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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

#271

Post by ohgodplsno »

alanfalcon wrote: post #138
ohgodplsno wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CK's breeding mechanics are about as complex as Pokemon Gen1's breeding mechanics, and simpler than Gen3. Congratulations on passing the GameBoy bar. Additionally, all of the talk about openness is now out the window since the breeding code is closed source. Congratulations on also doing limited time events, welcome to the year 2000 of online gaming!

Just because it's tradition to not let "someone being wrong on the internet" stand: https://www.cryptokitties.co/blog/post/learn-how-our-last-my...

Thanks! Now there's improvement, from "we're not sure just how simplistic those mechanics are" to "well fuck me that's some first year in college simple mechanics".

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

#272

Post by Doxin »

hypomanic wrote: post #247
mkaic wrote: 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…

How would you have a digital collectible without blockchain? The alternative is just a private database somewhere that depends on the whims of a company/individual for its continued existence.

And yet Neopets, which fits that description perfectly, was wildly more popular than even the most popular blockchain based game.

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

#273

Post by ETH_start »

nradov wrote: post #251
ETH_start wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 som…

People are only willing to "pay" for worthless NFT garbage due to the bigger fool theory. The grifters who created scams like CryptoPunks are already running out of fools.

That's an entirely speculative claim, and doesn't even make sense.

There is no difference in a digital Magic card and a physical one in terms of motivations to pay for one.

The anti-decentralization camp used CO2 emissions as their excuse for their wholesale condemnation of NFTs before. But now that that's gone, there doesn't seem to be anything of substance to support their blanket condemnation of them.

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

#274

Post by yreg »

anonymousab wrote: post #250
hypomanic wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you have a digital collectible without blockchain? The alternative is just a private database somewhere that depends on the whims of a company/individual for its continued existence.

> that depends on the whims of a company/individual for its continued existence As do most things so it's really neither relevant nor a drawback worth discussing.

This argument is non-sensical.

>Why does ${PROJECT} use ${TECHNOLOGY}?

>So it doesn't have ${DRAWBACK}.

>Most other things have ${DRAWBACK}, so it's really neither relevant nor worth discussing.

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

#275

Post by foerbert »

mumblemumble wrote: post #215
foerbert wrote: post #188

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…

I don't think that's the case. It's also a tabletop game so the rules are all out there in public and not even inhumanely complex.

Even if WotC's servers go down, you could use the blockchain to prove ownership of a card for use in a live tournament. It's also possible for a third party to create their own server to implement the game, and then refer back to the blockchain for ownership.

As for non-official cards, I mean, yeah? That's the case with physical Magic cards too. Not even actual counterfeits have held the MTG secondary market back from astounding prices. Meanwhile non-NFT cards would be the equivalent of proxy cards - cards that aren't X, but both players agree to treat as X - which haven't been any more successful than counterfeits in holding Magic prices down.

I'm not claiming there would be greater faith in a blockchain than WotC, I'm just saying I see it as possible.

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

#277

Post by everfree »

kareemsabri wrote: post #268
everfree wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Insane is a strong word. But your description ("efficiently price a scarce resource") is economics textbook language and irrelevant to the end consumer. What's "insane" about a currency where on any given day the effective purchase price of goods can fluctuate by 100x (from $5 gas fee to $500) is that it's not a usable medium of exchange. As a consumer I need price stability. Getting "priced out" of buying a t-shirt,…

> But your description ("efficiently price a scarce resource") is economics textbook language and irrelevant to the end consumer.

I don't understand what you mean by this.

> What's "insane" about a currency where on any given day the effective purchase price of goods can fluctuate by 100x (from $5 gas fee to $500) is that it's not a usable medium of exchange.

I don't consider Ether to be a currency, I consider it to be a commodity. The very fact that people bid the fee market up to high levels, despite the Ethereum network running constantly at its full capacity of a bit over one million transactions per day, is itself proof that the network is a medium of exchange that people choose to use.

> As a consumer I need price stability. Getting "priced out" of buying a t-shirt, or playing a game, and whatever other thing I want to buy (or sell), is an inconvenience that would cause me to just use a network with sufficient capacity to never be "scarce".

I don't believe that Ethereum is currently very useful for buying t-shirts or playing games. Most of the usage so far has been to run code on the Ethereum Virtual Machine.

> The resource I want isn't "block verification". That's Ethereum's problem, not mine. I want the thing I'm trying to buy. So I disagree the market is efficient, there's a tax on goods unrelated to the good in question, and I would use Visa to avoid it, as the other poster said in what you call a "weird flex".

The good that Ethereum sells (service really) is the ability to run code on the Ethereum Virtual Machine. If you don't derive value from that service, no one is forcing you to use it. Ethereum wasn't created to dethrone Visa as a payment network for t-shirt purchases at Walmart. It's fine if it isn't used for that.

My point remains that pricing a service based on supply and demand (in this case VM execution) is very much sane in an economic sense. When certain customers cease purchasing a service because the price is bid higher than the benefit those customers receive from it, that's market efficiency, not insanity.

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

#278

Post by ddevault »

hypomanic wrote: post #247
mkaic wrote: 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…

How would you have a digital collectible without blockchain? The alternative is just a private database somewhere that depends on the whims of a company/individual for its continued existence.

Right click and download the JPEG of a cat. Done.

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

#279

Post by LudwigNagasena »

thrown_22 wrote: post #276
LudwigNagasena wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin doesn’t even have smart contracts. How is it relevant?

Is it not a blockchain technology?

It is, however, not the blockchain technology.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_fallacy

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

#280

Post by foerbert »

largepeepee wrote: post #236
foerbert wrote: post #188

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.

Your words are contradictions. You say they will see benefit. Yet all you mention is how the blockchain might usurp the faith wotc relies on. Why would wotc ever fund their potential demise or depend on people that never had faith on their product in the first place?

WotC doesn't care if a potential consumer trusts their long-term business model, but they sure do care if the potential consumer trusts their purchase won't poof out of existence one day.

By throwing it on the blockchain, WotC could market it as the digital card being basically as safe from vanishing as a physical card. "Even if we go bust in 50 years, your digital cards will all still be yours! You'll still be able to prove ownership of all your cards, and will still be free as ever to trade coughsell for incredible profitcough them!"

I have no idea if the market as a whole would bite, or how deeply. But there is a not-insignificant number of people who count on Magic cards gaining significant amounts of value over time. Some use it as a way to justify the purchases, while others have turned it into an outright investment strategy.

I can only imagine that digital cards reliant on WotC's active involvement to exist would suffer significant discounts.

But maybe being digital is such a huge hit in the first place that it doesn't ultimately matter. I have no idea. Hence, why I said it seems possible.

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