[slg]

> How do you create scarcity in a digital infinitely copyable world

Your premise rests on this question. My counter is what is the value in creating scarcity beyond just trying to make money? Your examples are about people investing in money and not losing those assets. Your experience example is not really digital scarcity if I understand your hypothetical correctly. It is about a real physical scarcity, the number of people who will be let into the experience, being represented in a digital world. There is no new innovation there.

To me the idea of creating scarcity out of something that is not scarce is done for one and only one reason, for a financial benefit.

[basch]

>what is the value in creating scarcity beyond just trying to make money?

Gameplay balancing.

We've crossed a very blurred line of gaming, role play, and real life. Whos to say which is which anymore.

I dont think profitability and production of gaming are mutually exclusive. Why cant game creators also make money for their work?

[slg]

I guess I could have phrased that a little differently so you couldn't pull a quote out of context and miss my point regarding scarcity in a gaming context. In the context of games I was referring to decentralized scarcity. I can recognize the example of a game being better if not everyone has the same cards (but this is still financially motivated since Pokemon is a profit making endeavor). But in that context, what value does decentralization have? Why is decentralized Pokemon better than centralized Pokemon in a way that doesn't boil down to at least one of the parties having a financial interest in decentralization? The whole idea of "forking games" seems pointless to me. If there is demand for a fork, why wouldn't a different centralized version satisfy it? The only added value is the preservation of financial stake in the game. One again the idea of scarcity leads back to financial gain.

[basch]

How often do we see game servers shut down where the game isnt playable anymore? I think there is something cool about the accumulation of in game assets being in a persons personal owned wallet, and not an account on the game server. That dichotomy has consumer benefits.

A game company can disappear, and the players can pick right up where they left off, with a new game, remake, or a reverse engineered copy of the server.

Why cant financial gain be a PART of the whole? People can both collect pokemon cards, and play with them. It's not mutually exclusive that you have to declare youre one or the other. Although NFTs probably should include a "you opened the wrapper" function, to create additional scarcity as people destroy the value of their items by making them less digitally pristine.

[slg]

>A game company can disappear, and the players can pick right up where they left off, with a new game, remake, or a reverse engineered copy of the server.

If there is demand, this can and will happen anyway. There are countless examples of fans continuing to mod and/or host games after they were abandoned by the original creators. The only difference is that you want to import your assets from one game to another. The only thing being preserved here are the assets from the old game. The only added value from NFTs is preserving an investment in the old game.

>Why cant financial gain be a PART of the whole? People can both collect pokemon cards, and play with them. It's not mutually exclusive that you have to declare youre one or the other. Although NFTs probably should include a "you opened the wrapper" function, to create additional scarcity as people destroy the value of their items by making them less digitally pristine.

No one is saying that you can't have fun with your Pokemon cards. But Pokemon cards and decentralized digital scarcity are not interchangeable concepts. Decentralized digital scarcity appears to only be motivated by money.

[jshen]

Who balances the game in a decentralized world?

[basch]

The game creators and the market.

In the same way that the market will refuse to believe I printed an authentic pokemon card, the game players decide which printers/minters are valid game token producers. If the community decides to respect a certain game production team, that becomes reality. A game company being in charge only lasts as long as the players believing in them. It's the polar express basically.

[jshen]

I'm skeptical that this can work in a way that is fundamentally different than games without NFTs today.