Comment by swalsh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by swalsh | Hacker News Reader

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I'm a crypto guy, I like what it enables. But after using defi for a while, and dealing with the huge tax headaches it has caused me, this was the first thing that came to my mind.

If you're building a web3 game, and you don't offer a tool to export your in-game transactions to an easily importable turbotax format. US players can't play it.

But the problem is more complicated, everything in crypto is composable. So I could build a business off in-game assets, and the tool creator might have no clue that exists. So for example, in my space game example.... I might be able to use my minerals as collateral for a loan to buy another space ship. That loan might exist on a platform not developed by the game developers, and if it was the game devs that built the tax tool you're using... it might not properly capture that event. Maybe another platform offers insurance on that ship, and I need to pay a premium. The tool might not caputre THAT. The posssibilities for building a really cool space game are infinite, but these in-game events have real-world tax implications.

This all sounds ... horrific. I can't understand why anyone would want to play the game you describe, because as soon as you're hooking in actual finance ... what you have now is a job.

And much like with Axie infinity, it's a job that can only keep paying as long as there is either VC capital to burn or an influx of new people willing to pay your salary.

I've played a few play 2 earn games. In my opinion the fun is not in playing the game as intended. Crypto is a highly open and composable ecosystem. The real fun is trying to figure out how to game the game. If you're the type of guy who goes to Dave and busters and tries to figure out how the machines work so you can maximize your extracted value... you might like play 2 earn games.

In my opinion, the sort of person who is into this kind of idea is the sort of person for whom finance is a game. These people want to be the ones gaming the system and making money off of other people who are playing. They don't want to just be puttering around in a fake spaceship, they want to be the ones loaning out money and etc.

It's why I think every p2e game idea I've ever seen get proposed has had completely asinine sounding game play but plenty of opportunities to (in theory) make money off of taking advantage of lower sophistication players. The game play itself is secondary. What no one seems to recognize is that if the game itself isn't fun, there won't be any "normal" players around for them to fleece.

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