[saurik]

NFTs (as defined by ERC721 or whatever it is) by and large end up acting as an interoperable standard that allows the assets to be traded on unified exchanges with assets from other games in a way that doesn't require any of the game developers to have to deal with money transmission issues (as they would only ever sell, not buy or facilitate trade).

Like in some sense all the NFT is to the game you develop is a minimal external yet-trustable representation of the existence of some in-game asset so people can then go and use all of these systems you don't have to worry about to trade it around and then anyone can provide the receipt back to your game later to be the potentially-new owner.

[verdverm]

The hard problem is how to use an asset in-game, beyond the visual aspect. What is the speed, rate of fire, etc.

Each game does this differently, their code is not the same, their assets are managed in many ways. How do you propose to deal with this?

[Bombthecat]

Like any rpg, but not for character creation, but for whatever?

[verdverm]

That process is very different for each game. Do you make them all use the same rules and mechanisms? What differentiates games then?

Have you tried to develop a game? It's much more complex than most applications. There are no standard libraries or APIs for this type of thing.

[lmm]

A few old RPGs tried to make it possible to import characters from the previous entry in the series. This generally didn't work very well, and those were first-party games; to do it for a third-party game seems a lot harder.

[danaris]

The Gold Box series of licensed D&D RPGs from SSI back in the early '90s actually did this quite well—you could create characters at level 1 in the first game in the series, and import them into each subsequent game intact except for the loss of a couple of game-specific magic items, all the way through the fourth entry (in the case of the Forgotten Realms series; the Krynn series only had 3 entries, but worked basically the same).

But this wasn't just the same company, it was, with some incremental modifications, the same game engine, and by the time the last entries came out, it was showing its age. There's no way you could have taken, say, a character—or even an item—from a completely different game like Ultima VI and turned it into an NFT that could then be added seamlessly into SSI's Secret of the Silver Blades. The two games, despite both being RPGs that came out the same year, are just so completely different that it wouldn't make any sense even if Origin and SSI did want to collaborate on making that possible.

[antifa]

As usual, NFTs have a lot of "these 2 circles will be an awesome owl" but the rest of the owl never gets drawn.

[vorpalhex]

We can't agree on what file format to use most of the time, nobody is going to make interoperable textures/models/etc between games.

NFTs would still be a "thing of value" and still be beholden to all the same rules as other things of value.

You still have AML issues.

[thebean11]

> nobody is going to make interoperable textures/models/etc between games

Unity / Unreal Engine asset stores are just that aren't they?

[vorpalhex]

And how often do you import those assets to find they don't work correctly in your game? That they need a different shader, renderer, lighting or additional configuration? How often do they fail to blend in with other prefabs?

[thebean11]

The cost to integrate them into a game certainly isn't zero, agree with you there

[antifa]

But a dev will spend time making or integrating them just so you can buy an NFT from a random other dev?

[thebean11]

Not sure, maybe not. There are probably incentives in terms of playerbase, depending on how big these NFTs are. The NFT holders could also voluntarily fund the cost of integration, as it adds a "use" to their NFT.

My point was though that interoperable game assets aren't farfetched, they already exist.

[tasha0663]

> an interoperable standard that allows the assets to be traded on unified exchanges with assets from other games in a way that doesn't require any of the game developers to have to deal with money transmission issues

FALSE. The assets from the games are not being traded in your hypothetical. The NFTs are.

> minimal external yet-trustable representation of the existence of some in-game asset

TRUE, BUT all it does is confirm someone calls dibs on something. Actually integrating those dibs in any sensible way is a huge task. It might be the "Deluxe Crystal AstroBlaster9000" in one game, but due to trademark issues, you might have to settle for "1 Ripe Banana" in another.

> so people can then go and use all of these systems you don't have to worry about

UNLIKELY. Developers would be one hashtag away from the Internet mob demanding they not allow people to use items pointed to by NFTs purchased with Dunning-Kruggerands that have dirty histories. The whitepapers might say you don't have to worry about it, but the users will.

Then there are security concerns. There will be a bad contract. There will be a phishing scam. The whitepaper might say code is law, but the users are still going to want the developer to make it right, or they'll walk.

[nest0r]

Why would any publisher do that? They make their profit on ingame marketplaces by taking a cut of the transaction it just doesn't make any sense.

[Bombthecat]

The publisher can take a cut from minting (creating an nft) and taking a cut from every sale, for example 30 percent first sale and then any other sale 10 percent.

[nest0r]

What would be difference between whaht they are doing now ie. Steam wihth cosmetics in csgo or tf2 and NFTs? It would only add overhead.

[thebean11]

Wouldn't it remove overhead? They don't need to develop or host the "auction house" or whatever it is.

[paulmd]

tokens are just tokens, it's like having a bunch of pointers to JSON documents in a big flat file. if you want the tokens and their data to be discoverable then you still need to host some kind of UI to let people browse and issue transactions.

All blockchain gives you is the payment and settlement part of the process (a private key can reassign "ownership" of the pointer to your document), and it does so at the expense of any ability to reverse a fraudulent or accidental trade. Got a virus and lost your apes? Wow sucks to be you, if you're no longer the owner please take it out of your profile.

this is such a widespread misrepresentation/falsehood in crypto, that it makes all this other stuff go away, like we suddenly won't have any trading firms or crypto exchanges, therefore no need for buildings or employees or heating or lighting. I've literally had people on HN tell me that crypto was gonna mean no more "wasted power and heat" from financial services companies, like commodities or equity traders are just gonna disappear because we came up with a new mechanism for HFT.

[thebean11]

> All blockchain gives you is the payment and settlement part of the process

Like I said they give you the trading platform too (the thing web app that issues the onchain transactions, and shows what's for sale) because you can use a third party one.

> and it does so at the expense of any ability to reverse a fraudulent or accidental trade.

That is mostly true now, but it doesn't have to be that way. We've come a long way with things like time locked transactions and social recovery features, but I agree it still needs to improve.

I don't think I'm under any misconceptions here, my work is related to crypto, but feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.