The collapse of cryptokitties, the first big blockchain game • Hacker News Board

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

#221

Post by ajhurliman » Fri, Sep 16, 2022, 2:04 AM UTC

SergeAx wrote: post #152

> What went wrong? Absolutely nothing went wrong. 1-3 USD is a totally fair price for a random set of bytes producing random picture of cat. What was wrong in the beginning with those who paid thousands - that is the question.

The article threw me off, saying that the project had “crashed” or had a “demise” as of it were no longer operating or there was some sort of scandal. They’re still operating and nothing major has happened other than them losing value.

They’re inflationary collectibles that were a fad, of course they’re going to lose value. The article feels intellectually dishonest.

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

#222

Post by userbinator » Fri, Sep 16, 2022, 2:05 AM UTC

klodolph wrote: post #29

simsla wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that always the case? My friend was talking about a rare Magic The Gathering card being worth a silly amount of money... Except the card had only been sold once or twice at that price. Unless you have enough comparable items (e.g. paintings by the Dutch masters) it's really difficult to determine the value of something that's rarely sold.

Funny you should mention MtG, since the first big crypto exchange collapse was MtGox. I always thought it was "Mt. Gox", like a mountain of sorts. Turns out it's Magic: The Gathering Online Exchange. Edit: MtG seems like it has some kind of evergreen popularity, and various format changes, changes in the list of banned cards, reprints, and changes in the metagame will mean that prices of individual cards can vary wil…

Probably similar to you, I also heard of MtGox first via crypto, and thought it was an obvious reference to Fort Knox. Only later did I realise the original meaning.

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

#223

Post by cowtools » Fri, Sep 16, 2022, 2:14 AM UTC

lmm wrote: post #197

cowtools wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have considered this already. That does not solve anything here, for the reasons you have mentioned yourself. To the extent that it is broken in world-of-warcraft, it will be more broken here because there will be fees associated with playing, so players will be incentivised to make the most of their money by cheating and trying to optimize the smallest possible "proof". Eventually, so many people will cheat that t…

> To the extent that it is broken in world-of-warcraft, it will be more broken here because there will be fees associated with playing, so players will be incentivised to make the most of their money by cheating and trying to optimize the smallest possible "proof". Ultimately on a technical level it's just another form of proof of work - the boss issues a challenge and the player has to figure out a response that mee…

With a normal bot, you can only run one boss-fight at a time and you are subject to network latency and imprecision of your actions.

In this blockchain scenario, couldn't you run millions of different simulations of the boss fight on your own computer and publish the one in which you get the most loot, take the least damage, produce the most compact proof, or whatever?

In any case, the "proof-of-victory" as I'll call it is a useful technique for a provably-fair gambling system. For example, you could have players gamble over the outcome of some turn-based game (with provably-fair randomness) like poker, or nethack. If you can implement a time limit, it would also work for something like chess.

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

#224

Post by cowtools » Fri, Sep 16, 2022, 2:17 AM UTC

eaurouge wrote: post #204

cowtools wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I guess, but grinding/mining is not sybil proof. So the only thing that cryptocurrency improves is replacing that with buying and trading items with actual money, or mining stuff with PoW. You couldn't have a blockchain equivalent of World-of-Warcraft. You have no meaningful way to testify that you recieve an item from killing a boss, for example. The only thing you can really implement with cryptocurrency is a…

> You couldn't have a blockchain equivalent of World-of-Warcraft. You have no meaningful way to testify that you recieve an item from killing a boss, for example. Anywhere else and I would assume you were joking. This being HN, I have to assume you're being serious. So, at the risk of stating the obvious, that's the point of the blockchain. That you can provide verifiable proof for things like this.

Alright, care to enlighten us then? How would you go about implementing such a thing?

The two methods mentioned here are quite flawed:

Kerbonut mentions the use of the signature of a gameserver to verify the loot. This obviously is not decentralized, and is essentially the same thing as having a centralized itemserver. This is part of what I mean when I said that "their development structure is not decentralized enough to warrant the use of cryptocurrency"

lmm mentions the use of a "proof-of-victory" given a random in-game challenge produced with a provably-fair RNG seed. Not only would this require a ton of bandwidth and CPU to store and verify these proofs (unless it's a turn-based game like chess or nethack I suppose), but it is not really sybil-proof. In other words, it puts people who play the game at a significant disadvantage to those who just bot. It incentivizes not actually playing the game.

Edit: note that this Decentralized-WoW thought experiment is fundamentally different from axie infinity. The case of axie infinity is a two-player game where they essentially gamble using the depreciation cost of their pokemon. It falls under the category I described as "gambling on the outcome of a game"

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

#225

Post by ETH_start » Fri, Sep 16, 2022, 2:27 AM UTC

mumblemumble wrote: post #218

ETH_start wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The collectibles WotC issues could be much more valuable if they are issued on the blockchain where both exchangeability and access to provenance are guaranteed.

I would argue it's the opposite. The physical copies are unique objects that only one person can own and enjoy. With the way NFTs work, the blockchain version of one would be an infinitely copyable file that just happens to have a scoreboard somewhere that says that only one person can "own" it in some very specific sense. But everyone else can still enjoy it just as easily. Unless it's hosted on some WotC server whe…

Note I'm comparing digital collectibles with provenance determined by WotC servers to digital collectibles issued on the blockchain, i.e. NFTs. I'm suggesting the latter could prove to be more valuable than the former. I am not comparing digital collectibles to physical collectibles.

>>With the way NFTs work, the blockchain version of one would be an infinitely copyable file that just happens to have a scoreboard somewhere that says that only one person can "own" it in some very specific sense.

There are already NFTs worth tens and in some cases hundreds of thousands of dollars of ETH (see CryptoPunks NFTs) so we know people are willing to pay for something where the image is copyable, but the original can still be authenticated.

In the case of the physical copies, people can easily photocopy them or share their images digitally, yet the verifiable original still retains its value. I don't believe inability to copy the image associated with a physical or digital collectible is what imparts the collectible with value.

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

#226

Post by jhanschoo » Fri, Sep 16, 2022, 2:30 AM UTC

hnick wrote: post #213

naet wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 platfo…

Has anyone done something similar for a "gacha waifu" type game ala Genshin Impact? If they get the random generator making nice looking characters, I can see the ability to trade unique and attractive characters appealing to some. But it has to be backed by a decent game.

This isn't crypto and I don't know if things are tradable, but Arrowmancer checks the waifu and randomly generated aspect.

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

#227

Post by jholman » Fri, Sep 16, 2022, 2:30 AM UTC

px43 wrote: post #125

bombcar wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can be a puzzle with a built in score and fun, but rarely are these direct-to-cash games fun. D3 got much better when the real money auction house closed.

In my opinion, nothing has ever come close to the rich economic system that emerged naturally in Diablo 2. Maybe it just hit me at a good time in my life, towards the end of high school. I spent probably half my time playing that game just doing arbitrage trading. For example a sorceress or necromancer would always give you 4-5 Perfect Skulls for a Stone of Jordan (SOJ) ring, and you could pretty easily buy an SOJ fr…

You sound like you've never played Eve Online

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

#228

Post by jollybean » Fri, Sep 16, 2022, 2:33 AM UTC

They keep talking about technology but the primary issue here is social phenomenon, these are memes.

Cryto Kittes -> Beanie Babies -> Cabbage Patch Dolls

Cryto itself is like an ideological movement, a bit akin to the heady utopian populism of socialism in the start of the last century.

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

#229

Post by hnick » Fri, Sep 16, 2022, 2:36 AM UTC

jhanschoo wrote: post #226

hnick wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has anyone done something similar for a "gacha waifu" type game ala Genshin Impact? If they get the random generator making nice looking characters, I can see the ability to trade unique and attractive characters appealing to some. But it has to be backed by a decent game.

This isn't crypto and I don't know if things are tradable, but Arrowmancer checks the waifu and randomly generated aspect.

Thanks that's interesting. Crypto isn't required for trade of course but I guess one place it helps is that the developer doesn't need to implement the trade details themselves, just read results from the blockchain. Not sure if this is even possible at the fidelity level people would want though without external data hosting, most NFTs I heard about just link to a resource on a server anyway, and that could be troublesome in a game.

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

#230

Post by v64 » Fri, Sep 16, 2022, 2:36 AM UTC

klodolph wrote: post #29

simsla wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that always the case? My friend was talking about a rare Magic The Gathering card being worth a silly amount of money... Except the card had only been sold once or twice at that price. Unless you have enough comparable items (e.g. paintings by the Dutch masters) it's really difficult to determine the value of something that's rarely sold.

Funny you should mention MtG, since the first big crypto exchange collapse was MtGox. I always thought it was "Mt. Gox", like a mountain of sorts. Turns out it's Magic: The Gathering Online Exchange. Edit: MtG seems like it has some kind of evergreen popularity, and various format changes, changes in the list of banned cards, reprints, and changes in the metagame will mean that prices of individual cards can vary wil…

Another intersting wrinkle is that the original MtGox was created by Jed McCaleb, co-creator of eDonkey, who was later involved with the cryptocurrencies Ripple and Stellar Lumens.