff. Would you buy a game because it lets you do that? Assuming the total cost is the same, I'd just as soon buy different skins in each of my games...assuming I care about skins at all. And t…

> I question how desirable that even is. I agree, and would go even further - is this even desirable to the creators of the game? Sounds a lot like shooting themselves into the foot. They profit off having closed ecosystems and kids having to buy skins instead of already owning them from somewhere else

This is exactly why game makers will never do this. They make money on churn. Put out a new game, users must buy all new skins. If you allow porting of skins you drastically reduce your profit. It’s just a stupid business decision. Companies like walled gardens for a reason.
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