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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

#81

Post by nl »

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…

> yet we're seeing these highly-respected tech leaders try to convince us that such a brain-dead idea is visionary. Why? Because they stand to make another fortune on it and they have absolutely no problem lying to our faces about it.

They are clearly wrong, but I think much of the time they aren't lying so much as ignorant.

They aren't gamers, and the logic makes sense to them but they are missing the details that actual gamers care about.

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

#82

Post by [deleted] »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #76
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…

> 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. More likely is you go out and encounter someone with a $600 ship an…

[deleted]

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

#83

Post by [deleted] »

ryanSrich wrote: post #44
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 ass…

[deleted]

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

#84

Post by LtdJorge »

SrslyJosh wrote: post #78
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…

> You spent 3 missles at a cost of $10 each, but you got a whole ships worth of minerals worth $60, and some more missles. Okay, but where does this money come from? Obviously, the $60 ultimately comes from your bank account, but how does the game stay in business if you can spend $30 (you said only three missiles were fired) and get $60 worth of in-game resources, which you can then sell and convert back into real c…

True, they live from selling the equipment to first timers. The thing is, most games work like that. They need new players otherwise they don't make more money, as players just pay to buy the game.

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

#85

Post by rdbell »

SrslyJosh wrote: post #78
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…

> You spent 3 missles at a cost of $10 each, but you got a whole ships worth of minerals worth $60, and some more missles. Okay, but where does this money come from? Obviously, the $60 ultimately comes from your bank account, but how does the game stay in business if you can spend $30 (you said only three missiles were fired) and get $60 worth of in-game resources, which you can then sell and convert back into real c…

Every MMO in existence has external markets for RMT. There are stories of players in elite WoW guilds making 5-6 figures for helping noobs clear content.

Some people don’t mind spending $2000 to build an endgame character that’s only worth $1000 by the time they’re done with it.

We don’t call automotive hobbyists “marks” if they pay a mechanic to tune their car and devalue its resale price. Professionals/careerists exist in every hobby industry.

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

#86

Post by andreareina »

Kaze404 wrote: post #47
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 fun…

I like Path of Exile for having an explicit Solo Self Found mode. Unfortunately they seem to be on a path of making top-end gear pretty much required, which just pushes out the casuals. Good chance I'll be sitting the next league out.

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

#87

Post by djur »

carlosdp wrote: post #60
djur wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the way this tech takes off is when more marketplaces die because EA decides to start and then kill one, and everyone loses their items they paid money for, because they don't have any sovereignty over their purchase. How does blockchain help with this? The problem isn't that there isn't a record of your purchase on a ledger somewhere, the problem is that the software environment in which your purchase is m…

> How does blockchain help with this? The problem isn't that there isn't a record of your purchase on a ledger somewhere, the problem is that the software environment in which your purchase is meaningful is no longer running. The reason that environment no longer runs is because the company decides it's no longer profitable to run it. Blockchains build incentives to run that environment into the operation, so as long…

If we're talking about a casual poker game between friends where money doesn't matter, a verbal agreement that you're staking some additional item should be more than sufficient. Bringing the blockchain into it only makes sense if there's a genuine concern about someone not following through.

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

#88

Post by Sprite_tm »

carlosdp wrote: post #60
djur wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the way this tech takes off is when more marketplaces die because EA decides to start and then kill one, and everyone loses their items they paid money for, because they don't have any sovereignty over their purchase. How does blockchain help with this? The problem isn't that there isn't a record of your purchase on a ledger somewhere, the problem is that the software environment in which your purchase is m…

> How does blockchain help with this? The problem isn't that there isn't a record of your purchase on a ledger somewhere, the problem is that the software environment in which your purchase is meaningful is no longer running. The reason that environment no longer runs is because the company decides it's no longer profitable to run it. Blockchains build incentives to run that environment into the operation, so as long…

>The reason that environment no longer runs is because the company decides it's no longer profitable to run it. Blockchains build incentives to run that environment into the operation, so as long as there are users willing to pay, and the environment is efficient enough, in theory the environment should never not be running.

So why would that need blockchain? If this is a viable model to run the game, why wouldn't game companies have a direct 'pay us to keep up the servers online' model now?

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

#90

Post by khazhoux »

For years I played Team Fortress 2, where everyone was so proud of the hilarious hats we'd collect from achievements and special events. In retrospect, I can see that we weren't actually having fun, because those hats were not stored in a permanent blockchain.
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