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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

#301
post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah lots of “cart before the horse” happening in this space. When talking about games these days we often imagine rich engaging audio/visual interactive experiences. The crypto people don’t really seem to understand that kind of game. But there are also more turn-based games which really are about the mechanics of which items/stats/buildings/lands you have, what their effects are, how to level up etc which all could…

Something like the 40-year-old-and-still-ongoing DnD game might make sense in this setting [1] Considering blockchains survive for 40 years which is not a given. [1] https://nerdist.com/article/dungeons-and-dragons-neverending...

wow, thats a nice example as well

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

#303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fate somehow has exactly the same magic system as White Wolf Mage even though it's too old to have copied it. Unless there’s a different Fate that also started of as eroge and spawned a massive franchise, it was first released in 2006, 13 years after White Wolf first released Mage: The Ascension, and so was very much not too early to have copied from Mage.

The setting was written in 1996 with Mahoutsukai no Yoru/Kara no Kyoukai. Also the other half of the setting is all about vampires, and it's definitely kind of like White Wolf Vampire, but not close enough to look intentional.

Wait, Kara no Kyoukai and Fate are set in the same universe?

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

#304

So basically, as Ethereum gets more popular, the price of gas goes up. Eventually the cost of making a transaction will often become higher than the transaction itself, all of which you have no control over because it is all determined by how many people are using Ethereum. If true, this seems insane.

What seems insane to you about using an auction model to efficiently price a scarce resource? (The auction model is the transaction fee bidding market, the scarce resource is block space until/unless Ethereum scales.) If you're sidelined by the market because resources are being used by people who feel they have a greater need for them than you (who bid higher), that's an efficient market. It's no different than bein…

It’s not in any way a scarce resource. They are cryptokitties.

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

#305
post #233
post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If only there were some off-the-shelf technology for tracking digital assets Isn't this any relational database where you can set the owner_id of an item? > your entire game backend would then be built around a single marketplace that might randomly pull your game for some reason and shut down your entire company Most online games have some sort of digital assets they have to keep track of, and that's one of the tr…

No: most online games don't maintain a marketplace where users can trade their assets for cash, running auctions or whatever similar to eBay. That is the issue here: people want to be able to sell their cards to other players, and now you need to build a mechanism that supports that correctly without becoming riled in the customer support issues. Also, BTW: part of what makes the physical cards valuable in the long t…

> That is the issue here: people want to be able to sell their cards to other players, and now you need to build a mechanism that supports that correctly without becoming riled in the customer support issues.

I mean, if you put it like that it sounds as if the main advantage of the blockchain technology here is to offload responsibility for the inevitable issues that arise when people start trading for real money, such as scams or people regretting their purchases. But you're not actually solving these problems, you just gain the ability to point to the decentralized blockchain and claim there's nothing you can do about it.

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

#306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, I’ll keep using the credit card and traditional banking system where I don’t need to enter an auction and pay $20 to make a transaction.

This is such a weird flex, I don't understand what you're trying to say. Continue not purchasing things you don't get value out of, I guess? Good for you.

No, he’ll continue paying for things he gets value from using a medium that works for him.

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

#307
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Commenter said "there's no way to distinguish fake wash trades from real ones" and I showed a case where a wash trade was, to anybody looking at it, very obviously fake. I agree with the other part of the comment. Blockchains do not track "persons" but "wallets" and so metrics like "number of users" will not be accurate. But it is not accurate to imply that it is impossible to recognize wash trades. In many cases the…

OP probably meant fake wash trades and real non-wash trade ones, not fake and nonfake wash trades

The flash loan trade was a wash trade, obviously “fake.” Other wash trades are also - very often - obvious because the blockchain is transparent and easily analizable.

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

#308
post #87

> What Went Wrong? It's in the title of the article. It's a "Blockchain Game". That's what went wrong. It was a flawed concept from its inception. Blockchains are pretty cool from a math/cryptography standpoint, but they really do not provide added value in most areas people try to apply them to. CryptoKitties is a digital trading card game. You get cards, you can "breed" cards together to make new cards, you trade/b…

I know the blockchain has been kind of tainted by the way it's been used for the past few years, but I do believe that there can be valid uses for it.

Lately I've been thinking if it would be possible to have an MMORPG game where instead of a server all the data would be saved in a blockchain/linked list. The biggest concern I have though is the latency and speed.

Could blockchains be fast enough or in some other way protected from malicious actors to allow actual real time game play? Like World of Warcraft, or would it just be too slow.

I've been thinking about this, because servers are expensive and doing it this way you would have, kind of, solved the problem of scalability - no queues.

There would be no coins or NFTs or anything like that.

Just a decentralised MMORPG server/game thus saving the developers from the server costs.

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

#309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I also had fun making gold in Skyrim, which was offline. I don't recall it being work, but whatever.

That's not the point I was making.

Playing a little bit with game economics is fun to a certain point.

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

#310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's possible they might see some benefit. It would basically hinge on people's faith in WotC vs a blockchain to administer that data. If the blockchain was more trusted - say because of concerns WotC might go out of business one day, etc - then using it might entice people to put more money in.

If gameplay is also mediated through WotC's servers, though, then the cards would lose any intrinsic value when/if WotC goes under or stops supporting the game. And if others are allowed to create their own servers so that the game can live outside of WotC's auspices, that would also undermine the value of the NFT cards, since anyone who is able to create their own implementation of the game could just as easily star…

That really depends on the community that grows around the game. People spend money on all kinds of expensive stuff that they could replace with a cheap replica if they wanted to, but they don't, they want the original thing. If the community sees value in an original WotC NFT, they'll have value.

Furthermore, if said community creates tournaments and online services that require official WotC NFT to participate, that will further cement their value.

That you can create your own NFTs and your own tournaments isn't going to be of much use when the rest of the players only plays with the official NFTs and won't accept yours.

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