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by rglullis 1497 days ago
Substitute "digital hats" for "exclusive contract with the star player on FIFA Football Manager", or "a mine that produces unobtanium on a blockchain version of minecraft"

And yes, I am not much of a gamer so these examples might sound super silly today. But 25 years ago the idea of people making a living by collecting and selling items on WoW would also be met with general skepticism, so we never know what the future holds.
1 comments
adbachman 1497 days ago
You named two examples that only make sense in a centralized platform world.

FIFA licensing will always be a thing and collecting and selling WoW gear / accounts only worked because other people wanted to play WoW that badly. Both work because they're tied to a platform, not in spite of being tied to a platform.

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rglullis 1497 days ago
It's amazing how unimaginative people are when they are biased against the innovation. The examples I gave were only to bring an analogy. Of course the next version of FIFA FM won't be licensed by FIFA. We are talking about a world without intermediaries. Star players would themselves be creating blockchain avatars that could be tied to their real-world performance. Fantasy Sports already exist, web3 just removes middlemen and make existing mechanics possible.
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wollsmoth 1497 days ago
...What? Why wouldn't the next version of FIFA be licensed by FIFA?

I guess I don't really know what you're suggesting. As it is, people gotta get a new Madden game every year just to update stats. This isn't because of some kind of technical limitation afaik. EA just wants to sell a new game every year. In fact, I think they might have to buy the data and the right to use it from the league.

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rglullis 1497 days ago
FIFA has a primary institutional function: to coordinate the activities of all professional sport clubs in a way that is in the best interest of every one participating.

So, all types of decision making power were given to FIFA because the clubs thought it would be better to negotiate as a group for broadcast rights or game licensing fees.

The thing is, this type of coordination does not require an all-encompassing central entity anymore. You can see that in Europe already with the top teams from different countries trying to create the "Superleague", completely aside from the FIFA/UEFA-backed leagues.

In Brazil, there has been some years already that the most popular clubs decided to break away from the national association and went on to negotiate broadcasting rights individually. Lo and behold, they are making more money than if they went the "unionized" route.

When people want to play a football game, they don't care about it being FIFA. They care about seeing their favorite clubs and their favorite players. If we have the technology that allows clubs and players to negotiate their image rights directly with game publishers, who needs FIFA?

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