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Comment by dagmx | Hacker News Reader

I'm not entirely sure what the value add is here:

* The assets will likely only ever work or be licensed to use in Ubisoft games (and only those that support them...e.g you're not getting a gun skin from Rainbow Six into Assassins Creed)

* The market place is not a very open one, so it's not like you're taking Digits and selling them elsewhere

* I assume Ubisoft will be in the business of managing most users wallets.

This just sounds like a very convoluted way to do what existing in game marketplaces have done for years.

I suppose building on the hype of NFT/Web3.0/Crypto gets them some more buzz and mindshare.

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See, I'm wondering why they didn't go that route and have these NFTs work across games. Haven't dove deep into crypto so bear with me.

In my head how this would work is you go into the game store and pay $15 in Ubi-bucks to get one of these NFTs. That gets you some pRNG seed value, and any supporting game can read that seed off the blockchain and procedurally generate some piece of gear. It might use that to generate a unique item based on preset patterns, it might just be an existing item off a drop table (maybe with a serial number stamped on like the article states). For some games the item is crap, for others it's awesome. Players can browse through already made items, (they're all on the chain after all) and trade through some cross platform auction house, where Ubisoft takes a modest 7% on each transaction.

Numbered helmets seem kind of bland in comparison.

Yeah their use case is very odd. It feels almost like some suit pressured them to add it, and this was the easiest way to get it out?

I would expect them to do this in the future. The incentives to make these NFTs more and more valuable is there, since Ubi can take royalties from all the preceding sales of the NFTs in the secondary market.

If they eventually reach 10.000$ per NFT since it grants you X and Y on 3/4/5 games, Ubi will make 1000$ a sale. That’s 20x retail games at 50$. For one sale. Imagine there’s 100 of these 10k NFTs, that’s 100k on royalties alone.

There’s a reason Axie Infinity an NFT game has 3.6$ billion traded in their marketplace.

if our assumptions are incorrect then so are your conclusions. Who said you can't get a skin from one game to a similar skin on another game?

This is, for now, a way for them to create a marketplace where digital game items are freely sold, and where they will collect royalties ad eternum.

However if these items become valuable, it might create the beggining of the "play to earn" economy you already have on Axie. Axie Infinity, a terrible game by most standards, now has a marketplace worth hundreds of millions. The idea that this is a "buzz" thing, it's a money thing.

> if our assumptions are incorrect then so are your conclusions.

What? That is nonsensical.

> Who said you can't get a skin from one game to a similar skin on another game?

How are you going to get an asset from one game to another game from different developers in possibly different engines with all the required licensing to use it as well?

Talk me through your technical solution for this step by step please.

If it's running on the Tezos blockchain, anyone can make any NFT from Ubisoft into an NFT on their own game. You just have to connect to the user's wallet and decide to build an asset for the players that matches the NFT. Doesn't mean it has to be same thing.

1. Ubisoft - You can buy an NFT gun skin in R6 that also gives you a similar sword skin in Assassin's Creed. Or you might require 3 NFTs from R6 to gain a rare NFT in Assassin's Creed. Again, people who don't want to play Assassin's Creed can now suddenly sell their R6 loot to AC players and make money out of it.

2. Indie Dev - if you're making an indie shooter, because for instance Rainbow 6 has made changes you don't like, you can build similar skins that were in the original NFT. Community can jump into your game with full compatibility to their old NFTs.

3. Indie Dev 2 - You're making a completely different game but you want to capture some attention. You build some of the most popular Ubi NFTs onto your game. whatever it is. Could be it just grants you access to a rare Pokemon. Doesn't matter, you can do whatever you want.

No one is saying the same asset will be there in multiple engines, you can do whatever you like and offer it to the users who have that NFT. A gun skin can become land, or a dragon, or whatever you want. The NFT is just a record, a deed. What you make in your game is up to you.

Are you a game developer? Because you're trivializing the vast majority of what you said to fit your desired goal.

1. Game assets are not easily interchangeable. They're often in different, engine specific formats that are undocumented. So interchange will be hard without remaking the whole asset.

2. You're ignoring licensing and copyright. You can't just replicate an asset from someone else. The NFT doesn't give you that. So you'd have to make something unique.

3. The NFT also doesn't store the asset, just a pointer into their DB. So for every single asset in the UB database, you'd need to maintain a mapping for your game and keep it perpetually up to date.

4. Why would I as an indie want to let Ubisoft collect the money for an asset I then have to make for my game? Even if the item doesn't match, it means that the user sent their money to Ubisoft, and now I'm spending money to make an asset, that the user gets for free because they own a token?

Your ideas don't make sense at a technical, legal or financial level other than "building on hype"

I’ve built toy games on Unity and I work in 3D in advertising.

You misunderstood what I said.

1. I never suggested that game assets would be interchangeable between games. An NFT is just a record of you owning something - that can be completely different items in different games. That was literally my entire point.

2. Yes that’s my point. Everyone but Ubisoft would have to build unique assets.

3. Perpetually up to date? You only have to do it once with an NFT, that’s it’s entire point. The blockchain handles this. I ask you back - are you familiar with blockchain tech and NFTs and how that works ?

4. I agree it’s not a great idea, but it could be done. You could theoretically airdrop matching NFTs to make your own marketplace. The point is - Ubisoft can’t silo the information on who owns what gun/skin since the NFTs are stored in a public ledger (blockchain). If you make an indie game to compete with R6 you could in theory reward all R6 players with matching NFTs (non infringing the copyright by making them different assets, but still valuable and in matching number in your game economy).

BASICALLY The NFTs are microtransactions, but with data portability. They are the exact same thing, just held in a decentralised database that Ubisoft does not control (if they are up on the regular Tezos chain). This is the same as the old microtransactions, just a bit better.

Imagine you stopped playing R6 after sinking hundreds of hours into it. You could sell off the skins you've earned, making it a return on investment of your time in the game.

Regarding 3. NFTs don't tell you what the data is, only what they point to.

Unless Ubisoft and everyone else involved made their database visible before they update it, everytime they add a new item you'd have a period where you don't have a mapped item to correspond to it.

The "it could be done" is hand waving away a lot of things. You don't address why it would make sense for a third party to have a corresponding asset to ubisofts. Where's their financial incentive to put in that work? They're not getting the money to support it.

Again, you're not thinking through all the aspects fully.

I’m not advocating for 3D asset sharing through NFTs at all, I think this is where we misunderstand each other.

I’m not saying you have to map 1-to-1 to every item that Ubisoft has made either. I’m saying that if you want to build Ubi NFTs into your game, using completely different assets, you can. You could just do the 10 most popular assets, or the top 100.

You’re right that it doesn’t make sense to just build them into your game (considering the overwhelming power Ubi has given themselves over these NFTs in particular).

However if they are in the Tezos blockchain you CAN send matching NFTs for your game to every owner of UbiNFTs you care about - ie the top 100 most popular - in order to bootstrap a marketplace for your game. You can do this without asking anyone permission. All this information on who owns what NFT is public in the blockchain, and airdrops like this are common in the crypto world. You just duplicate them as a way to bootstrap your game for instance.

Again, data portability and ownership is the benefit here.

Although Ubisoft has given themselves enormous power over these NFTs (I assume partially to protect themselves legally since they cannot sell them to under 18s) they do not own or control the database where these NFTs are being held, and you can do a lot with that.

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