Hammercoin – A Bitcoin-fueled game • Hacker News Board

Re: Hammercoin – A Bitcoin-fueled game

#21

Post by NTripleOne » Fri, Nov 25, 2016, 2:56 PM UTC

Lazare wrote: post #13

Pamar wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that Second Life (still running, and where you can still trade in-game money for real money see: https://community.secondlife.com/t5/English-Knowledge-Base/B... ) is a better example than Diablo 3

Quite possibly; I'm more familiar with Diablo 3 than Second Life, and had actually forgotten (if I'd ever known) that Second Life allowed RMT. I think that supports my overall point though: This isn't new, and you don't need bitcoins to make it work.

SL doesn't just allow RMT, it all but necessitates it. There is a very small list of things you can do without any L$, heres a few included in that list:

Be called a noob because you use a whole free avatar or free avatar components.

Be instantly blocked by just about everyone you try to talk to

Be unable to access adult-rated sims and regions

Spend 4 hours attached to a dancing poseball that pays you L$1 an hour

Re: Hammercoin – A Bitcoin-fueled game

#22

Post by NTripleOne » Fri, Nov 25, 2016, 2:59 PM UTC

VermillionAzure wrote: post #11

My most favorite video game economy was Habbo Hotel, actually. Because few people actually bought coins, people were caught in a deflated economy almost constantly. And since special events or buying furniture from the store was the only source of supply for the demand, a whole economy formulated around furniture for coins, etc. I just thought the dynamic was neat. Additionally, Spiral Knights also had an interesting…

Also, falling furni was fun as fuck and nothing anyone can say will change that.

Re: Hammercoin – A Bitcoin-fueled game

#23

Post by petejodo » Fri, Nov 25, 2016, 6:16 PM UTC

So semi-related to this, I've contemplated about the feasibility of a cryptocurrency/blockchain built specifically for a pseudo-MMO game where instead of a central server, it's actually a network of servers where anyone can host a server. Each server would be a "game world" that falls into a few categories, such as PvE, PvP, and Town, where Town would be a sort of server browser to find PvE/PvP servers.

The blockchain would store users' character data i.e. level, currency, inventory, etc.

It would use a hypothetical form of proof of work where either the previous hash or the nonce would determine what monster and items are available on that server for some given amount of time. Clients would then be required to sign with their private keys a "chain of events" that would have to line up with the server's chain of events somehow.

I wouldn't know how to determine if a client and a server are cheating or not though.

The game developer would imaginably host some of the larger servers and could then sell the cryptocurrency they gain from hosting said servers for some actual fiat as a means to make money.

Clearly this is an incredibly rough idea that I have not actually spent too much time thinking about.

EDIT

an inspiration for this idea was "The World", a fictional game from the dotHack series

Re: Hammercoin – A Bitcoin-fueled game

#24

Post by runeks » Fri, Nov 25, 2016, 7:06 PM UTC

kriro wrote: post #14

I would like to see a game that tests the gold standard approach. Basically a novel economic simulator. The hard part would be building a fun enough game around it, I'm currently thinking some sort of sandbox game/MMORPG. Upon the creation of the game world a fund of X money would be set aside and correspond to all available in game items etc. For each paying player, new items would be added that correspond to a perc…

> I would like to see a game that tests the gold standard approach.

Bitcoin is that experiment, but in the real world. After ~2021, the inflation rate will be less than 1.8% p.a. [1]. I believe the stock-to-flow ratio of gold is around 1% (its stock/supply increases around 1% per year). So they will be pretty similar in that regard in ~5 years, and in addition, we won't need to worry about whether our experiment actually reflects real-world conditions, as opposed to with a game.

[1] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Controlled_supply

Re: Hammercoin – A Bitcoin-fueled game

#25

Post by jayajay » Fri, Nov 25, 2016, 7:16 PM UTC

Don't be fooled by a few utterances of the word "Blockchain". This could still be exploited by the game owners, who have control of the drop rates and enemy interactions (i.e. there are still centralized aspects of this environment). There are several elementary typos in that article -- so it makes me trust the game creators even less. This reeks of typical MMORPG developer greed.

Re: Hammercoin – A Bitcoin-fueled game

#26

Post by keypusher » Sat, Nov 26, 2016, 6:00 AM UTC

micfar wrote: post #18

keypusher wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you are speaking about the deficiencies of some particular game, this certainly isn't true of all MMOs. GW2 and Eve both support buy orders, for instance. Items that drive the economy are also not always obtained incidentally, often they must be crafted by someone with high enough skill using rare components.

Given that the In-Game currency is purchasable with fiat currency, wouldn't it be reasonable to surmise that hyperinflation doesn't occur in the same way due to the fiat anchor for IG currency values?

Only if it goes both ways. The ability to purchase in-game currency with fiat currency actually makes inflation worse by introducing even more money to the in-game economy. Most games currently do not allow in-game currency to be "legally" converted back to real world money directly. Their solution is the ability to convert large amount of in-game currency to meaningful metagame items. In Eve, you can use in-game currency to pay for your subscription. In GW2, you can use in-game currency to pay for "gems", which are used for microtransactions such as server transfers, rare skins, additional bank storage, etc. These gold sinks serve as an important valve to control inflation of the economy by permanently removing that currency from the game.