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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

#171

Post by imtringued »

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…

People smelt copper scrap into ingots. For a scrap yard this is completely pointless because they know how to inspect unprocessed copper waste and then have to cut the ingots up, you are spending money and time on your copper ingots and get less money in the end. Why do people insist on doing it? Because it is a hobby, because doing something yourself can be fun.

By your logic nobody should go on a vacation because the ROI is negative.

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

#172

Post by imtringued »

ehnto wrote: post #116
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 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.

Nobody is going to register a business to pay VAT in an MMO.

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

#173

Post by imtringued »

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…

This makes me wonder if these games could be designed to DDoS the tax collection agencies of specific countries and force them to adopt a simpler tax code once millions of players suddenly have intractable tax return forms.

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

#174

Post by imtringued »

cuteboy19 wrote: post #114
edm0nd wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

It is a multi level marketing scheme with a useless product.

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

#175

Post by imtringued »

mark242 wrote: post #71
malermeister wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's technologically impossible and also straight up makes no sense if you think about it for longer than a second. Call of Duty should implement all the various potions from World of Warcraft? What does a Mario Kart powerup do in your Halo game?

I'm trying to envision the pitch to, for example, Fromsoftware, makers of Elden Ring. Ignore the cross-game component for a second because that's mind-bogglingly dumb. "You could have artificial scarcity of Rivers of Blood*! Imagine that only 1000 people could own it, and could auction it off, and you'd make a percentage of every single transaction! You'd have a brand new monetary stream in-game!" Alright. Now try to…

When I read Rivers of Blood I thought people started owning a location that is necessary to progress through the story and that there would be an overpowered NPC trying to commit highway robbery.

I like these game based experiments of adding real economic elements into a game and seeing exactly where and why it is going wrong because games haven't been politicized to death with partisan interest groups defending their ideology. No, most developers are focused on providing good entertainment and a lot of real world business practices are openly hostile to enjoying yourself which is exactly how many feel about the real world economy but any discussion about improving it will then be thrown into one of the left right baskets, people are more concerned whether something could be called communism or socialism or not than if it is an effective policy that helps both the country and the people.

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

#176

Post by imtringued »

malermeister wrote: post #141
pavlov wrote: post #102

Crypto “web3” is a world where the only real and good thing is day trading, and the center of everyone’s life is a stock trading UI. Everything else is a pale reflection of the objects that can be day traded: games and art now exist to support the day trading nirvana, not the other way around. It’s understandable that this world seems appealing to venture capitalists and others whose lives revolve around finance. It’…

It's the ultimate triumph of shallow capitalism over all that makes us human. We should do our best not to let it come to pass.

Video games are supposed to be the fun zoney they want to tear the fun zone down.

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

#177

Post by mark242 »

charcircuit wrote: post #170
mark242 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> The ability to have your new game instantly have access to a giant catalog of compatible things is useful for game studios.

Again - you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what drives game development. It is neither useful nor desirable for a studio to immediately have to work through balance issues in a game before they have even written one line of code. Think about this for half a second. You don't get to wave your arms and just magically get a functioning, workable in-game economy. There is a huge amount of real world capital and human overhead to make sure this magical spec of yours doesn't completely wreck people's enjoyment of playing, which is, you know, the entire point of a game.

The moment that people recognize "oh, I can get a +1% health bump by going into game X and doing some mundane task, then go into game Y where a 1% health bump is the difference between winning and losing a PVP battle" guess what's going to happen over and over and over and over again. You are talking about a fractal amount of complexity for a game designer, developer, product manager, design team, the list just goes on and on. Nobody who wanted their game to be successful would ever latch onto this.

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

#178

Post by Kaze404 »

imtringued wrote: post #171
Kaze404 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

People smelt copper scrap into ingots. For a scrap yard this is completely pointless because they know how to inspect unprocessed copper waste and then have to cut the ingots up, you are spending money and time on your copper ingots and get less money in the end. Why do people insist on doing it? Because it is a hobby, because doing something yourself can be fun. By your logic nobody should go on a vacation because t…

I'm not entirely sure I understand your comment, but I'm advocating for the opposite.

The ROI for a vacation isn't negative, because you're usually paid during those. In the situation that you're not, it just strengthens the point I'm trying to make. I personally took a 1 month sabbatical between jobs and it was one of the hardest decisions I've had to make. I knew I needed a vacation, but the thought of skipping an entire month's paycheck for that ate me up inside for the first week or so. And from what I've gathered, including talking about it on therapy, it's a common sentiment.

The point being that once money gets involved in a hobby activity, it infects every other aspect. It's no longer about having fun, it's about maximizing what you get out of it.

Note that I'm not saying this is a universal experience, but I've observed it in the situations I described in my original comment.

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

#179

Post by charcircuit »

mark242 wrote: post #177
charcircuit wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> The ability to have your new game instantly have access to a giant catalog of compatible things is useful for game studios. Again - you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what drives game development. It is neither useful nor desirable for a studio to immediately have to work through balance issues in a game before they have even written one line of code. Think about this for half a second. You don't get to wav…

You are projecting. I've never suggested anything close to every game item works with any game. If you go up to my first post in this chain you will see that I say that they even need to show up in the game.

Later in the chain I explained how it would be possible for their to be items which could be shared between many games and the appeal for doing so.

>make sure this magical spec of yours doesn't completely wreck people's enjoyment of playing

In an open more simulator single player game there wouldn't be that much of an issue. If someone has a car that goes 1000 mph then that's what they get. As a game designer your physics system way not be able to handle that or for multiplayer the balance wouldn't work. This can be solved by putting limits on the stats.

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

#180

Post by charcircuit »

charcircuit wrote: post #179
mark242 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The ability to have your new game instantly have access to a giant catalog of compatible things is useful for game studios. Again - you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what drives game development. It is neither useful nor desirable for a studio to immediately have to work through balance issues in a game before they have even written one line of code. Think about this for half a second. You don't get to wav…

You are projecting. I've never suggested anything close to every game item works with any game. If you go up to my first post in this chain you will see that I say that they even need to show up in the game. Later in the chain I explained how it would be possible for their to be items which could be shared between many games and the appeal for doing so. >make sure this magical spec of yours doesn't completely wreck p…

I say that they don't even need to show up in the game
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