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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

#61

Post by digitaLandscape »

midislack wrote: post #59
alanfalcon wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CryptoKitties is a lot of fun, for what it is. It's super deep and while it's more of a sandbox than a typical game, I became obsessed with it when it came out, though not for monetary reasons (if it has one huge drawback as a game, it's always been how much it costs IMO). Became so obsessed that I ended up hired by Dapper Labs and working on the CryptoKitties team, later helped design and launch NBA Top Shot on Flow…

OK but WHAT IS THE GAME? What do you DO with CryptoKitties?

You breed them. It reminded me of horse breeding games my girlfriend used to play. Kind of fun. Not worth the ongoing cost though.

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

#62

Post by vkou »

notahacker wrote: post #32
samatman wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amount of wash trading in the fine art world is certainly not zero.

True, but I don't thing wash trading is integral to convincing people that fine art is something people want...

I'm pretty sure it's integral to convincing people that ~99% of the >$1,000,000 fine art is something people want enough to pay the 'going' price for.

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

#63

Post by reidjs »

Melchori wrote: post #50
secretsatan wrote: post #45

I read these articles sometimes about crypto games, but they all never seem to describe the actual game, it’s like crypto is the primary concern, and game is secondary, and i’m getting the distinct impression none of these games are any fun and everyone in the space has to avoid mentioning it. I think that the people writing these things only have a very slim grasp of gaming, but they know it would be a good market t…

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 mining, etc. Probably the purest form of gambling is slot machines, since they are purely random chance.

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

#64

Post by andrewmutz »

zeroclip wrote: post #26
teraflop wrote: post #3

One thing I don't see addressed in this article is that as far as I know, it's basically impossible to trust the reported price or volume of NFT transactions, because there's no way to distinguish fake wash trades from real ones. So it's hard to draw any conclusions about whether the data reflects an actual peak in user activity, or just a peak in scams.

> there's no way to distinguish fake wash trades from real ones Ah, like that $532M Punk wash trade that was clearly visible on-chain?[1] I guess we'll never know if it was real or fake. [1] https://decrypt.co/84756/no-someone-didnt-really-pay-532-mil...

How can we tell that the buyer and the seller are two different people in real life?

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

#65

Post by sharkjacobs »

fab1an wrote: 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…

"digital original" is on its face absurd

An analog original could be valuable or at least meaningful because it's impossible to create an identical copy of anything in which exists in the material world.

But there is no way to distinguish between two copies of digital data.

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

#66

Post by pas »

zeroclip wrote: post #47
rnk wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please explain your comment for the rest is us. Was that a sarcastic "it really happened because it made it to the chain" or a "we'll never know whether value was exchanged from one person to another because the owner of both wallets could be the same person" - or both, neither or?

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

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

#67

Post by coding123 »

Melchori wrote: post #50
secretsatan wrote: post #45

I read these articles sometimes about crypto games, but they all never seem to describe the actual game, it’s like crypto is the primary concern, and game is secondary, and i’m getting the distinct impression none of these games are any fun and everyone in the space has to avoid mentioning it. I think that the people writing these things only have a very slim grasp of gaming, but they know it would be a good market t…

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.

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

#68

Post by JeremyNT »

midislack wrote: post #59
alanfalcon wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CryptoKitties is a lot of fun, for what it is. It's super deep and while it's more of a sandbox than a typical game, I became obsessed with it when it came out, though not for monetary reasons (if it has one huge drawback as a game, it's always been how much it costs IMO). Became so obsessed that I ended up hired by Dapper Labs and working on the CryptoKitties team, later helped design and launch NBA Top Shot on Flow…

OK but WHAT IS THE GAME? What do you DO with CryptoKitties?

Disclaimer: I haven't played it, but I read this article.

It looks like a pet breeding game. You "own" cartoon cats - visual representations of distinctive bundles of characteristics contained in a NFT. You generate more NFTs by "breeding" two existing cats (executing the smart contract), which results in random combinations of their characteristics in offspring.

What to do with them? Speculate on their value, same as any NFT.

As a "game" this sounds incredibly unsophisticated compared to normal video games - something that might have passed during the flash era of gaming, or maybe today on itch.io as a weekend project. The only "hook" outside of this is the speculation / potential to earn (and I imagine if you're in on the scam, earning is a lot of fun).

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

#69

Post by alanfalcon »

midislack wrote: post #59
alanfalcon wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CryptoKitties is a lot of fun, for what it is. It's super deep and while it's more of a sandbox than a typical game, I became obsessed with it when it came out, though not for monetary reasons (if it has one huge drawback as a game, it's always been how much it costs IMO). Became so obsessed that I ended up hired by Dapper Labs and working on the CryptoKitties team, later helped design and launch NBA Top Shot on Flow…

OK but WHAT IS THE GAME? What do you DO with CryptoKitties?

Breeding is a complex and nuanced game mechanic, which when coupled with the worldwide marketplace unlocks a dizzying rabbit hole. Once you understand the mechanics, you realize just why a Gen 1 Tendertears would be a grail collectible to own.

I called it more of a sandbox than a game, but there are also Fancy Chases, events where a specific limited-time breeding goal is introduced and it's a race to be among the first to achieve this goal and breed a Fancy Kitty.

Not saying it's for everyone, but it's definitely something that thousands of people found and find pretty darn fun (again: if expensive).

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

#70

Post by Chabsff »

alanfalcon wrote: post #58
secretsatan wrote: post #45

I read these articles sometimes about crypto games, but they all never seem to describe the actual game, it’s like crypto is the primary concern, and game is secondary, and i’m getting the distinct impression none of these games are any fun and everyone in the space has to avoid mentioning it. I think that the people writing these things only have a very slim grasp of gaming, but they know it would be a good market t…

CryptoKitties is a lot of fun, for what it is. It's super deep and while it's more of a sandbox than a typical game, I became obsessed with it when it came out, though not for monetary reasons (if it has one huge drawback as a game, it's always been how much it costs IMO). Became so obsessed that I ended up hired by Dapper Labs and working on the CryptoKitties team, later helped design and launch NBA Top Shot on Flow…

You cannot have a conversation about "crypto games" without addressing how crypto makes the game better. For the sake of this conversation, it doesn't particularly matter how fun CryptoKitties is. What matters is how does the blockchain integration make the game better than it would otherwise have been.

From my point of view so far, even the best crypto game out there would have been better if it wasn't for the crypto aspect of it.

If this ecosystem is to provide value beyond the potential for making money, then what is it? It's hard to be excited about something that only has downsides.

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