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NFTs are a nightmare says Game Dev
finefluff
Member RarePosts: 561
"The expectation versus reality here is so bizarrely far apart, because what's actually going to happen is that organized groups are going to operate and scale with ever-diminishing margins, and just push out everybody else. Because that's what happens. If you play EVE Online or Runescape, or any other game that simulates economy, that's what happens. Organized groups are going to fucking crush you. 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. It's gonna be worth fractions of a cent, but what you give in return for that fraction of a cent is that you're completely powerless now. Your fantasy, your ability to be impactful in the world as an individual is gone, because now it is controlled by these guys."
https://www.pcgamer.com/developer-turns-future-of-gaming-talk-into-a-surprise-attack-on-conventions-nft-and-blockchain-sponsors/
He brings up a great point about how NFTs fundamentally change the incentives for player behavior in a game. A game built around NFTs cannot offer the same type of player experience. It will be a fundamentally different, and it's not something a player could ignore in an MMO and remain unaffected. That's why I think that if such projects come about they will be never attractive to the traditional mmo player. They are really products aimed at a different segment and played for fundamentally different reasons.
This also brings up a larger issue related to how some countries economies are so bad that gold farming offers better financial prospects than a regular job (search about Venezuelan Runescape gold farmers). These companies see a big opportunity in these third world countries with poor economies, so they are making a push there to exploit them with "Play to Earn" (a fitting epithet for gold farming).
Investors see potential value in South America right now due to exploitable political and economic instabilities, which for Venturelli means that presenting his counterargument is more important than ever.
"If we don't take up some spaces, and we let these kinds of people take these spaces, suddenly they're dictating what's the future, suddenly they're taking the investments so that they are building our next big projects," he said. "That's when it starts to get really dangerous, because it can jeopardize our future as an industry, in my opinion. Because I don't feel like these things have long legs. I feel like they might be successful in the short term, but they are going to fall on the long term for sure."
The speaker was applauded enthusiastically after his talk.
https://www.pcgamer.com/developer-turns-future-of-gaming-talk-into-a-surprise-attack-on-conventions-nft-and-blockchain-sponsors/
He brings up a great point about how NFTs fundamentally change the incentives for player behavior in a game. A game built around NFTs cannot offer the same type of player experience. It will be a fundamentally different, and it's not something a player could ignore in an MMO and remain unaffected. That's why I think that if such projects come about they will be never attractive to the traditional mmo player. They are really products aimed at a different segment and played for fundamentally different reasons.
This also brings up a larger issue related to how some countries economies are so bad that gold farming offers better financial prospects than a regular job (search about Venezuelan Runescape gold farmers). These companies see a big opportunity in these third world countries with poor economies, so they are making a push there to exploit them with "Play to Earn" (a fitting epithet for gold farming).
Investors see potential value in South America right now due to exploitable political and economic instabilities, which for Venturelli means that presenting his counterargument is more important than ever.
"If we don't take up some spaces, and we let these kinds of people take these spaces, suddenly they're dictating what's the future, suddenly they're taking the investments so that they are building our next big projects," he said. "That's when it starts to get really dangerous, because it can jeopardize our future as an industry, in my opinion. Because I don't feel like these things have long legs. I feel like they might be successful in the short term, but they are going to fall on the long term for sure."
The speaker was applauded enthusiastically after his talk.
Comments
"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.
These games dont attract the basement dwelling, chip eating, forum trolls. It's very different.
Probably a dev or employee in one of those stellar games.
I am the polar opposite. I do not want this shit in my games and I will avoid it like a plague.
Have not yet though. Maybe there is hope?
Nah there is really none for me or the human race.
The people can be great in a crypto/NFT game, why not? But the game is designed in such a way as to be detrimental to gaming and NFT's simply have nothing to do with gaming.
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.
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.
Even if you're "earning" fractions of a cent, technically you're still earning monetarily.
Playing to earn doesn't mean that the items you earn are worthwhile to earn. In just about every case, someone in a country with a decent economy with adequate labor standards would find more money at the lowest paying jobs instead of attempting to earn in even the best blockchain games.
Adding the system can change player incentives, and it has in the past. But that's partially because developers allow it to. It doesn't need to be that way. It's not sustainable for large organizations to manipulate the economy. In the short term, the developers will make some money, but just like with axie, eventually there's no appeal anymore if the market relies on just the sellers running the markets. Axie was in a decline before the hack. Now they are shifting to a "play and earn" mode and giving free axies to new players... a temporary stop gap to it's impending failure. They never created a good game in the first place, now they will suffer.
But that doesn't mean NFTs can't work. As a primary monetization factor, I don't think it will last. As an addition to other monetization models, I think it will. Before that happens we'll probably see a lot of people lose a lot of time and money on assumptions that they'll get rich, when very few actually will make any real money. The only ones that will always profit in every transaction made are the developers.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
Some games have a proprietary internal wallet. That means that each account has their own place to store NFTs. That also means that you can't realistically place all of your NFTs in a wallet that someone else only has access to, because it's tied to your game account. If you have the game account login, you have the wallet access too.
Some have you use your personal wallet, which is external. If an organized guild sets up an account, they probably will provide a wallet that only they have the password and key information for.
I don't think there's an nft guild bank, like a normal guild bank. At least, there hasn't ben in any games I've seen. But corps often setup "sponsorships" or lend/rent some game nfts to others for them to earn for them.
All of a sudden, that NFT sword you planned to sell for a profit is worthless because the entire game economy is a flaming wreckage.
I don't think people realize how serious things will become when items in the game are legitimately considered financial assets. Imagine a game like New World included NFT assets, such as items or townships.
Imagine a Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker, as an NFT when The Burning Crusade dropped. Imagine giving devs that kind of power over financial assets, and the hilarity that would ensue.
Maskedweasel is quick to point out that most won't make anything of discernible value, but that IS the way these play to earn games are being marketed, and seems like the way some of these NFT fans WANT it to be marketed (such as bcbully).
That disconnect is the source of a lot of well-earned suspicion from outsiders.
I mean, of course they are. Can't go chasing away all the fresh meat thats going to be left holding all the bags
https://biturl.top/rU7bY3
Beyond the shadows there's always light
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.
It's called time limited mints.
Some games have done this, and it proves effective. It is also applicable in a play to earn model as well as a purchase item option. The reason why many developers choose not to do this, is because in many cases it can tank the resell of an item out of the gate.
For example. Lets pretend you have an Epic Lobster Mount Skin. Pretty cool. Maybe you want to buy it.
Well, as a developer you have a few choices. You can throw it up for sale for a reasonable price and everyone can buy it. Or, if you're making Lobster Mounts NFT's.. why not force the limitation to 100 Lobster Mounts. You might sell the initial Lobster Mount for 10 dollars, but once it hits that arbitrary cap of 100 Lobsters, they are "gone" so now the reseller market takes over.
You would have to have someone sell the mount for 50 bucks for the developer to make their 20% cut at cost, but nah... investors that buy out the 100 Lobster Mint won't sell it for 50, they'll sell it for 100, 200, 500, 1000 dollars. Because it's rare and getting rarer the economics of the Lobster means the price should consistently go up. (not always the case but rarely if ever would drop below initial retail price).
Anyways, you get the idea. A single 1000 dollar sale would be worth 20 regular sales, and it sets a precedent that means every sale thereafter should exceed their expectations.
But in a time limited mint, anyone who wants a Lobster gets to buy it. Maybe the time limit is 1 week and then it's gone forever. The problem is, it might flood the market with 15000 Lobsters. Developers don't want that. "Investors" don't want it either because that means they could spend and spend and spend and no matter how much they spend they can't manipulate the market. Lobsters will keep minting, the more they spend during that time, the less the NFT is worth.
Some developers that have implemented this have realized this issue. Then they institute a burn protocol for those NFTs. Like "upgrading" your Lobster to make it a Sparkle Metal Lobster, all it takes is to burn 2 Lobsters to make 1 Sparkle Metal Lobster. This way they still retain a way to arbitrarily control scarcity. But you get the idea. Lobsters start getting bought by "investors" burning assets to make Sparkle Metal Lobsters, increasing scarcity and value, and try to manipulate the process... but it never really works.
It's not as developer friendly, especially for small studios who can't bank on their sales keeping them afloat. Instead they'll just come up with a tokenomics scheme that pumps the daily player numbers and let organizations sell to each other. It works in the short term, but it's part of the reason it's hard for these games to hit mainstream.
Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.
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.