Instead of using cryptocurrencies to add independence in games why couldn’t a platform like Steam do the same thing? The trading card system is quite close. I have a real hard time understanding on how to use cryptocurrencies to create interoperability when game publishers could do it already or just make a standard API with the games you want to partner with which would probably end up being a competitor to steam. NFTs being bought and sold also needs to go through KYC and AML and that’s a nightmare to games with any in game currency since they don’t want to become money transfer authorities for obvious reasons such as money laundering. So just making an interoperability layer that just goes to points going to buying a game would best way to do this instead of this unnecessarily convoluted system that has downtime that you can’t control and variable prices on execution of contracts. Also slowdowns.
Justin Kan: Web3 games don’t need to lure players with profit
111–120 of 180 posts
Re: Justin Kan: Web3 games don’t need to lure players with profit
#112> “I think the idea of creating digital assets, and then taxing everyone for all the transactions around them is a good model,” Kan said. I don't think he has the slightest idea what players want, because this isn't it. This is exactly what players are raging against: games optimized for the creators' greed, not for the players' enjoyment. It doesn't sound like more fun than an existing game by that description, and…
At its foundation it sounds like rent seeking.
Inducting artificial scarcity to seek rent seems like a parody of capitalism by some 20th century communist. And yet here we are
Re: Justin Kan: Web3 games don’t need to lure players with profit
#113Instead of using cryptocurrencies to add independence in games why couldn’t a platform like Steam do the same thing? The trading card system is quite close. I have a real hard time understanding on how to use cryptocurrencies to create interoperability when game publishers could do it already or just make a standard API with the games you want to partner with which would probably end up being a competitor to steam. N…
I think the motivating factor is an idealistic vision of eventually moving beyond Steam's corporate DRM and percentage cut taken out of all gamer and game dev transactions. Innovators are usually reluctant to entrench the incumbent monopoly firm (recall how IBM was regarded). Agreed that pragmatically speaking Steam may be able to stand up something more efficient and functional than any crypto aspirants in the short term.
There was a similar debate on potential interoperability between the dominant social networks and Youtube etc, people wanted an open source, open-governance transfer standard that various networks could plug in to. They didn't want Facebook to own that standard, and now that has evolved into the ownership question of the "metaverse".
Re: Justin Kan: Web3 games don’t need to lure players with profit
#114In 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...
It would be wrong to describe it as a game. More like "ponzi scheme with an interactive component"
Re: Justin Kan: Web3 games don’t need to lure players with profit
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 e…
In the early days, when gold wasn't worthless, we used the carry players for gold, it was the equivalent to maybe $50-100/h?
Same for arena titles.
It also funded the guilds raiding expenses and external costs.
I feel like a lot of people that have opinions about blockchain and gaming, just weren't exposed or never got involved in these underground economies.
Re: Justin Kan: Web3 games don’t need to lure players with profit
#116In 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 could do this whole thing with regular currency, so if you treat it like that the tax implications are no different to regular income. The government doesn't (yet) care how many apples you bought, or that you found some extra apples in the forest on your way home, they just care how much money you end up with when you sell those apples you found at the market.
Re: Justin Kan: Web3 games don’t need to lure players with profit
#117In 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…
That's more a of a problem with your country than the game or the technology.
Re: Justin Kan: Web3 games don’t need to lure players with profit
#118In 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…
> There's some capital gains! Are you really certain of this? Grinding and acquiring valuable inventory in a game is not necessarily the same kind of taxable event as buying/selling/trading. If so, why would this not be equally true for any digital game (see: any currently active MMO) with currency or items which can be sold between players in the exact same way? See Kaze404's sibling comment. I'm skeptic that it hav…
> If so, why would this not be equally true for any digital game (see: any currently active MMO) with currency or items which can be sold between players in the exact same way?
It is already kind of true in non-blockchain games, but most of the accounting complexity is on the game company's end. This is described quite entertainingly in "Accounting for SaaS and swords" https://bam.kalzumeus.com/archive/accounting-for-saas-and-sw...
But it probably helps if trading in-game items for real money is not an officialy supported feature of the game, so only items you actually bought come with an extra service contract attached that the company needs to honor.
Re: Justin Kan: Web3 games don’t need to lure players with profit
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A metaverse where these skins are transportable game to game. Is this even viable? Can a skin from say an Unreal engine game be copied over to and used in a Unity engine game?
> Can a skin from say an Unreal engine game be copied over to and used in a Unity engine game? With difficulty, yes. If you have the asset in the creator tools, rather than just inside the game as a game user, it's straightforward. There's some standardization in this area, and it's getting better. There are now open formats. Look up "GLTF" and "USD" formats. Until about two years ago, most content was interchanged i…
> There are now open formats. Look up "GLTF" and "USD" formats.
We had fbx for decades, only difference is that it wasn't open source. Even better USD is an art format, nearly every concept it supports is for art direction, comparison of various designs, hiding of details that may get in the way of some modellers work. It isn't dynamic, it doesn't even have the concept of level of detail, so it will render a 10 million poly model even if all you see is a three pixel wide spot on the screen.
Re: Justin Kan: Web3 games don’t need to lure players with profit
#120In 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 what way this game should sound appealing?
It's like a normal space game, but now you have to pay 10 dollar to shoot a missile. Doesn't seem very cool