NFT, Blockchain, bitcoin, the housing market, the 1980's coin bubble; they all have the same intentionality behind them regardless of form.
Dope the public into believing something has value- manipulate the market with said value; cash out before bubble pops; everyone loses their life savings and only a small handful of people profit; then those same people (literally it's usually the same group of people) find another thing to market to the public.
Fishing on Gilgamesh since 2013 Fishing on Bronzebeard since 2005 Fishing in RL since 1992 Born with a fishing rod in my hand in 1979
Interesting take. What I will say though, is while he's right, he's arguing over a non-issue.
"What actually is going to happen is that if you just naively play a game and have fun—imagine that—then you want to sell your stuff, your stuff is not going to be worth anything."
Uhm, yeah in a play "and/to" earn economy you're right. They won't be worth anything. That's kind of the point though.
People think that what they EARN in a game should be worth something. But it's only what people are willing to pay for it. See, that's why goldsellers make so much money, because most games don't inherently allow for trading for real money in games.
The problem here (for the developer) is that they don't profit from transactions outside of the game. So in a play to earn economy they will profit. It doesn't matter to them if big corps flood the market and drop the price of goods. This happens in every game economy at some point. GW2. New World. You name it.
My only argument here would be.... "so what?" If you're arguing a case against tokenomics... I think the fact that prices will tank and your items will be worth less and less is not a great argument.
Sure, you might not profit, but if the game is good, that means players will spend less and get what they want.
This kind of gets invalidated by cosmetic only NFT shops and limited mints... Organized gaming corps would have to buy massive amounts of items from limited runs to corner a market and manipulate the price. It all comes down to how you're implementing these systems.
So he's not wrong. If you're playing a game that requires massive farming rings to run the economy... games like Nino Kuni. Axie Infinity. Mir4. Yeah those are shit when it comes to parts of their blockchain setup. Nino Kuni only has one saving grace, and that's the fact that you can completely ignore the blockchain part... but those buying and selling NKT NKA are dealing with extreme price drops, making it ..yeah.. pretty worthless of a currency.
A necessary currency. A currency with utility that gamers need. There's a reason to buy it. But the price is so freaking low... less than a dollar for an NKT, and 4 dollars on an NKA.... that's down from 30 dollars for an NKA and 15 dollars for an NKT on launch. Farmers just aren't making that much, and the more there are the less they'll make.
But companies don't care... because they make money no matter how low the price goes, and they don't care who is selling it.
I think that he was just giving an example of why play to earn isn't going to be true for the average gamer. He argues that these economies will be taken over by large organized groups. The games are marketed in a way that suggests everybody can earn, but in reality that will never be the case.
His main concern isn't whether NFTs will be worth anything for the average gamer. It's about trends in game design and how that affects what type of games get made. Adding this type of system changes player incentives and cannot offer the MMO experience we've been waiting for. If as a developer, as an artist, his vision is compromised because investors want NFTs, that hurts both him and us as gamers. It makes for a completely different type of experience. He has to speak up so investors start paying attention to what adding NFTs does to a game and how it will not be in the interest of their current customers.
That depends on how the game is structured. If the really valuable stuff drops exclusively from top-tier endgame areas that few players have access to, then yes. If the really valuable stuff is a 0.01% chance drop from any on-level or higher mob, time gated such that you can have at most one such drop chance per minute, and the game can prevent bots from taking over, then who earns by playing will be a lot more widespread.
It will still be the organized groups. Manpower still provides an edge, even in that situation. That system will just end up with those large groups saturating the game world, making it harder for solo players to even participate.
The thing about creating systems in these games is that they're always going to be competing with the ingenuity of players. We've had more than enough evidence to know that devs rarely manage to consistently outsmart players, specifically when the stakes become high. When you start intertwining speculative risks and gaming like this, one instance of a player group outsmarting the devs becomes not just an issue of player retention, but an issue of lawsuits with real legs.
In one game, a member of the organized groups could earn 100 times as much per hour as someone just playing for fun. In another game, it could be only 2 times as much per hour. Game developers can design to make that ratio smaller if they want to.
If they did, they'd be discouraging one of the biggest reasons gaming groups exist in the first place.
I'm interested in how you'd design such a game in a way that doesn't discourage these groups. I'm also interested in evidence that this would be a smart business move for an online game.
Because one can do something, it doesn't mean they should or that it would be an improvement or even work. Devs have a tough time balancing economies that aren't based on any real financial assets. The idea they'll do much better when real cash value is being assigned to in-game objects doesn't pass the smell test.
You could do what I said above. Make it so that the most valuable tradeable items don't come from endgame content. Rather, each roll for such an item has a 0.01% chance of actually giving one. If you kill a monster that is your level or higher, then you get such a roll added to the monster's drops if you haven't had such a roll in the last minute.
You'd also need some minimum level to get drops just to stop brand new botters from immediately being eligible, but this could be far away from the level cap. You'd also need a good way to detect and ban botters to stop them from dominating this. Some games have been successful here and some haven't.
Top tier endgame stuff wouldn't be tradeable, and could perhaps be on par with the valuable items that are tradeable. The top tier tradeable gear would be rare, so that apart from whales, you normally want to gear out by doing content. Maybe you buy one last piece that you can't get to drop or some such, but most players wouldn't be buying the top gear at all.
Should developers go this route? That's an entirely different question. But they could if they wanted to. It's a question of priorities, not possiblities.
That seems like a nice ideal, but one that isn't so easily implemented.
Which goes back to my comments RE: weasel's insistence on what's possible. What's possible is literally irrelevant if it isn't truly feasible in the reality of the market.
We know from seeing countless cash shop practises that they are never implemented in the best way for the player. It will be the best way for the system to make money for the game, there is no other consideration.
Comments
Dope the public into believing something has value- manipulate the market with said value; cash out before bubble pops; everyone loses their life savings and only a small handful of people profit; then those same people (literally it's usually the same group of people) find another thing to market to the public.
Fishing on Gilgamesh since 2013
Fishing on Bronzebeard since 2005
Fishing in RL since 1992
Born with a fishing rod in my hand in 1979
Which goes back to my comments RE: weasel's insistence on what's possible. What's possible is literally irrelevant if it isn't truly feasible in the reality of the market.