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Can Blockchain Really Work in MMO Games? | MMONFT with Infinite Fleet's Samson Mow | MMORPG.com
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Can Blockchain Really Work in MMO Games? | MMONFT with Infinite Fleet's Samson Mow | MMORPG.com
Can blockchain really work in MMOs? Today's MMONFT, Steven looks into whether blockchain is viable, and Infinite Fleet's Samson Mow provides his detailed take on if Blockchain can work and how Infinite Fleet is using it.
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If a game supports real currency asset trading, you don't need NFTs - player could simply transact in the game with a FIAT transaction (credit card, PayPal etc).
If the game doesn't support real currency asset trading, then blockchain/NFTs still don't solve anything. You still have an asymmetrical trust situation where one person has to transact first (whether it be sending the asset in-game, or making the payment through whatever payment system - blockchain based or otherwise), trusting the other player to keep their end of the bargain. Basically how gold farmers work already.
If you had a group of independent games that supported some form of interchangeable asset framework, then blockchain/NFTs would work as an independent exchange mechanism. The only problem is, every game has different asset structures and aesthetics, making this sort of system very unlikely (it would strangle innovation within the games).
Let's be honest. NFTs and blockchain in games is just a positioning statement to get funding from a16z or whoever else is pushing the hype wagon. Or to attract players who are more interested in NFT asset trading (aka ponzi scheme) than they are in the game itself.
I'd be more interested to hear if Infinite Fleet is actually a good game.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
The ongoing argument is in establishing reason.
The article itself talks about legitimizing secondary trading, rather than offering any benefits to play or the game in a direct sense. It continues to speak to how to monetize games more, than how to improve the games.
It skirts the problems with legitimizing such things too. You may be avoiding playing the private crypto-currency game, but it's still foremost only really making jobs out if game activities. Even worse it's enabling external parties to tamper with the internal game economy, which serves as detriment to core gameplay instead and remains a problem that I have not really seen any proposed use of blockchain actually address.
EDIT: @Dekahn Can you explain exactly what your position is that results in your differing response to largely the same point of view that I and hive shared? It's a strange contradiction.
But I think the article brings up a lot of good points. Like one of the best uses of blockchain is trade. And it really doesn't make sense to use it for trade unless you want players to trade outside of the game, or in cases where the developers want a cut of the money.
I still see no reason why they need crypto currency tokens at all to facilitate trade. I think the idea of using NFTs for trade isn't bad. The devs get paid on player to player transactions. No big deal. Not something I care about. But when you have a variable currency based on the markets and utilizing a chain that acts as a value store, it creates kind of a mess.
Because it breeds speculation.
Speculation that the chain will increase the value and the assets increase in value, and that isn't what we want to see in our games.
Items should have value because of the value in game, not because of what some "investor" thinks the item will be worth.
So I think Mow is right about what blockchain is good for. I just don't know if infinite fleet will actually use it the right way.
*edit cause I confused 2 different games
This site should always take a "10th man" approach whenever sharing articles on crypto gaming.
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How can anyone not acknowledge blockchain and NFT existence? NFTs in and of themselves are not a scam. They do exist. Debating whether they have a use in gaming is another thing altogether.
People using blockchain and NFTs to scam others, that is real. But the same can be said for stocks, art, and virtually any commodity. The fact that someone is willing to pay thousands of dollars for an NFT, well, that is just stupidity.
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I think gaming needs blockchain like it needs a hole in the head, but I must agree that pretending it does not exist is not a solid way of dealing with any issue.
The problem is that even if there were, what you are asking is effectively "Has anyone tried to build a non-monetary use-case for 'Cash Shops'". They are seen as a money making exercise, they are built for that purpose. I have seen bit coin commentators waxing on about what could be done, but not seen one in game example of anything that could make gaming better. Like Hivemind said, there are other ways to make transactions secure, blockchain is not being introduced to make your money secure, it is being introduced to make studios more money.
"Studios are attempting to incorporate blockchain technology into games to cash in on the hype, but they're missing the point. Cryptocurrencies do not make games more fun to play.
To play most blockchain games, you have to purchase their tokens and then their NFTs. Due to the target market of crypto investors, blockchain games are usually designed as gamified investment tools. Consequently, everything comes with a price - and often a high one.
Getting in early and cashing out at the top is the typical strategy to make good money with blockchain games. As with a Ponzi scheme, latecomers tend to lose money.
Developers realize this, so they build fast, trash games that last only for a few years (if that). This is why most blockchain games look like early 2000s browser-based games. This is a predatory monetization model that works well for early adopters and VCs."
I am not an expert but as far as I can see, I don't see anything good in crypto, blockchain or NFT. They didn't change our life for good at least, they are famous or better say infamous for:
1)"making easy money" with their big stupid volatility of value
2)Paying blackmails to criminals
3)Ponzi
Noone of such things were new or made our world a better world. Everything you can legally do with crypto (or NFT) you can do with other legal ways, crypto seems good only to go illegal, and I not a NFT expert but from what i understood you can do with just the same with some database. But hey, database and electronic payments sound old right? let's attract people with crypto and NFT! don't forget METAVERSA, sells for sure more than speaking about virtual or augmented reality... who cares about the original meaning of the word?
Plus I read someone speaking about digital assets... for me it's crazy, digital assets?? people paying for gold, for something, fsome "work" that the devs can create with a click and make some extra money. This leads to just people to play as a work... I mean, I don't see it as a big issue or problem, and I would be happy to be payed to play some game, but, as customer, I would prefer to buy it from the devs to contribute for more development. I find much better to pay unknown people that make mods to games (thing that is already happening btw...) or people that make some new content for a MMORPG with some ingame tool (one of idea I wrote in the other discussion about end-game).
No, NFTs are a scam. You own a receipt to something, but you don't actually own the thing. It is like going to Wal-Mart with a receipt to a microwave you picked up on the ground outside and going in to ask for your money back without the microwave. They should not be covered just like you don't see piracy covered on this website. They are the same thing. Hell, I would argue that piracy is worse then NFTs. NFTs are pretty much also old news at this point and the bigger game industry has largely given up on them. The only games that have anything related to NFTs now are literally just scams.
People keep saying stuff like this but the reality is that we have not seen a good example of blockchain used in video games yet and that is because....it doesn't exist
Just in this thread alone there's so much wrong with what's being said, it's hard to know where to begin, so I'll just start at the beginning.
1 - not NFT related, but Infinite Fleet was always robotech inspired.
2 - the idea that blockchain is going to "solve" something for MMO gamers doesn't track. It's not supposed to "solve" gameplay problems. It's more of an infrastructure tool. It can be used to run games, like "serverless" games like I mentioned before with 6 dragons and xaya. It might let players take assets from one game to the next, and there are only a few games that actually function that way.
But more aptly it has been used as a monetization tool. In the best cases, monetization is regulated by in game markets, or through a baseline initial sale price. In the worst cases it's crypto-market speculation, based on tokenomic schemes built in the pattern of a ponzie scheme. These two models are not are not the same.
3 - All monetization models are built on the principles that players are allowed to sell your assets, and those assets are generally sold for real money. This is NOT an RMT system. The difference between these systems is the ability to sell items on grey markets, or facilitate trades outside of normal channels, but the catch is, when a transaction takes place, the developers get paid no matter how it is transacted. This isn't meant to help gamers. In practice, it's just shifting the monetization so that players who pay players for items, always give a cut to the developers. It's not that hard to understand.
And when you realize this, you understand why so many crappy games exist by pumping the values and hoping for high speculation. The more items sell for, the more "developers" make from the %. But it's unsustainable.
4 - NFT's are not a "scam" because you don't own the assets. In reality, you own the token. The token is tied to the asset. If the game goes bottoms up, you still, ACTUALLY own the token. It can sit in your wallet forever. But the reason WHY you own the token - the asset, is what you lose. But what you end up with is a similar situation to any game that shuts down. Just, the main difference is, once the game shuts down for a blockchain game, the NFTs you end up with a token that has no utility anymore, and is therefore worthless.
It's a silly thing to rail against though since you're left with less when any game goes under. Any cosmetic you buy for ESO won't mean a damn thing when the game shuts down, you won't even be left with a token.
Anyways. nobody has to like them. It's easy to avoid blockchain games right now. There's not that many on the market worth actually playing. But that could change one day, and if it does, it might change the way people look at these kind of games.
As for not owning an NFT, that is no different than any other digital asset. There isn't any physical manifestation of the item, but it still exists in the digital world. The NFT has a unique id to differentiate it from all other digital lookalikes. Just like when I buy a game on Steam, I am purchasing a key that activates the game for digital download. That key is unique and is linked to my account. If Steam shut down tomorrow that key is worthless, but I still own the game.
The whole point of an NFT in gaming is that I could take that ID and and sell it, either through an in-game system, OR on a third-party platform. So when I loot the Sword of Awesomeness, I "own" it and can do what I want with it. The ID passes to the new owner, and a chain of custody is created that shows who the current owner is.
Now, that is how NFTs can work in a game. I do agree that most developers are using it as a buzzword to attract a certain type of person to their game. I also agree that many are doing it with nefarious intentions. But the technology itself is not a scam, it's the people manipulating it that are scammers. Just like a phone isn't trying to scam me, it's the person on the other side of the conversation that's trying to con me out of my money.
I think you misinterpreted what I said and tried to make it sound like you, someone who is clearly invested in NFTs, thinks that they have actual value.
You know what the value of receipt for something you don't actually own is? Nothing. There is a reason you can just copy and paste anyone's bored ape and use it anywhere. The reason is because they don't actually own it. The value is literally made up by people who want to pretend it has value when it does not. See: Every NFT related SCAM crashing and burning.
The steam analogy does not work because you still get to play the game. It has value. NFTs do not have any value other then the value prescribed to them via the blockchain which -- has no real value. You own something that says 'this has x value' but it doesn't actually have real value. The value isn't real, it is made up by a bunch of other nerds on the blockchain that figure it is worth that much. No one will actually buy it for that much. Steam could shut down some day and you no longer have value in those games, but your console could stop working, your operating system could stop supporting a game you play,ect. It is the only strawman argument cryptobros got.
Everything you described in regards to video game NFTs already existed in video games before NFTs existed. We don't need NFTs to sell in game items for real money. Gamers have risen up against NFTs pretty hard and fortunately, we won. Move along. Every attempt at it by any remotely large developer (not these scam devs who make NFT MMOs that 7 people have heard of) has been met with extreme backlash until they just stop focusing on it completely.
The reason that this niche website, in a niche genre of video games, covers NFTs is for sponsorship deals primarily. Most gaming websites don't actually cover NFT games at all for a reason. They are no longer relevant. We have moved on. Gamers have moved on. Now please, lets go back to complaining about battlepasses.
To take another crypto example, HTTPS encryption doesn't bother people because you aren't forced to care about it, outside of the occasional broken site that implements it wrongly. Web sites don't use "we use HTTPS encryption" as their primary argument for why you should visit their site. Rather, you benefit from it quietly without noticing.
Blockchain and NFTs need to get to that point before they'll really be ready for widespread use. It needs to be the case that people can play games without having to care about blockchain or NFTs, or necessarily even knowing that they're part of the game. A game that advertises that they use blockchain or NFTs as the main reason to play the game is surely terrible and probably a scam. But if a game can find some benefit from using them under the hood without forcing players to care, then it will be fine.
So, what's left beyond this?
What's left?
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https://biturl.top/rU7bY3
Beyond the shadows there's always light