Comment by duskwuff | Hacker News Reader

Comment by duskwuff | Hacker News Reader

Man, I really don't get the point of this. (And I mean the game in general, not just the sale of this franchise.) It's like blockchain play-acting.

Using a blockchain to track the status of objects which only exist within an online game, and which are only accessible within that game, makes no sense to me. Ultimately, the status of those objects is subject to the whims of the game and its operator, not the blockchain -- since they control the rules of the game. If they want to make the game stop recognizing your "property", or change what it represents in game, that's always something they can do; throwing a blockchain at it doesn't change that.

Also: I can't help but feel really suspicious about a game whose primary feature appears to be its monetization strategy, rather than its gameplay. (Read the rest of the blog -- there's virtually nothing in there about what the game actually is!) Does anyone actually play these games to have fun, or is it just a way for cryptocurrency fans to find even more esoteric things to invest in?

The creator was ex-Zynga, so of course it's largely built around a whale-first monetization strategy. Even more dangerously, it's inside of a game that appears to be largely vaporware, and has no high-profile company to give weight to the virtual items. At least you know Blizzard or Epic will be around for a while, these people could be bankrupt tomorrow and all you'd own is a worthless (and expensive) Ethereum transaction.

I'd also bet that this "sale" is an inside job, given that the virtual nonsense was purchased by another scammy blockchain gaming company via "Polyient Games Unity Tokens", and the $800K is based on the market cap of some obscure, illiquid token.

https://www.polyient.games/

> Polyient Games is an investment firm focused on the non-fungible token (NFT) and blockchain gaming industries.

800k makes more sense if it is also an investment and includes equity.

I recently tried out a game backed by a block chain. I had uninstalled it quite quickly because it was taking dozens of seconds to load a level because my previous actions had to be saved to the block chain. Maybe they picked a poor implementation of block chain to go with, but sacrificing performance for any of the benefits of being on a block chain is not a trade off I see worth while in games in general. Players care about loading screens far more than they care about their items being on a block chain rather than a database.

This absolutely isn't the case with the BETA product (TownStar) already available for free play on the Gala Games platform if you want to check the implementation.

This is true of anything "on the chain." The world can just decide to not care what the chain says.

I would argue games are the only place where this situation is reasonable as the gamers desire self enforcement (or there is no game).

In other situations with DRM (which is what the chain if being used for, DRM) it's trying to force the user to stop themselves. Here the community can police itself.

You're right that trusting a closed source game to stay up is crazy, but people "buy" digital goods all the time. That situation is not unique.

"and which are only accessible within that game" - this isn't correct. The concept of public blockchain allows these NFTs to be used anywhere that also uses that blockchain. They have mentioned this in another article on their ecosystem. https://gogalagames.medium.com/the-gala-games-node-ecosystem...

"Used anywhere" implies that an in-game item has a use outside that game. While it's technically possible that another game might decide to "honor" these items, in practice that's almost certainly not going to happen.

Whilst I agree this may not necessarily be put into practice by other games, Gala Games is also said to be using select NFT items across multiple games in their platforms too. They have already demonstrated collaborations with other games in the blockchain space so it wouldn't be too far fetched to imagine that a sharing of NFT between partners might follow.

"Is said to be using"... who is that said by? By you?

"They have already demonstrated"... where? Across what games? I only see one.

"who is that said by? By you?" By their devs, by their media, on their website, in their discord, at their AMA's. Planning already for their second game alpha release which is what the entire thread here is about ie the 800K NFT sale prep for Mirandus.

The point of the blockchain is to attract 200% more moron VCs and 150% more lazy bloggers. It’s an essential part of the business model.

It looks to me like its in the same vein as Pokemon Cards, Yu-Gi-Oh cards, etc. Very few people actually "play". They just collect for the sake of collecting, and they buy out of fear of missing out on exclusives.

It isn't a model that appeals to everyone, but it appeals really well to some whales, hence it exists.

Well, you wouldn't buy Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, Magic: The Gathering cards if you hadn't at least spent some time playing. Those are games which have had, at least at some point in their lifespan, large communities of players. I kinda doubt rich people are randomly buying mint alpha Black Lotus cards with no knowledge of the game?

Side note: you can still fail with this type of monetization even if the game is huge (see: Diablo 3 auction house). Once you screw up the economy or drive away the player base, it's hard to recover.

At least with pokemon, my friends and I all collected cards growing up, and none of us ever played the game (mainly because we were children who didn't understand the rules).

>I kinda doubt rich people are randomly buying mint alpha Black Lotus cards with no knowledge of the game?

They absolutely are.

https://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/07/accused-pharmaceutical-fraud...

>Very few people actually "play".

I don't think I've ever met anyone who collects but doesn't actively play these games. However I've met tons of people who play casually and don't really collect.

I'm with you that there are definitely a lot of players. But recently, speculation on/collection of Pokemon cards in particular has become kind of a big thing.

[1]https://kotaku.com/twitch-streamers-are-opening-90s-pokemon-...

Even there, the reason those cards are considered valuable is ultimately because people played the game. Not necessarily the same people who are collecting the cards now, but that's where it started. There are hundreds of other CCGs from the 90s whose cards are basically worthless today because the game was a commercial failure.

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