Justin Kan: Web3 games don’t need to lure players with profit • Hacker News Board

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

#161

Post by jfengel » Thu, Aug 11, 2022, 7:04 PM UTC

baby wrote: post #145

malermeister wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like more monetization is the opposite of what the internet needs. This might just be "old man yelling at cloud" stuff, but to me the "best time" in the internet was when people were just using it to genuinely share their weird interests, before monetization came along and ruined it. I'd rather not have monetization ruin more stuff. Why does everything always have to be commercialized?

> I feel like more monetization is the opposite of what the internet needs. I don't agree. There's not one "need" for the internet. The internet, as any technology, enables use cases by being more flexible. Enabling the money feature for the internet will lead to more use cases. > This might just be "old man yelling at cloud" stuff, but to me the "best time" in the internet was when people were just using it to genui…

I always read that as "wasn't it great when the Internet was mostly nerds exactly like me, and all the things people created had me in their target audience?"

There's plenty of "weird interests" on the Internet. More of it than ever. It's harder to find your specific thing... but not that hard. If the centaur furries and left-handed pickleball players can do it, so can you.

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

#162

Post by Ekaros » Thu, Aug 11, 2022, 7:15 PM UTC

cinntaile wrote: post #7

smt88 wrote: post #2

> “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…

Plenty of players happily pay Steam 30% of the sale value of their ingame items.

15%... Or technically 13%. Which is lot better than not being able to sell.

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

#163

Post by Ekaros » Thu, Aug 11, 2022, 7:19 PM UTC

beebeepka wrote: post #109

khazhoux wrote: post #90

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.

I've been playing that game since the beta and never bought into the whole vanity thing. Hats almost completely ruined the game and even today half the community servers are just drop grounds for vullshit items.

It does feel weird in context of original design language. Which they very heavily promoted that each character has unique silhouette that is recognizable from very far away... That just feels like destroying their own game.

I'm much less against CSGO way, where it really didn't change how models looked.

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

#164

Post by carlosdp » Thu, Aug 11, 2022, 8:00 PM UTC

Nursie wrote: post #100

carlosdp wrote: post #15

The whole "play-to-earn" concept isn't actually that popular in web3 builder circles, in my experience. The companies that work on that just spend a ton of money on marketing, and Axie's valuation went so high for a while, that it keeps getting mainstream attention. I think he's totally right, though I don't think he does a great job of explaining why blockchain tech can be beneficial for gamers. Here's some of my qu…

> if your special skins are NFTs, that makes them automatically compatible with any and all apps and protocols that support NFTs out of the box Erm, no. It really, really doesn't. There's a mass of technical reasons that skins are not easily portable between games already, well beyond the licensing problems. Sure, you could trade them, but actually using them is a huge technical problem. At an absolute minimum there…

I said "apps and protocols", not games, and I literally explicitly agreed with your point in another point in my post.

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

#165

Post by marak830 » Thu, Aug 11, 2022, 11:46 PM UTC

charcircuit wrote: post #152

malermeister wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would I buy something that just shows up as a png in some menu? Why would I accept a car bought in some other game as a developer trying to make money? How would that even work? Need for speed and Forza for example have dramatically different driving models. Does sharing stats between those even make sense? What about licensing deals? Money exchanges hands when real life brands are used in games. Not sure they'd…

>Why would I buy something that just shows up as a png in some menu? Because in the game it's for it actually does something. >How would that even work? They would need to come up with some kind of standard. >Need for speed and Forza for example have dramatically different driving models. You would want to standardize on one to try and keep things consistent. >Does sharing stats between those even make sense? Having…

You do realise how impossible all of that is, right?

Technically, no, but in reality, it's never going to happen.

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

#166

Post by charcircuit » Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 12:13 AM UTC

marak830 wrote: post #165

charcircuit wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why would I buy something that just shows up as a png in some menu? Because in the game it's for it actually does something. >How would that even work? They would need to come up with some kind of standard. >Need for speed and Forza for example have dramatically different driving models. You would want to standardize on one to try and keep things consistent. >Does sharing stats between those even make sense? Having…

You do realise how impossible all of that is, right? Technically, no, but in reality, it's never going to happen.

I'm not sure what you mean. Nothing I stated was that farfetched. I'm sure you could even whip together something that fulfills what I'm talking about in a weekend using an existing driving simulator + models that are freely licensed.

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

#167

Post by Nursie » Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 2:43 AM UTC

chaosbolt wrote: post #122

Nursie wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"What do I care about? Making money. It's the focus of my life. Therefore everyone else cares about that too. We should inject external economic motives into games, they're totally gonna eat this up!"

>"What do I care about? Making money. It's the focus of my life. You should've listened then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18183102#18184642

In case you didn't understand the content of my post there, it wasn't about me. I note that chainlink is still not "the next bitcoin or ethereum", and frankly I wouldn't care if it was.

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

#168

Post by rcacho » Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 3:28 AM UTC

clarle wrote: post #18

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…

Maybe I'm out of touch these days but I don't see how Web3 in this scenario is also better than just a standardized API schema that's shared across different games or platforms. The developer still needs to implement how this skin or texture is applied in their specific game, so there's still net additional work per skin or texture. You don't just get it for free as soon as someone else implements it in one game.

The Web3 part of this would be that no company needs to be responsible for the database that says that a player is in possession of a particular item. The fact that limited cooperation between companies is needed is what could allow the adoption of standardized schemas.

I'd be curious if even that would be so simple. There could be competing blockchains or types of NFTs. You might also get into the situation where instead of every company building the software to verify ownership they just pay specialized companies.In that situation Web3 technology isn't really all that different than a company building a virtual shop API. A company like Valve could probably do this better than Opensea could and without all the extra Web3 technology.

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

#169

Post by mark242 » Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 3:49 AM UTC

charcircuit wrote: post #152

malermeister wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would I buy something that just shows up as a png in some menu? Why would I accept a car bought in some other game as a developer trying to make money? How would that even work? Need for speed and Forza for example have dramatically different driving models. Does sharing stats between those even make sense? What about licensing deals? Money exchanges hands when real life brands are used in games. Not sure they'd…

>Why would I buy something that just shows up as a png in some menu? Because in the game it's for it actually does something. >How would that even work? They would need to come up with some kind of standard. >Need for speed and Forza for example have dramatically different driving models. You would want to standardize on one to try and keep things consistent. >Does sharing stats between those even make sense? Having…

> They would need to come up with some kind of standard.

You have a fundamental misunderstanding of what motivates game studios.

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

#170

Post by charcircuit » Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 4:02 AM UTC

mark242 wrote: post #169

charcircuit wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why would I buy something that just shows up as a png in some menu? Because in the game it's for it actually does something. >How would that even work? They would need to come up with some kind of standard. >Need for speed and Forza for example have dramatically different driving models. You would want to standardize on one to try and keep things consistent. >Does sharing stats between those even make sense? Having…

> They would need to come up with some kind of standard. You have a fundamental misunderstanding of what motivates game studios.

If you want users to easily add UGC there needs to be some sort of standard. The ability to have your new game instantly have access to a giant catalog of compatible things is useful for game studios. Imagine if each social media site had their own proprietary way you had to encode your images in their sdk before you can upload them.