[noetic_techy]

All those poo-pooing NFT's will miss NFT gaming and gambling like a freight train to the face.

Reading the comments, I see too many people focused on the art aspect (of course this is OP's articles focus). NFT's applied to art is a bit stupid and makes only nominal sense. NFT art is really just flexing for the rich, because as anyone realizes, right-click save-as is all you need to have the art too, just not the "key" or "ownership proof" to that art.

However when it comes to gameing, its a whole different story. Think of it more like a key to unlock something unique in some digital world.

Want to own the unique special edition sword with rare attributes in the Zelda-verse or the uber lazer in your favorite open world space game? Buy the NFT block chain address to it that says you and only you can have it (check out Phantom Galaxies). Want to own the penthouse apartment in the zuckers-verse? Buy the NFT key that says only you have ownership rights. There are already people buying up digital lots in VR games in development. Want to be a unique character with unique pets in World-of-crypto-craft? Buy the NFT's to unlock these. Want to own a special randomly generated horse in a horse race gambling game? Buy the NFT to unlock, and feed your NFT in with someone else to "breed" a new horse with chances of getting the same rare attributes (this is the concept of D-race). Want to own the rare uber-pokemon in the poke-verse to battle with others (check out Illuvium, same concept)? Buy the NFT to unlock. Sell them if you get bored for more/less money, and the game developer gets a cut!

The gaming and even the gambling application scenarios are enormous. That's why crypto gaming will likely be huge and I myself have invested in it's foundations for the long term (Enjin, Seedify-fund, D-race, etc). It's one of the few applications that makes sense outside of rich snobs flexing.

Tell me I'm wrong.

[Traster]

Doesn't the gaming applicaiton seem to negate some of the core aspects of crypto-currencies - the decentralization. If you want a rare artifact in the Zelda-verse, why wouldn't you buy it from nintendo? And why would nintendo want to support a 3rd party market place. I've bought some NFT from some guy - why is Nintendo going to abide by that? Why wouldn't Nintendo just set up their own store and let you trade your items there, and while they're at it they can create new items and issue them and tweak the store to control in-world inflation?

What you seem to be describing is "Here's something you might want to do in a game, and here's how you could implement that with NFTs" but what you seem to be missing is I can do exactly the same thing without NFTs, and in most of your scenarios as the game developer the NFT solution gives me less flexibility, less control and potentially restrict my ability to monetize. As a game developer I need to be able to step in and fix the economy if it breaks.

What you need to be doing is demonstrate scenarios that we can't trivially solve through traditional methods. The steam store already exists, you're not solving a problem by re-writing it to use NFTs.

[jcfrei]

The steam store is very limited because Valve is worried about violating AML (anti-money laundering) requirements. With blockchains these worries can be alleviated because all transactions are visible. It could allow developers to create in-game currencies that can then be exchanged for currencies in other games: Imagine selling all your World of warcraft gold for some gold in Zelda.

[Traster]

Why would the blockchain help you circumvent anti-money laundering laws? Do you think Nintendo are going to be less worried about a money laundering operation than Valve?

[jcfrei]

Not circumvent them. You can create a system that addresses the concerns of regulators wrt money laundering. Valve offering such functionality on their steam store (without some blockchain just all transactions in their own DB) would likely get them shutdown in most countries.

[motioncuty]

Funny thing is, thats probably a taxable exchange.

[015a]

Its excitingly easy to imagine a Ready Player One-like metaverse that could only exist thanks to NFTs. The set of iron plate iron I wear is expressed as a cryptographically-verifiable token within the game's world, which is itself powered by a connected network of peer-to-peer servers.

Don't imagine Fortnite. Imagine Counter Strike. Old Counter Strike, back in the day, when Valve never ran any servers, and you had your Favorites list of the best community servers, the same crowd of people showing up every evening to play. Thousands of these servers existed. Valve produced the game, and (most of) the code these servers ran. But, they were ultimately independent entities; many would re-skin players, or have custom weapons, or even custom physics engines.

These items were cool. But they were ephemeral; they didn't have any intrinsic value. So, Valve added Official weapon skins, and the Steam marketplace where they could be purchased and sold. They "christened" the providence of these digital items (and, of course, produced many of them).

Now, imagine Valve's christening of that item isn't necessary. The alternatives you outline look more like "how our world works today, with linear extrapolation". It's a recipe for further centralization of control into entities like Nintendo and Facebook. Yes, if Nintendo built a "metaverse" they'd run a MySQL database in a data center in Oregon that registered your ownership of some cool weapon skin; but what does a world look like where not only you and I can run servers for people to play on, independent of Nintendo, but where the concept of ownership of valuable digital items is still maintained, and a vibrant economy can exist in the exchange of these items?

Blockchain tech is truly a "have your cake and eat it too" situation in this regard. Valve's argument is that, yeah public servers are awesome, but their authority is necessary in this marketplace of weapon skins existing. Most gaming companies aren't even this open; their authority is necessary in both the marketplace, and servers (think: Fortnite). Blockchain tech says that none of that is necessary; the role of the game developer is to "set the stage".

This also has the potential to significantly change how developers are compensated. Valve takes XX% of every steam marketplace transaction (not to mention, the disgusting loot crate system they helped to pioneer). It's a tax on every transaction in the network, which acts as a negative force against usage of the network. Reframe this to the dev's only significant role being to "set the stage"; they invent the currency that is used to make these transactions, so their compensation is in owning a large amount of this currency (what they don't distribute). Now, their compensation is in growth-in-value of the currency; proof of stake! This is a positive force; their compensation goes up when more people value the currency.

[noetic_techy]

Exactly! All the counter arguments of "but I can already do that with a database" and "why would any developer want to maintain such a clunky system" miss all the avenues NFT's unlock for gaming for those developer who DONT wall off thier gardens and DONT screw up their own in-game assets by nerfing interpretation, causing their value to drop and the eyeballs to get angry and move on.

[garblegarble]

>Want to own the unique special edition sword with rare attributes in the Zelda-verse or the uber lazer in your favorite open world space game? Buy the NFT block chain address to it that says you and only you can have it (check out Phantom Galaxies).

Where's the decentralised part there? A game maker can already add a row to their database saying your account owns the item with a lot less overhead. You already have to rely on the game maker anyway to allow you to use it in the game, whether it's a row in a table, a digitally signed message, an NFT or a paper certificate.

NFTs would add lots of complexity to the cases you mentioned, but I don't see that they're bringing any value other than buzzword compliance.

[noetic_techy]

If the developer was smart, he would build the NFT on an existing market place so as NOT to have control over its price, and in a sense de-centralizing it (even though all currencies have a foundation group pulling the levers at their core). Think Steam coins to buy steam NFT's, across multiple games. Focus on the unique aspects for your NFT to unlock whatever and create hype for your game. If someone wants to sell or trade the NFT for other NFT's in other games in said market place, then they have the ecosystem to essentially escape that in game asset to the real world and assign a real world fiat price to it. You suddenly have something that can accrue real world value the more rare/scarce it is. Like they do for in game loot, people will go nuts for it and keep farming / trading, especially if you keep adding features to someone unlocked item rather then take away from it. This also lets the developer create hype to attract players. Like owning a classic car only produced when the game launched or in the early years with long since nerfed overpowered attributes, and oh by the way you can put a modern engine inside if you want, but only if you have the NFT to unlock the engines for that type. If the dev does anything to screw that up like spamming an item or screwing with how its interpreted in game, they will have a lot of angry people deleting their game as their NFT values crash. Competition of eyeballs. I'm not saying its not going to be fraught with problems and people struggling to figure out what works and what doesn't. Some will choose to wall off their ecosystem, some won't, may the best prevail. Markets will evolve. Developer will lean the direction that makes the most money and I think that will be the direction where you have the least control over it once the NFT is in the wild. Its going to be the wild west, but so is crypto currencies in general. In fact I think crypto currencies is still in its infancy stages. Look at all the alt-coins struggling for unique aspects they bring to the table. At some point their may be one or a handful that do it all, but right now its a shit show of entrenched technologies and up and comers struggling to steal each others market cap.

[garblegarble]

Sorry that this will come off as quite flippant but: I love playing games and this sounds absolutely awful.

As a game developer, now I don't just have to worry about new features getting blowback from players who don't want to adapt to them... now I have to worry about what will happen to people who are using my game as an investment vehicle for real money and will attack me if I make changes that drop the value of their investment?

Edit: but if you really think this is the future, what you're describing is a huge amount of code and systems that all these games will need to build and support long-term - so you should probably get started building middleware for that and make a killing...

[noetic_techy]

Its the wild west baby! The same can be said with crypto currency development, yet some are willing to take the risk, endure the nightmare and press forward. It's never perfect. It can make you rich and simultaneously hated. Those who can walk the balance beam will get the rewards. There are definitely games coming out with this very concept, so one developers nightmare is anther's opportunity to try his luck. I'm sure new laws will be written also to give immunity to developers who crash their assets by tweaking interpretation or going out of business.

You got me thinking with your middle-ware comment... sell the weapons needed for those who venture into the nightmare of crypto gaming.

[madeofpalk]

> Tell me I'm wrong.

Nintendo can do this all currently. NFTs, crypto, Blockchain all have nothing to do with it.

> I myself have invested in it's foundations for the long term

Ahhhhhhh there it is.

Normally its etiquette to start the post off with *Disclaimer: I have financially invested in foo, bar, baz which are companies that do the idea im promoting"

[noetic_techy]

I think those who wall off their garden rather then make their NFT's open and tradable with other games on a larger market will lose. I can't trade my Nintendo unique items for a a ship in Eve Online. A dev could even play the competition of eyeballs game and say that one games NFT (built on a decentralized non-company controls platform) will unlock equivalent items in their game, so come jump ship!

And honestly I was not trying to shill. Just saying I think there is an application enough to invest a little see where it goes.

[hirsin]

You just keep enumerating reasons why as a hypothetical game dev I'd never support NFTs.

"Hey, build your platform on movable objects so that customers have no incentive to remain sticky to your game"

"Hey, build your in game economy in a way that you can never fix it, leaving it open to attack by griefers or famine"

[zkldi]

The fact that other games can refer to other <items> on the blockchain doesn't implicitly mean that they'll work in every game though?

The amount of effort it would take to support every item for every single game in every single game is impossible.

That means developers will:

1. Have to actually care about implementing items from many other games. 2. Have to choose a subset of items to implement (the valuable ones)

meaning that the only things worth owning NFTs of are the most valuable items in the game.

Also, NFTs are literally just pointers to data, there would be absolutely nothing stopping any game developer from inferring hash 0cd42e... as an entirely different item, or one with entirely different stats.

What appeal does this actually serve? Developers of different games and companies have to collaborate still, and they could just do that with an SQL database and APIs. Infact, that approach would be millions of times quicker, more efficient, and with no blockchain overhead.

[noetic_techy]

I dont think you need to support multiple games, but a dev with a similar game could say that some other NFT from some other competitor game will unlock equivalent items in my game, so come on over and jump ship! Competition of eyeballs. Expecially if those NFT are not in some walled garden and built on a common platform. You could then trade NFT's from one game for NFT's in another. I'll trade you my zucker-verse penthouse for a unique ship in Eve Online!

Yes, a dev could screw with interpretation, but that would likely create a lot or angry people and kill your cash cow as they move on. Zuck makes your pentouse smaller you are going to be pissed.

[zkldi]

> Zuck makes your pentouse smaller you are going to be pissed.

And what the hell are you going to do about it?

How is this any different to the arguments against centralisation that they could ban you/remove your belongings at any time?

This is just centralisation again!

> a dev with a similar game could say that some other NFT from some other competitor game will unlock equivalent items in my game

Firstly, gamers absolutely do not want to constantly have to jump ship between clients -- that is a horrific inconvenience and you completely underestimate the network effect.

Secondly, why would any developer ever implement NFTs if the benefit of them is that another developer could pluck your customers?

[estel]

> Want to own the unique special edition sword with rare attributes in the Zelda-verse or the uber lazer in your favorite open world space game?

Isn't my favourite open world space game ultimately managed by a centralised developer, creating a centralised game; and recognition of my "ownership" only as meaningful as the developer happy for it to be?

Put it another way, what difference is there for me as a user compared to "owning" a ship in my open-world space game today?

[noetic_techy]

The keys to your unique ship (possibly with randomly generated attributes) don't accrue in value the more its traded.

I see your point, but I don't think anyone getting into NFT gaming is going to care about the centralized nature of it. Save that talk for the currencies. Especially if the dev builds the game on top of a existing NFT engine that multiple games are built on, then they can't really "control" the market and are forced to focus on the creative and unique aspects of the generation of the NFT to the uniques in thier game and create some hype and artificial scarcity to bring in more players, rather then just spam everyone with the same ship that you can buy in game for 1,000,000 space sheckles. Even if the ship is unique in game asset, you can only trade it in game. What if I wanted to trade my ship for a uber character in some other world, and some other guy wants to get into the space game and has keys in the game I want to sell to me. Deals are made.

[madeofpalk]

> I don't think anyone getting into NFT gaming is going to care about the centralized nature of it.

Then what's the point when I can already buy hats for my characters on Steam?

[noetic_techy]

Can you trade the hats for a pets in another game using the same NFT market? Is the hat unique enough to accrue value?

[madeofpalk]

Yes https://steamcommunity.com/market/

[vimy]

Other games or apps can import your ship.

[XorNot]

How?

Literally how would this work? The art and assets in the game are actually copyright in the real world as property of the game developer.

[s-lambert]

An NFT doesn't include the assets, it's just a receipt ID.

For a recent example, Riot has just released a bunch of tie-ins for with other games. Like the character Jinx is now in Fortnite. You could use an NFT that says this person owns the Riot character Jinx and thus the Fortnite developers could let you pick the Jinx skin in game.

Although a realistic example I think it would be stupid to do in practice because why would would Epic want to give away Jinx for free just because you bought it from Riot? Then there's a much smaller advantage of having the tie-in, sure you could get cross-play between Riot games players and Fortnite players but you also lose on a quick cash win of getting Riot fans to buy a Fortnite skin.

[XorNot]

What part of this requires an NFT though?

Every example of "well developers come to an agreement and.." has already bypassed the entire concept. Riot can just publish an API for Epic to consume and be done with it - less work then the legal contracts that need to be signed to cover everybody for the use of art and assets for "Jinx" by someone who was not the copyright owner.

You've given an example where by doing something more complicated an NFT could be involved, but no problem that an NFT is actually solving.

[s-lambert]

None of it requires an NFT, I mean nearly everything crypto related is "this doesn't require crypto but crypto is one way of doing it". At least with an NFT it'd be a bit standardized? I don't actually think NFTs are useful, that's just an example of what people mean when they say an NFT could be used in games. But then I was taking it to the realistic conclusion that it's just useless because there's no advantage to giving away free stuff between different games of different companies. Which only leaves shared stuff between the same company, like digital Amiibos, but then that's also just a centralized API replaced with crypto for no real reason.

[vimy]

Lets say you’re a Fortnite competitor. To lure people to your game you let them import their Fortnite weapons or clothes and convert them to your game equivalent.

[dgellow]

Everything you describe has been possible for decades, without the need of NFTs or other cryptocurrency concepts. Even the market aspect has been done in the past, you have for example Diablo 3's Auction House where users could trade for real money, and was a horrible gaming experience.

[noetic_techy]

That was mostly a walled garden trading something in 1 game for fiat. I think building your NFT on a platform that allows you to essentially escape that in game asset and let it accrue value and be tradable to assets in other games is the key. A competitor may even let your NFT from some other game unlock the equivalent weapon/item/whatever in their game. Competition of eyeballs. The dev does anything to nerf that asset or screw up how its interpreted, causing the value to crash and angry gamer, they lose the eyeball. Markets will evolve. I don't think anyone that walls off their garden will prevail. If Nintendo NFT's / coins only apply to Nintendo games, then who cares. Steam coin/NFT's for the win.

[iamacyborg]

I thought the AH was great in D3, certainly light years ahead of the trade experience in Path of Exile.

[AlexandrB]

> All those poo-pooing NFT's will miss NFT gaming and gambling like a freight train to the face.

This seems like a win-win to me. Gambling is a waste of money and NFT gaming sounds like an awful slog ("play to earn" indeed) combined with "pay to win" for those that can afford it.

No thanks.

[noetic_techy]

Gambing is gambling. Nothing to say there.

I think good devs will try to balance that pay to win aspect out. If me and my guild get together for a day long slog into level 50 of some dungeon for a guaranteed rare NFT loot drop worth $10,000 in real world fiat tradable on a open market for assets in other games, then it might be worth my while.

[ufo]

Saying in the open that cryptocurrencies are good because they allow gambling is an interesting development in the ever-evolving field of excuses for why cryptocurrecy is useful. What is next, saying that ramsomware is actually a good thing?

[andrewxhonson]

Those exchanges with NFT's don't do anything different from storing that ownership information in a normal database, do they? The novelty in the situations you propose would be that the general public can verify ownership.

[AlexandrB]

You can do this too already. IIRC there's a web-based character viewer for WoW that lets you see equipment/stats/etc. I'm not sure what NFTs add here other than the remote possibility that you will be able to use the same NFT in a different game. The chance of this happening across franchises is vanishingly remote in my opinion though.

Using NFTs for loot like this also gives a great excuse for publishers to make more games online-only, which is a net-negative as far as I'm concerned.

[nikanj]

And how is that any different from WoW Armory and similar open-to-public portals that let you check the gear for a player?

[nikanj]

What happens when a dev says "Hey the rare sword is really cool! insert into character_inventory (player, item) xxx, yyy"?

The NFT is worthless bunk, because the company is free to print just as many of the items as they please.

[Jxl180]

If the developer can insert items outside of the blockchain, then it isn’t a decentralized game. The developers are free to mint more copies of the same item as they wish, just like the US government is free to print as much cash as they wish. If they do, the markets will react and it will devalue the items drastically.

[nikanj]

Uhh pretty much 100% of games made today let the devs spawn objects as needed, and seems like everyone hasn't abandoned them for an NFT-based upstart.

[Jxl180]

I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make. Pretty much 100% of games today aren’t trying to push for decentralization, and we haven’t abandoned them for an NFT based MMO because the concept for gaming is extremely new, but there’s a reason people want MMOs backed by a blockchain, so to basically say it’s useless because nearly 100% of games are part of the status quo, therefore such changes are useless (or unwanted) is not a valid reason in my opinion. Just because a status quo exists, doesn’t mean the status quo shouldn’t be changed. A blockchain doesn’t stop devs from spawning objects — that’s not a concept that blockchain is trying to stop or intends to stop, but at least we’ll be able to audit exactly how many exist in the world to determine actual rarity and freely trade the items outside of the ecosystem.

[kall]

Is it "missing it" when I see the train, I understand the train, I believe it will be going very fast, but I don‘t want to board because it‘s going to a terrible destination?

[mch82]

How can Link’s sword be moved into another game?

How can the value of a t-shirt in Animal Crossing be preserved beyond the life of the game?

[noetic_techy]

You could easily say your NFT will unlock an equivalent in my come, jump ship and give me your eyeballs!

True, but then again that may have to factor into the price. A game like Eve has been running for years, if not more then a decade. The longevity of your game will just increase the price. But yes, as some point your NFT may go to the graveyard unless someone else picks up the ball and says their game will support it.

Its the wild west, may the best win.

[s-lambert]

DLC cranked up to 11, that just sounds like it will make modern games even worse.

[piva00]

So basically... CryptoKitties?

Nothing is really new under the Sun.