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The collapse of cryptokitties, the first big blockchain game

spectrum.ieee.org

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Re: The collapse of cryptokitties, the first big blockchain game

#111

Post by opyate »

alanfalcon wrote: post #69
midislack wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK but WHAT IS THE GAME? What do you DO with CryptoKitties?

Breeding is a complex and nuanced game mechanic, which when coupled with the worldwide marketplace unlocks a dizzying rabbit hole. Once you understand the mechanics, you realize just why a Gen 1 Tendertears would be a grail collectible to own. I called it more of a sandbox than a game, but there are also Fancy Chases, events where a specific limited-time breeding goal is introduced and it's a race to be among the fir…

Sounds like gacha, where folks feverishly "collect" pointless pieces of little plastic. All these things (hoarding, compulsive buying, gambling) go hand-in-hand [0], and ends up emptying pockets and possibly devastating lives.

0: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3181956/

Re: The collapse of cryptokitties, the first big blockchain game

#112

Post by ohgodplsno »

alanfalcon wrote: post #69
midislack wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK but WHAT IS THE GAME? What do you DO with CryptoKitties?

Breeding is a complex and nuanced game mechanic, which when coupled with the worldwide marketplace unlocks a dizzying rabbit hole. Once you understand the mechanics, you realize just why a Gen 1 Tendertears would be a grail collectible to own. I called it more of a sandbox than a game, but there are also Fancy Chases, events where a specific limited-time breeding goal is introduced and it's a race to be among the fir…

CK's breeding mechanics are about as complex as Pokemon Gen1's breeding mechanics, and simpler than Gen3. Congratulations on passing the GameBoy bar. Additionally, all of the talk about openness is now out the window since the breeding code is closed source.

Congratulations on also doing limited time events, welcome to the year 2000 of online gaming!

Re: The collapse of cryptokitties, the first big blockchain game

#113

Post by Chabsff »

Kiro wrote: post #85
landryraccoon wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn’t that have been done equally well with a centralized ledger? Lots of games have “high stakes pvp”, such as eve online. They don’t have a blockchain, and yet you can still steal stuff permanently from other players if that’s how you want to play the game.

Let's say I want to build a game where you can destroy your EVE Online spaceships to get bonuses in my game. How would that work? That's what happened with CryptoKitties and HyperDragons. Just to clarify: someone who owns a CryptoKitty decides to send it to the HyperDragons smart contract that handles the absorption. It's not about stealing anything. You use your assets in CryptoKitties to boost your dragon in HyperD…

This is not inherently made possible by the blockchain itself though.

The mechanisms to transfer a Kitty to the HyperDragons lie within the CryptoKitty Smart Contract. This is not particularly different than a regular API, where the available operations have been chosen, specified, and made available to the public at large by the developers.

The only real difference with a public-facing documented traditional API is that said API will outlive the original product. But that doesn't make CryptoKitties a better game, since Cripto Kitties won't be a thing anymore when that comes into play.

Re: The collapse of cryptokitties, the first big blockchain game

#114

Post by TomGullen »

secretsatan wrote: post #45

I read these articles sometimes about crypto games, but they all never seem to describe the actual game, it’s like crypto is the primary concern, and game is secondary, and i’m getting the distinct impression none of these games are any fun and everyone in the space has to avoid mentioning it. I think that the people writing these things only have a very slim grasp of gaming, but they know it would be a good market t…

Gamer sentiment is generally very anti micro transactions, all the crypto games I’ve seen so far are micro transactions front and centre on steroids

Re: The collapse of cryptokitties, the first big blockchain game

#115

Post by firebaze »

glitchc wrote: post #96
reidjs wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gambling and gaming are quite interconnected, maybe you can describe it as a spectrum between games and gambling. Free single player games are the 'purest' games, you're only betting that it's worth your time. Cheap single player games, you're still gambling in that you're 'betting' the game is worth your time and $5. Closer to the gambling side are things like Poker, CS Skins, the Diablo Auction House, Eve Online mi…

This is an absurd argument! By that logic buying a book is akin to gambling: You don’t know how good it is until you start reading. Books have nothing in common with gambling except for the books about gambling.

I suppose I'm overlooking something, since I cannot follow this line of reasoning.

When I buy a book, I usually don't know its contents beforehand (the exceptions are I had copied it somehow in my earlier years, and now I want to buy it to come clean, or it is a classic I just never bought yet).

Most of the time, I rely on a friends reference, or a review online, or maybe I just buy by chance. And in either of these cases, there is a less than 50% chance I perceive the book as good. Which, to me, is a gamble. So I suppose there is an edge I don't get?

Re: The collapse of cryptokitties, the first big blockchain game

#116

Post by px43 »

Melchori wrote: post #50
secretsatan wrote: post #45

I read these articles sometimes about crypto games, but they all never seem to describe the actual game, it’s like crypto is the primary concern, and game is secondary, and i’m getting the distinct impression none of these games are any fun and everyone in the space has to avoid mentioning it. I think that the people writing these things only have a very slim grasp of gaming, but they know it would be a good market t…

Gaming with being able to earn money is something I normally call gambling or work. It's depressing to think about it. And yes people who made gold in wow were also not gaming but working. It wasn't cool, fun or whatever 10 years ago

The status quo in gaming today is that people work thousands, or 10s of thousands of hours building, collecting, exploring, etc, and it's all owned by some emotionless gaming company that might just decide to delete all your stuff, or just disappear all together, without notice. Giving players control of the things they worked hard to get just seems like the natural progression as we assign more and more value to the lives we live in virtual spaces.

Vitalik famously was first inspired to build Ethereum when Blizzard nerfed a sword he had in World of Warcraft.

Re: The collapse of cryptokitties, the first big blockchain game

#117

Post by naet »

secretsatan wrote: post #45

I read these articles sometimes about crypto games, but they all never seem to describe the actual game, it’s like crypto is the primary concern, and game is secondary, and i’m getting the distinct impression none of these games are any fun and everyone in the space has to avoid mentioning it. I think that the people writing these things only have a very slim grasp of gaming, but they know it would be a good market t…

Check https://www.cryptokitties.co/guide/ways-to-play

The reason it seems like they didn't describe the "actual game" is that there is no actual "gameplay". You just pay to collect cats.

You can trade the cat tokens with other people, try to sell them on the marketplace, pay to generate semi randomized new cat tokens via "breeding", and... just have them under your wallet / name. There is no action, no RPG, no platforming, no game board... basically nothing besides collecting and swapping tokens. They actually do show the entire "gameplay loop" in this image from the article: https://spectrum.ieee.org/media-library/a-flow-chart-with-ar...

They encourage you to collect more with timed events, where you "win" a bonus for having collected a certain type of cat token, but that's about it.

If you're of a certain generation, you might remember a craze of kids collecting and trading Pokemon cards, and never really playing the game. It's basically like that except there is no underlying game to play, all you have are the tradable cards.

Re: The collapse of cryptokitties, the first big blockchain game

#118

Post by lottin »

Kiro wrote: post #88
pdntspa wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what here does the blockchain offer that a database table doesn't? Other than the ability to monetize.

The fact that I can build upon CryptoKitties with no obstacle. If CryptoKitties was on a private database I would need to get access to their API and also trust them with the ownership/management of the assets. Now I can just build it on the blockchain and have people destroy CryptoKitties in my smart contract to get benefits in my game. No API functionality or permission from CryptoKitties needed.

So how does this open API works? Every time you use it you have to pay a third party?

Re: The collapse of cryptokitties, the first big blockchain game

#119

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

midislack wrote: post #59
alanfalcon wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CryptoKitties is a lot of fun, for what it is. It's super deep and while it's more of a sandbox than a typical game, I became obsessed with it when it came out, though not for monetary reasons (if it has one huge drawback as a game, it's always been how much it costs IMO). Became so obsessed that I ended up hired by Dapper Labs and working on the CryptoKitties team, later helped design and launch NBA Top Shot on Flow…

OK but WHAT IS THE GAME? What do you DO with CryptoKitties?

There's a free mobile game called Clusterduck which is basically the same idea but without the crypto nonsense.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pikpok.wtd...

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/clusterduck/id1531250914

You basically don't do anything except watch what weird mutations come out from the breeding. In Clusterduck, you can only have up to 30 ducks, so once you hit the limit, you have to throw a duck into the pit to sacrifice it. Sometimes when sacrificing a duck, a large monster spawns from the pit, and if you tap it enough times, it'll spawn a duck with a "cursed" trait of some sort.

Re: The collapse of cryptokitties, the first big blockchain game

#120

Post by anotherman554 »

Kiro wrote: post #73
Chabsff wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cannot have a conversation about "crypto games" without addressing how crypto makes the game better. For the sake of this conversation, it doesn't particularly matter how fun CryptoKitties is. What matters is how does the blockchain integration make the game better than it would otherwise have been. From my point of view so far, even the best crypto game out there would have been better if it wasn't for the crypt…

HyperDragons. Someone made a game where you bred dragons that could eat CryptoKitties to absorb their attributes. The composability and interoperability of the blockchain means anyone can extend your game and build mechanics with your assets, without your permission. It's truly an open API.

Unless the intellectual property assets (art and character designs) have been licensed putting them on a blockchain does not make them legal to use.
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