NFT/Crypto Games

Danimal

Moon that’s crazy stuff! I remember hearing some things like that talked about on the podcast.

That game reminds me of what this game Ember Sword is doing. Seems pretty crazy to me though… I couldn’t imagine spending $80k on in-game virtual property!

TracyDMcGrath

To put into perspective how much energy bitcoin consumes, the average bitcoin transaction takes about 1 Megawatt-hour of energy to complete. This is enough energy to power an average grocery store for 5 hours, or a residential home for about a month.

When China banned bitcoin mining, their grid load dropped by 8 Gigawatts. That’s around the amount of electricity demand of most US states, and more than some countries.

rejj

Danimal what do you guys think of this as a concept?

Both exodus and TracyDMcGrath have noted my same concerns on this topic rather well, so I’ll just add that I find the concept, in general, abhorrent. Sorry.

yeso

it’s hard to consider the topic beyond this ^^^

JoJoestar

Crypto and NFT have been getting extremely bad rep on the circles and ambients I frequent and although I sincerely admit I haven’t put the time to really understand the whole thing, I really trust my friends and the people that have told me the Crypto underworld stinks.

Only thing I know, by watching Feels Good Man (the documentary about Pepe the Frog), is that some dude became rich by speculating with… virtual memes, which honestly sounds terrifying and exactly like the postmodern late-capitalism end of times shit I tend to want to escape from, not get myself invested in.

So… I don’t know, maybe you guys can make me understand the whole Crypto affair better. Right now sadly it feels like the thing extremely sucks and is only accelerating us further into environmental catastrophe and all those nice nice things so… yeah.

Video Game King

JoJoestar Right now sadly it feels like the thing extremely sucks and is only accelerating us further into environmental catastrophe and all those nice nice things so… yeah.

No, that’s basically it. It’s basically speculation grafted onto severe environmental destruction. If you want a more specific example, though, I’d recommend this piece on how it’s manifested in the art world.

Danimal

rejj don’t be sorry! I agree with virtually everything you all have said on the topic. I didn’t really mean to delve so deeply into the environmental/ethical aspects… but on that topic: I have not seen any Bitcoin based games, and Ethereum is transitioning to 2.0 which will make mining obsolete and reduce power consumption by 99% or more.

Video Game King that “art” sure is a bunch of trash!

Also, just to be clear, I am not in favor of these games, and have never played any of them! If any are actually fun or a decent way to make some extra money, I would consider trying one… but in general I do believe it is all a bad idea and not a good direction for games to go.

At the same time we could all use a few bucks, and “investments” like crypto are much more reliable than actual gambling. You won’t see me playing cryptokitties though lol. The whole concept really is bad though, and I don’t like to games move in the direction of really any kind of monetization. Micro transactions, loot boxes, live-service, and gacha systems are all huge turn-offs for me.

dicegame

NFT’s nuts, is my stance honestly

goonbag

Danimal At the same time we could all use a few bucks, and “investments” like crypto are much more reliable than actual gambling.

With all due respect, this is simply false unless one has insider-trading-adjacent insight into what is actually happening in the crypto market, which involves the full gamut of criminal activity from white-collar investment scams through to straight up organised crime. It might be true that it’s not difficult for a savvy civilian to make a few bucks but that’s very far from reliable.

Danimal

Video Game King I guess I don’t know how widespread cryptocurrency ownership is, but it has definitely grown a lot. I see more and more places that accept it as payment, and more integration in payment services/platforms. Can even buy it on PayPal.

I can’t remember which country it was, but some country in South America was trying to make Bitcoin its national currency lol.

Gaagaagiins

Danimal I can’t remember which country it was, but some country in South America was trying to make Bitcoin its national currency lol.

Perhaps you’re thinking of Venezuela’s Petro?

Danimal

Gaagaagiins dang, I didn’t know about that one! Actually I was referring to El Salvador, which actually did make Bitcoin national currency! BBC Article

Gaagaagiins

Apparently El Salvador might also be trying to adopt Bitcoin as one of its national currencies too

Danimal

Gaagaagiins yes they did do it. They just haven’t made it through the 90 day period before it becomes active yet.

tanuki

Gaagaagiins it seems that the adoption in Latin American countries has to do not with its utility as a currency, but as a transaction medium for remittances that (for now) avoids US-imposed capital controls and the traditional money-changers (and secondarily, avoiding hyperinflation in the local economy’s currency, but they could use USD for this if it were not for capital controls so it’s mostly the first thing).

Gaagaagiins

Also to put in my……………………….. 2 cents…………

Well, you know, yeah, I think it’s impossible to separate it from how cryptocurrency is backed by, forgive me for oversimplifying, its capacity to waste the production of energy to no practical purpose whatsoever, quite literally designed to do so at a pace that will exponentially increase, all to grant illusory wealth to what is primarily no more than a few thousands or tens of thousands of people at, which, unfortunately, spends like real material wealth, until the moment either people finally does something about it, or the entire system collapses in what has a terrifyingly high chance to be an explosion of unimaginable violence, terror, and death, the natural conclusion of this manmade global extinction event.

…all that being said, of course, I don’t automatically judge people personally for having a little bit of a stake in crypto, ’cause yes, we all got to get paid and we all commit crimes in the court of lifestylism, and there’s often little productive purpose in meting out judgement to others based on your own interpretation of the laws of lifestyle. It just makes people feel like shit and less likely to ask other people’s opinion unless they can feel confident they’re not going to have people jump down their throat over it. Which, hey, you know, maybe that is a factor in all of this radicalization going around these days!

I mean, which is not to say that I wouldn’t avoid an opportunity to say I think you should get out as soon as you can. But, take that with the knowledge I say it more out of concern than my own moralizing. I mean, I am moralizing too, but it’s not my intent to make you feel like crap about it either. It’s what I’d do, but like, I’m just a guy. At the very least, it’s always good to be aware of one’s own hypocrisies.

Anyway, I mean, yeah, it’s pretty bad, but there are more urgent ways in which your average person can gain, amplify, or hoard wealth, through what I would consider something that is morally abominable. Like being a cop, or being a landlord.

Video Game King

goonbag To add to this, the reason you see services like Paypal catering to cryptocurrency has less to do with a lot of people using it and more to do with there being enough money in cryptocurrency that places like Paypal have decided it’s worth catering to that crowd.

treefroggy

ethical crypto exists. blaming the the ends for the means of energy production is silly.

Gaagaagiins

tanuki I won’t pretend to understand but I’ll take the broad meaning that it’s not as bad as it sounds to heart

donrumata

So far I have yet to see anything crypto can do for games outside of enabling real money gambling and creating a whole new layer of grotesque monetization. In fact I haven’t seen anything crypto is actually good for aside from speculative investments. Is it useful? Not really. Does it provide a compelling alternative to any existing computer infrastructure? Nope. Can you make money off of it? Yeah.

I’m not going to fault anyone for wanting to make a quick buck, but I’m also not going to pretend that this “Web 3” shit doesn’t make my skin crawl. Even if we assume we can somehow solve the energy problems with crypto, the way crypto developers focus on commodifying every little thing and turning it into a purchasable, ownable, tradeable asset is repulsive. Frankly I think it’s much, much worse than microtransactions or advertising or whatever other repugnant monetization scheme is out there.

Gaagaagiins
Basically the US dollar is used internationally as a store of value and the US uses a combination of its control over the currency itself and its control over the international banking that’s done in that currency as a way to exert power over other countries. For example Vietnam was a communist nation after the war, but was unable to do business with the rest of the world. The World Bank offers them a substantial loan but requires them to make “economic reforms” before agreeing to anything. These usually look like abolishing price controls on certain goods, privatizing certain industries, and so on.

All this because you can’t do international banking without the US approving of it. Bitcoin makes sense as a replacement for USD for countries the US doesn’t like, but even then there are moves being made by countries like China to get international business to depend less on the dollar. The end goal here is of course to make everyone less reliant on the US. The Chinese RMB internationalization scheme is more likely to work out imo, just because there’s a central body actually providing the infrastructure to get this thing done. The belt and road initiative is probably going to be more successful than a bunch of random startups, I mean.

yeso

Gaagaagiins it’s bad but maybe less bad than being under the thumb of a USD global reserve currency. It’s still capital and financialized economics. The posters here aren’t ofc making any overly-credulous claims, but the crypto advocates talking these currencies up as being beneficial to developing nations are definitely reverse engineering/rationalizing to cover scamgreed

shane

I’ll never use that feature or play that game. The same way I don’t care about asset marketplaces in games. I’ll never give money to someone who’s interested in creating a “free market” within their game. These companies don’t respect you. They don’t respect your time. They think you’re a sucker. It’s artificial scarcity.
Companies are just looking for investment. The only reason any of these companies are talking about NFT is because they know it’s a quick way to get a bunch of (sucker) investors to pump money into their company and push the stock prices up. Ultimately none of these games company care about NFT or even know what it does. NFT/Cyrpto is just the latest scam to convince people to part with their money. What’s the difference between NFT/Crypto games and how Second Life sold products (or skins in CS:GO)? From a user perspective nothing. Its just buzz words for investors.
It worse at doing every task. For me this is the biggest point of why you’ll probably see all this go away in games once/if the big investment dry up. There’s nothing NFT/Cyrpto can do that you can’t do quicker and simpler with a centralized authority. NFT/Etherum transitions can take a few minutes at best and a few hours at worst. Games will try and get around these delays with a centralized authority (which undermines the entire thing).
It has no use. I’ve only ever met people who use NFT/Crypto to gamble or “invest” (if you want to invest just put money into S&P 500). No one uses it like a currency because it’s not. It’s not a currency if you can go to sleep, wake up, and suddenly can’t afford basic produce to live. (Countries in south america are using it because their own currency has serious issues, not because they love crypto.) Same with NFT in games. It’s not an investment. if the game goes down as happens all the time, then well there goes your NFT. It’s no longer accessible. But don’t worry it was decentralized while it was accessible!
Sign of a desperate society. To me no one would give a shit about NFT/Cyrpto if we didn’t live in such a terrible time period at the moment. Regular people are only interested because they think they can get rich. It’s their ticket out of participating in a capitalist society.
Proof of Stake is not magic. Ethereum 2.0 (and many crypto) are moving to Proof of Stake. It consumes way less power but the exact savings are still not exactly know. That 99.9% number if from The Ethereum Foundation, because well of course they would say that. However much saving it is it’s still gonna be more energy than necessary all because they want a sense of decentralization. (It also rewards those with more coin who are willing to “stake” it. So the more of the network you control the more coin you will get rewarded with.)

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