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Counter-Strike's player economy is in a freefall

polygon.com

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Re: Counter-Strike's player economy is in a freefall

#21

Post by raihansaputra »

mkagenius wrote: post #2

Interesting that a whole economy is based on fake supply constraint. Or is making butterfly knife really hard? It seems like NFT before NFT.

yeah CS skins is one of the biggest markets of digital-only-aesthetic-items before NFT came around (and now probably still bigger than NFTs). The main thing with NFTs was that there's no "central database", CS skins solely lives in Valve's database.

making a butterfly knife for Valve isn't hard (in the past Steam Customer Service duplicated items lost in scams). It's hard for the players because they have to "gamble" for it through paying keys to open cases.

Re: Counter-Strike's player economy is in a freefall

#22

Post by beeflet »

ramesh31 wrote: post #11

Valve employs an army of economists (notably Yanis Varoufakis as alumn) to make these decisions. It was certainly purposeful and will balance itself out.

this is what I think. The change is that 10 of the highest-level weapon textures can be traded for a knife texture: the result is that the supply of knife textures goes up, but the supply of high-level weapon textures goes down significantly more.

It's not so much a depreciation of knife textures, as a distribution of this value down the chain of item rarities.

Re: Counter-Strike's player economy is in a freefall

#23

Post by episteme »

beeflet wrote: post #15
someothherguyy wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> wasted hours of time playing it What would you dictate that humans do instead to not be wasteful with their time? Comment on threads about games?

I don't know, reading? Building something? Exploring the natural world? Sports? Not to say that all video games are unsubstantive. But the substance in exploring virtual world comes from its uniqueness, not playing de_dust2 for 1000 hours. No other form of entertainment or art is analogous to video games in terms of the maximum time you can spend on it with totally depreciating returns.

Playing de_dust2 for 1000 hours is as reductive as saying playing on a soccer pitch for 1000 hours.

And soccer only has 1 map.

Re: Counter-Strike's player economy is in a freefall

#24

Post by beeflet »

mashlol wrote: post #17
beeflet wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know, reading? Building something? Exploring the natural world? Sports? Not to say that all video games are unsubstantive. But the substance in exploring virtual world comes from its uniqueness, not playing de_dust2 for 1000 hours. No other form of entertainment or art is analogous to video games in terms of the maximum time you can spend on it with totally depreciating returns.

Would you say the same if someone played 1000 hours of a sport?

No. If you play 1000 hours of a sport, you will at least be stronger, more coordinated, more agile. But the downsides are more about repetitive strain injury and the possibility of screwing up your joints.

Different benefits and downsides.

Of course, a lot of guys are suckered into sports-related gambling these days too.

Re: Counter-Strike's player economy is in a freefall

#25

Post by pols45 »

mkagenius wrote: post #2

Interesting that a whole economy is based on fake supply constraint. Or is making butterfly knife really hard? It seems like NFT before NFT.

All this froth on the ocean surface is only possible in an economy where household net worth has been inflated to 150 Trillion.

Re: Counter-Strike's player economy is in a freefall

#26

Post by themafia »

someothherguyy wrote: post #13
jalapenos wrote: post #12

> Counter-Strike's player economy There's a what? I guess once you've maxed out wasted hours of time playing it, you start wasting money too? Less absurd than NFTs though I guess

> wasted hours of time playing it What would you dictate that humans do instead to not be wasteful with their time? Comment on threads about games?

They can do whatever they want with their time. Except operate and profit off of make shift casinos and unregulated games of chance.

Re: Counter-Strike's player economy is in a freefall

#28

Post by zharknado »

alberth wrote: post #16
adrr wrote: post #9

Gambling mechanics for anyone under 18 should be banned. Children can't buy lottery tickets or hit tables in Vegas. Its crazy they can buy loot boxes that real life value.

Would you consider old school coin operated arcades as something that should be banned? Just curious.

Not OP, but I would ban the tickets/prizes mechanism.

Depending on how old is “old school” for you, every game in an arcade might be fine.

If we’re talking 90’s Chuck E. Cheese, maybe half the games would be potentially interesting to play without a token payout. The others round to “roll the dice,” where there is no payoff other than a gambler’s variable reward.

I think this also covers whether skill is involved. Like for me, beating my buddy at basketball shots is mildly rewarding, but smashing a button at the right time is not very interesting even if it requires a lot of skill.

Re: Counter-Strike's player economy is in a freefall

#30

Post by ang_cire »

beeflet wrote: post #24
mashlol wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you say the same if someone played 1000 hours of a sport?

No. If you play 1000 hours of a sport, you will at least be stronger, more coordinated, more agile. But the downsides are more about repetitive strain injury and the possibility of screwing up your joints. Different benefits and downsides. Of course, a lot of guys are suckered into sports-related gambling these days too.

You don't think that you get better at CS the more you play it? Better coordination, better accuracy, etc?
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