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The collapse of cryptokitties, the first big blockchain game

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

#171
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

I would disagree with that.

D3 RMAH was bad because D3 was bad. At that time there was basically no itemisation, everything gear was basically dps/main stat/trifecta. D3 was so bad that the fix was to remove trading completely and never been brought back.

People traded D2 items for gear, runes and/or real money for decades, there is no problem and the game is alive for well.

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

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct, not possible if you dont want someone to know But of you’ve ever traded NFTs its hard to really begin with the assumption that trading volume is fake because bots and market makers buy from you so fast. You know that wasn't a fake or wash trade, while there is a pervasive audience of onlookers that are trying to prove a negative. You know that funds in bankruptcy court have successfully sold $30,000,000 wort…

Right, I'm not saying there's no real trading, just that it's impossible to say how much. Which makes the graphs and anecdotes quoted in the article a bit meaningless, IMO.

I agree that the data collection possibilities are limited

this is more so for others who are looking for validation of only wash trading. I’m mostly saying some assumptions have to be made, and relative comparison to other projects and understanding actual trades occur… a lot, moves the assumptions towards more distinct market participants than assuming the nonexistence of any market participants

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

#173
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct, not possible if you dont want someone to know But of you’ve ever traded NFTs its hard to really begin with the assumption that trading volume is fake because bots and market makers buy from you so fast. You know that wasn't a fake or wash trade, while there is a pervasive audience of onlookers that are trying to prove a negative. You know that funds in bankruptcy court have successfully sold $30,000,000 wort…

"because bots and market makers buy from you so fast" Does that still hold true today, or was that the case six months ago before the NFT market crashed?

it still holds true today for the same top projects

most collections are essentially just tokens with a picture, the same practices on token exchanges are prevalent on nft marketplaces

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

#174
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are like porn games, the gameplay is not the focus, fucking is. Except it's you getting fucked in crypto.

I wonder if there are any prn games where the gameplay is so good you forget about the prn

The Fate series which later spawned a massive franchise (multiple games, movies and books) started off as an eroge.

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

#175
post #63

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

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…

Your argument started well but veered off the tracks. The examples I would give of parallels between gambling and gaming are arcades, loot boxes, merchandiser machines, and free-to-play games with a virtual currency

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

#176
post #126
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…

In the real world, people play trading card games all the time and a big part of the ecosystem is trading the trading cards. Only, it is really annoying to have to ship around and maintain physical cards, and I want my card collection in the cloud. Some people would thereby prefer to play an online version of, say, Magic: The Gathering, or whatever the Pokémon one is called, etc. The problem now is... how do you do t…

> 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 trivial things to implement.

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

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the few areas where I think there's a legitimately useful role for NFTs. WoTC (the owners of MtG) could "mint" a limited number of cards each year, just like today, controlling the rarity of certain ones, etc. People could pay WoTC for them, and they could be traded in the blockchain, which shows the "chain of custody" all the way back to WoTC, which is what makes it "authentic". Online tournaments cou…

> They already do this sort of thing with MtG Online Exactly. They can track all this stuff in their own database. WotC doesn't stand to benefit from putting anything on a blockchain.

Generalized case: no one stands to benefit from putting such things on a blockchain.

Except the people making money by running or grifting off a blockchain.

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

#178

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 being priced out of buying corn or wheat - there's not an infinite amount available for everyone to buy at whatever price they please.

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

#179
post #14

I feel that NFT pricing exuberance (or lack thereof) is distracting both critics and even fans from the core innovation here - 1. the capacity to signify a digital original and 2. to decentrally organize ownership (though it's more like possession) of these items. The ultimate question for crypto as a whole is whether the mass market wants digital possession that transcends a single centrally managed database. Person…

The major distraction is that a 'digital original' is a fiction. I can ignore your blockchain and make any digital IP fungible.

You're one evil motherfunger!

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

#180
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…

> The idea of an artist signing their work in a cryptographically unique way is not new or revolutionary, and it certainly doesn't need a blockchain.

It creates a provable, transferable, composable, tamper-proof "ownership" record of the digital signature.

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