91–100 of 700 posts
We should create a game like Axie infinity, but instead of making money from useless Axies you make it from writing code. And then since crypto is bad we just pay people with regular money instead. Also maybe have them sign a contract for working fixed hours and/or completing a project in X time. So you know, the project actually gets done.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This feels like a "let them eat cake" reply when compared to agrarian labor...
How much money people make is a separate question, but playing games is likely worse for the body than most forms agrarian labor. Excluding accidents with heavy machinery.
Play-to-earn will die a painful death, but the takeaway here (which this article dodges) is that players should own their in-game assets. This is really where blockchain comes into play. Diablo 3 tried to do this, but they were too early and too greedy. If done correctly, owning your digital items is certainly more preferable than not. Again, this is touched in half a paragraph, but this is the real revolutionary asp…
Diablo 3's in-game real-money market wasn't based on a blockchain, and was doomed to failure for game design reasons alone.
> And, paradoxically, it's nothing new: Steam store "items" are basically NFTs. Fortnite skins are basically NFTs. It's just that without a decentralized marketplace, you can't sell them.
You can sell Steam in-game items just fine on the community market (https://steamcommunity.com/market/). You just can't cash that out to real money because Valve, quite sensibly, doesn't want to be classified as a money transmitter.
Sorry to get a bit off track: So is web3 just “ blockchain related things “ ? I feel like web3 as a term usage has exploded to the point that I’m not sure what people are talking about when they say “web3”.
Generally refers to decentralized technologies that somehow benefit from blockchain-like data structures. For example, you can compost these three technologies to build a decentralized webserver. - Filecoin & AR Weave: decentralized file storage. Spend tokens to store files, earn tokens by storing others' files. - ENS (Ethereum Name Service): DNS-like system for addresses. - Smart Contracts of various sorts (e.g. Eth…
I don’t know if you meant “compose” or “compost”, but it works both ways.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's the cultural value provided by sitting on Axie and grinding for hours?
I'm not sure "value" is the correct question. Value depends on... values, I guess. In any case, I suspect Graeber would have advised asking them. The grinders in manilla. The currency buyers, traders, etc. Cultural reasons are hard to extract from their cultural context without resorting to essentialism. There are differences between a game where money comes from grinding, even if 3rd party and outsourced, and a pay-…
I disagree entirely with the thesis of "bullshit jobs". Unless it's a government job or mandated by regulations, someone is paying for a task to be done voluntarily. Therefore it isn't bullshit to the payer, even if it might seem like bullshit to the worker. I have never stumbled on a single job that wasn't government-required labor that had no purpose whatsoever, and furthermore the laborer wasn't able to quit.
But I think your objection is not very strong and his thesis can be rescued from it.
> it isn't bullshit to the payer, even if it might seem like bullshit to the worker
I think a lot of jobs really are "bullshit jobs," not because they have no value to the payer, but because they have negative value to the economy overall.
For an extreme example, some people are willing to pay to have witnesses murdered so that they can continue committing crimes without legal repercussions.
Or, some people are doing jobs that are purely for positional advantage and that are even "cancelled out" by other people in other companies doing another job. Advertisers seeking to take over market share from competing companies.
Or, some extractive industries may be more beneficially halted because of negative externalities; but those who benefit from the extraction will still hire people.
In the late 2000s, as a teenager, I was gifted a Runescape account. This account had level 80+ woodcutting, allowing one to chop magic trees - which would produce the most expensive lumber in the game. It took a staggering number of real hours to achieve this skill level, we're talking several hundred hours minimum. At some point I had realized that there were different sketchy websites that would buy and sell the in…
Nitpicks because this game was my childhood. I totally support your sentiment though. > It took a staggering number of real hours to achieve this skill level * 97 logs (30 minutes) * 293 oaks (1 hr) * 714 willows (2.5 hr) * 19,246 maple (very inefficient compared to willow cutting rate - 60 hour). If you did yews it would be many hundreds of hours. About 70 hours done inefficiently. > What if I wrote a macro Macros w…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How much money people make is a separate question, but playing games is likely worse for the body than most forms agrarian labor. Excluding accidents with heavy machinery.
As someone who worked on a midwestern farm as a child, I will respectfully disagree with your assessment -- farm labor is significantly more harmful to your body than working at a computer.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's different inasmuch as it's even stupider. Gold farming is, at least, based on the premise that there are people who are willing to pay other people money to perform repetitive actions in a video game for them. It's still kind of dumb and it has harmful effects on in-game economies, but at least there's some semblance of money being exchanged for goods and services. "Play to earn", on the other hand, is based on…
The question is answered in TFA: > These “economic opportunities” are essentially a wealth transfer from new players to established ones. Gameplay requires the purchase of three Axies, which currently cost in the hundreds of US dollars each. Players who buy in treat this as an investment, since it’s a necessary buy-in in order to work in the game. It sounds more like a Ponzi scheme in a Gold farming disguise to me. I…
I would agree with this if the primary income stream came directly from the increase in value of Axies as the game attracted more users. From my understanding, the income comes from acquiring and selling in-game currency rather than from the Axies themselves.
Is this a bullshit job? Maybe. Ponzi scheme? I don't think so.
If people are working this bullshit job, it means that this bullshit job is better than their alternatives. I'm not convinced the existence of these kinds of games is a net-negative.