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Comment by burnoot | Hacker News Reader

This makes many factually incorrect statements, over generalizations, and is filled with emotion. I don’t know where to start.

Tim Berners-Lee doesn’t own the term “web 3(.0)”.

Miners/validators charge a fee. Any cloud provider also charges a fee. DIY isn’t free either.

I’ll ignore DeFi because I know it doesn’t necessarily sit well with HN, but there are valid use cases for blockchain in Gaming.

10 years is a long time, yes. But there are a lot of things that need to be built, tested, and adopted. Blockchain moves slowly. So what?

Comparing anything to the iPhone is a terrible argument. The iPhone is arguably the biggest success (design, marketing, need) of the last 25 years and comparing anything to it doesn’t tell us anything other than “yes, iPhone good”.

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there are valid use cases for blockchain in Gaming

If you mean the usual example of "you could buy a 3d model of a hat, and use it in all your favorite games" then you have no idea how 3d asset pipelines work and why this is never going to happen except maybe within the realm of a single publisher, and if that's the case there's no need for a blockchain. You could just store them on an account that's probably using Postgres in the background somewhere.

Check out https://worldofcrypto.io, they are working on a gan based neural network to do a style transfer on your own nft.

There's no need for a blockchain within one game.

Blockchain, NFTs, and all related ideas are about sharing data between untrusted parties without a central authority. If you're in a single game there is automatically an authority.

I'll be generous and suggest that World of Crypto is being built by some devs who are using NFTs as a hustle because they're trendy. There's nothing wrong with that. That's how you sell things in fashion. But it could easily be a rugpull scam...

The value that is being generated not on centralised entities but on private keys.

What does that even mean? What is the difference, to me as a user, between value being generated on centralised entities and private keys

or, you can buy a trading card for a game that embraces blockchain and decentralization. the media which is a PNG and JSON can be stored in ipfs , p2p hosted, and licensed with CC0.

this is a niche .. but you can imagine some communities and players might enjoy owning assets that are not tied to a game company. the company can fold and the game go under, and the asset can still be repurposed for another game, or held as a collectible like we do physical trading cards and stamps.

a probably simpler use case for blockchain in gaming is for a simple payment API and market mechanism .. easier to spin up a smart contract and escape payment processor fees and the ridiculous take-rates of Steam and Apple in-app purchases.

The payment processor fees are still there though - you just pay them when you convert your fiat currency into crypto, rather than when you use the crypto to buy the 3D hat.

nope. if a game publisher uses a CEX to exchange the crypto they receive from users into fiat and direct bank account deposit the fees can range from 0% to 0.6% compared to 2-5% for stripe and PayPal or up to 30% for steam and apple. this also does not consider per-transaction fees which in L2 will be very minimal and allow users to engage with micro payments like $0.25 USD asset purchases, which are not realistic with stripe APIs.

https://help.coinbase.com/en/exchange/trading-and-funding/ex...

edit: these fees apply both ways, selling and buying crypto, so the user also pays less. and if the user buys $100 USD of tokens like they would at an arcade, all of those tokens can be spent on the game without exchange to fiat needed. this is different than every interaction with processor taking a cut which happens now if you want to buy 5 assets from a game that uses stripe or an app store or whatever.

if a game publisher uses a CEX to exchange the crypto they receive from users into fiat and direct bank account deposit the fees can range from 0% to 0.6%

The only reason the fees are that low right now is because crypto is speculative, and users have no protections. If crypto is useful and buyers expect to be able to do things like refunds or charge backs the fees will do up to cover those costs.

Looking at how crypto works right now and suggesting it'll still be the same if people use it as currency is silly.

equally silly to assume that regulations will force all centralized exchanges to charge 2-5% or 30% as is the case with current payment processors and app stores. that is not going to happen except in totalitarian countries.

the reason those standard take-rates are high are not for consumer protection. interbank fees are about the same or lower as CEX take fees in the range of 0.1-0.5%. corporate infrastructure built on top of these financial systems like PayPal, Stripe and VISA are taking huge profits.

> the asset can still be repurposed for another game

Can it? NFTs don't confer copyright, there are all sorts of issues with that. If the original company goes under, rights to its assets are likely to be part of either acquisition or bankruptcy proceedings.

this is why i say CC0 licensed assets and why the game and publisher has to embrace decentralization. also why this type of usage will be niche and apply to a specific type of game genre.

CC-NC license also sorta works but not as well.. assets can then be repurposed for non commercial uses only.

other licenses should be developed to operate specifically on these kinds of problems. some projects are already exploring this like BAYC licensing token owners more rights.

> this is why i say CC0 licensed assets

Then who cares if they're on a blockchain?

I think it's fair to say I don't really get this artificial scarcity fetish.

look at it this way: anybody can google images of the rarest MtG cards and print it out on paper, and bring that to play with. but the other player will probably frown on that. because both players have bought into the idea that the "cards" not the JPG image that makes them is what has value in the gameplay.

the same is possible in blockchain setting. ownership of that unique token can hold value for gameplay and collectibility, despite JPG being CC0 and free to download and print out.

Honestly a game where you get advantages from "rare" cards that people pay huge sums for doesn't really appeal to me in the first place.

It's not really any sort of level playing field at that point. Each to their own I guess.

agree, but that is not the game I am describing. many free to play iOS and Apple games use an in-app purchase model and users are fine to pay $1-2 to add new skin or expand their play. in those cases the assets are locked to your apple account, and also include a 30% take fee.

acquiring an nft does not even need to include payment at all. assets can be distributed to users for non monetary reasons, such as some achievement or action taken in the game, or defeating some other player in a pvp battle based on a mix of skills and random chance and as a result winning their hand or rare loot or whatever. it is up to the game to decide these things.

> acquiring an nft does not even need to include payment at all. assets can be distributed to users for non monetary reasons, such as some achievement or action taken in the game, or defeating some other player in a pvp battle based on a mix of skills and random chance and as a result winning their hand or rare loot or whatever. it is up to the game to decide these things.

You've literally described how games work now. No NFTs required

yes, games and game stores hold records of ownership under your account. some of that may be purchased, some of it may be acquired through another means like an in-game achievement.

nfts are literally just records of ownership of a digital asset that are upheld without a central entity.

“it’s a lot like owning assets in a game” is exactly correct with the distinction that it’s decentralized

> nfts are literally just records of ownership of a digital asset that are upheld without a central entity.

Again. Above you literally described how games already work, with no need for NFTs. Why the hell would games need NFTs?

the only need for NFT in a game is decentralization and disintermediation of payment and ownership. if you wish to distribute game assets and give players a form of transferable and scarce digital ownership that is not locked into a walled corporate garden, CC0-licensed NFT represents one approach.

You don't need NFTs for CC0-licensed assets.

You don't need "decentralized ownership" for something that is literally only applicable in a single game.

On top of that, the myth that people clamor for digital scarcity is also the invention of crypto bros.

OK, but then again, I'm not seeing the utility of an NFT on a public blockchain, apart from the mythincal "I get to use it in other games" thing, which is only going to work in games with "free" art assets - vanishingly few.

as I said in my original post: this is a niche application. some share of users will be happy to own and trade CC0 licensed assets that are not centrally owned by a single game company, and not sitting in their steam or apple account.

similarly, some share of devs and gamers like to publish and purchase work on Itch.io, even though it’s the minority compared to Steam or Apple.

> look at it this way: anybody can google images of the rarest MtG cards and print it out on paper, and bring that to play with. but the other player will probably frown on that. because both players have bought into the idea that the "cards" not the JPG image that makes them is what has value in the gameplay.

This is not true. Concerning "value in the gameplay", as you put it, the value is in the JPG. The "card" might have a value as a collectable but that value has no bearing on "value in the gameplay".

if the value is in the JPG or "image" then anybody can print it at home and play with it in competition. but it is not the norm. likewise, nobody has a collection of self-printed MtG JPGs in their attic, but they do have collections of "cards" which hold sentimental value to them.

For information, you can play proxies in some competitive MTG games if you prove you have the card. And in less known games like vampire CCG, proxies are allowed in tournaments without proving anything (and imho it makes that game even more competitive, and allow players to modify their deck at will depending on the clans/player at the table.

> prove you have the card

this is where blockchain is well suited. user can sign a message with their private key and cryptographically prove ownership where all other parties can also verify it cryptographically

> proxies are allowed in tournaments without proving anything

cool! but not what most refer to when talking about trading card games. if you have access to all cards in the game at any point there is no need to trade or do anything in particular to acquire and own a specific card except to say “I choose that.” if a game works like that it wouldn’t make sense to build blockchain based ownership around it.

> anybody can google images of the rarest MtG cards and print it out on paper, and bring that to play with. but the other player will probably frown on that.

Wizards of the Coast frowns on this, and bans it in sanctioned tournaments because obviously they want to sell you cards. Actual players do it literally all the time and it's not even very controversial.

I can't see how that is desirable in the slightest. People who like to play with trading card games don't enjoy the artificial scarcity part, they accept it as a necessary evil enforced to them by the manufacturer. I don't think any Magic the Gathering player enjoys telling their friend how expensive it is to get into (all of my friends play Pauper even if they own fetchlands, fwiw)

it does not have to be expensive. it can be that the entire year of play cost you $10 USD to purchase all your cards, or it could be that you acquired your game loot just through playing for days on end in RPG-like boss drops and not spending anything.

scarcity is part of these games. when you open a pack of MtG cards and one item is rare, player will tend to get pretty excited. same with a rare loot dropped in WoW. without this imposed scarcity all assets would have equally unlimited supply and the game would probably be pretty bland, and there would be not as much reason to trade cards and build a hand.

> without this imposed scarcity all assets would have equally unlimited supply and the game would probably be pretty bland, and there would be not as much reason to trade cards and build a hand.

Completely false. The strategy game and the collection/trading 'game' are completely different activities, and it is extremely common to enjoy one but have no interest in the other.

I played MTG very competitively in my youth, and I sidestepped the scarcity issues entirely by either playing sealed/draft[0] in official tournaments, or by playing in unofficial online tournaments where cards were unlimited (I enjoyed the so-called Eternal formats where many cards had been long out of print and cost hundreds of euros at the time).

Pro players also tended to favour drafting - it had a reputation as the most strategic and interesting way to play - and while of course they also played in official tournaments with custom-built decks, quite a few of them were known for having no interest in collecting cards and simply borrowing whole decks from their friends who did have the hobby of trading and collecting (whether or not those friends played the game).

[0] A game mode where everybody starts with a small set of random cards, instead of bringing their collection.

maybe this depends on the game and players. I have seen a lot of MtG folks take pleasure in having a carefully curated deck with some cards that are more rare and coveted than others, and even hold onto these cards years later when they aren't playing any more because they have some sentimental value to them. if supply were unlimited then every player would just have every card in the game.

it is like WoW loot where some items are rare and others are not. if all items in the game were of equal supply and scarcity, there would be no rare or coveted items. you could trade a bronze dagger for a legendary mythril great sword or whatever. after 100 loot drops from grinding you'd have 100 different items of equal rarity rather than say 95 worthless items and 5 rare items.

i guess that is a valid type of game but it seems different than most trading card games and loot based games.

True collectors do exist who collect something purely because it's rare. In MtG the most obvious example are 'misprint' fans who enjoy collecting cards that got accidentally printed off-center, or upside-down, or in the wrong colour. The rarity is literally the only thing those cards have going for themselves, as they're usually mediocre or unplayable in the game itself.

True collectors do exists, but they are outnumbered 1:1000 by ordinary players who sigh and say "oh man, I'd love to play $card, it's perfect for my deck, but I don't have the money for it, this shit sucks".

Modern video games have found a satisfactory compromise by allowing everybody to enjoy the game on a level playing fields without restrictions, and then using cosmetics to bait the collectors into getting addicted, with all the dark patterns we know and loathe - artificial scarcity, FOMO, etc.

If MtG took the same lesson to heart and released every year a 'play set' where you can pay like $50-$100 to get all the new cards needed in regular form, and then had separate randomized products for collectors with a chance at shiny or alternate art versions, I'd get back into the game on the spot.

if scarcity is not needed or desirable for MtG players why would they not just release all cards individually for the same price? why should any card be harder than another to acquire?

if MtG uses this model for deck building it sounds like pay-to-win.

a blockchain game can just be pay-to-own and play-to-own like most games on the App Store, except the assets assigned to the user is not attached to a single App Store account and do not involve a 30% take fee. imagine these game assets could still be held even if you switch from Apple to Google phone, because the assets are detached from your phone company’s accounts.

> if scarcity is not needed or desirable for MtG players why would they not just release all cards individually for the same price? why should any card be harder than another to acquire?

Because it's desirable for the publisher? Since, you know, they make way more money that way.

> if MtG uses this model for deck building it sounds like pay-to-win.

It is pay-to-win, up to a point. There is an upper ceiling on how much a top-tier deck can cost to acquire (usually a few hundred dollars, in the most popular formats), and after that point money no longer confers an advantage. That's how it can be a competitive game at all, even when you bring your own deck.

> a blockchain game can just be pay-to-own and play-to-own like most games on the App Store, except the assets assigned to the user is not attached to a single App Store account and do not involve a 30% take fee. imagine these game assets could still be held even if you switch from Apple to Google phone, because the assets are detached from your phone company’s accounts.

Very nice - for the player. Why would the game publisher, Google, or Apple want to make an effort to recognize assets from a blockchain they do not control and do not profit from?

so re: MtG, this goes back to my original point. most of the game depends on scarcity. I was recently informed about proxies where users can print their own cards, but it still sounds like the majority of players value the cards themselves rather than just a self printed version of it. apparently there is something special about "owning" MtG card rather than just a proxy

> Why would the game publisher, Google, or Apple want to make an effort to recognize assets from a blockchain they do not control and do not profit from?

they don't and probably will not do this, unless it starts to compete with their profits. this is what we are seeing with nfts in art world, llike Christie's and Sotheby's now selling nfts, Instagram and Meta adding nfts, and now Spotify announcing they will explore nfts. these corporations see value that they can extract, in the same way opensea is extracting 2.5% on each trade and as a result making millions in profit.

if more gamers begin to use and demand decentralized marketplaces for games and assets, the major publishers will step in to those spaces as well to try and keep their foothold and avoid becoming obsolete in a new market.

Thankfully, so far, gamers have said a resounding "NO" to this sort of crap.

lol, players saying NO to reducing the take-rates of app stores from 30% to 0-2.5%, and saying NO to having the assets they purchase stored anywhere besides the privately owned servers of their favorite centralized megacorps

Yes because so far, they've experienced 100% of the issues (lack of moderation, wild exploitation with no way to get un-scammed, lack of consistency and clarity) and 0% of the benefits (you could tax something 100% its value and still be way below gas fees).

People don't care how little control they have over it, the shift from having retail games in your own home to owning them on platforms like Steam (and the resistance from buying from other sources) should tell you enough.

you are probably right, but I will not be so pessimistic as to resign to favouring Steam and Apple stores and take rates as a necessary evil and permanent facet of the web’s future. I am happy to see web3 at the very least attempting to challenge this, however weakly it is currently being done.

Mtgo have limited supply, and even my old splinter twin which were my favorite cards in the world 10 years ago i don't care about. Paper assets are different than digital ones I think. Especially if you only pay for it and didn't work on them.

> the asset can still be repurposed for another game

no.

If the NFT is, say, an image. Different games could definitely pull the image(url) from the blockchain and use it in their specific game. Multiple games could share it in that way.

Now if that will ever happen I very much doubt.

That's not actually right unfortunately. Things like resolution, color depth, alpha channels, compression formats, gamma correction, and meta data all impact whether you can use an asset between game engines. Some things can be automatically corrected for or just ignored, but if you want to have an image displayed identically between different games, or apps, or OSs, or even browsers it's basically impossible.

That still doesn't make it impossible, does it? The shared resource server would have a set of requirements, and the engines would have to work with that. It would also be an opt-in scenario, so if a game decided they wanted to be a part of this, they simply would work with it. It's not like games would be forced to use it.

Again, I am not saying it is a good solution, but displaying a PNG in multiple games from a shared location for /sure/ is possible.

displaying a PNG in multiple games from a shared location for /sure/ is possible

No doubt you can display it obviously, but you can't ensure that it's identical everywhere, especially where the thing displaying it is implemented by separate teams of developers. PNG has built in gamma correction. It's a good example of a format that displays differently depending on where you're viewing it. Game developers would be swamped with support requests saying "My special hat NFT is just a black rectangle!"

And that's just for 2D images. If you want to do it for 3D assets... Well, trust me, you really don't.

I think you and I are building up explanation backwards from an instinct that assets can’t be shared across games.

Images are hotlinked across the Web all the time, the problem is that random assets cannot be added to a game.

And the people pushing NFTing assets might have a different idea on games - e.g.(I’m open to refinements) the “game” is understood to be more heavy on game mechanics as seen in game of chess, so that 3D model of a piece can be anything, or that an asset is always a complete, tangible entity as a fully voiced and textured Companion Cube, rather than a husk of a car in the background with half of the body removed, etc.

And with that level of disagreement as deep as to what the game is, I’m not sure how we would all get to an agreeable conclusion. A chess game that allows any pieces in a Unity asset bundle as a piece sounds interesting if possible.

> I think you and I are building up explanation backwards from an instinct that assets can’t be shared across games.

It's not instinct. It's an fact obvious to anyone who as much as had a tutorial on game programming.

> the “game” is understood to be more heavy on game mechanics as seen in game of chess, so that 3D model of a piece can be anything, or that an asset is always a complete, tangible entity as a fully voiced and textured Companion Cube, rather than a husk of a car in the background with half of the body removed, etc.

wat.

Ok. Let's take a game of chess, or a game based on chess. For example, Knight's Retreat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54ibEGIER-4

And, say, you have assets from Rimworld (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tDrxOASUog), Elden Ring (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3Huy2cdih0), Hyperlight Drifter (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWufEJ1Ava0) and Kentucky Route Zero (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bp8f7zWwRjo)

So, tell me. How exactly will this work with "game mechanics" with an "always complete asset" etc?

> A chess game that allows any pieces in a Unity asset bundle as a piece sounds interesting if possible.

Of course it's not possible. Or, if somewhat possible, will look like shit for the majority of assets: you can't convert a 2D pixel art asset to a 3D object; 3D (and many 2D) assets will have completely different compositions, skeletons, rigs, animations etc.

> or a game based on chess. Not a game based on chess, THE chess. A game engaging enough that the whole UI/UX can be just added or replaced. Think GNU chess, but with an argument that takes a magnet link for background.png. I think that is kinds of games that "NFT as game assets" idea is targeting. Not a modern game at all.

I mean, I could have said that NFT believers' mental model of a game is so removed from computer games IRL, AAA and gacha and mobile and all kinds of games, that those concepts make basically 0.0E-16 sense or in case it make sense the point those paths cross is few decades away. Basically that's my thinking. But isn't that too dismissive?

> Basically that's my thinking. But isn't that too dismissive?

It's not :) It describes the mentality exactly

The chess/rimword/elden ring comparison doesn't really make sense. You're assuming any game that allowed NFTs would simply load ANY NFT?

Twitter, for example, allows some set of NFTs to be used on their website. Those NFTs are from a specific place (OpenSea) and follow a specific criteria (be an image).

Like that a single game would connect to some place (GameNFTs) and allow for example a user to select their chess pieces if they owned an NFT in a specific category (GameNFTs::Images::ChessSets::TypeA). But it wouldn't allow other NFTs than that.

> You're assuming any game that allowed NFTs would simply load ANY NFT?

That's what crypto bros keep telling us.

> Those NFTs are from a specific place (OpenSea) and follow a specific criteria (be an image).

So, a very limited set of NFTs from a centralised service. Got you.

> Like that a single game would connect to some place (GameNFTs) and allow for example a user to select their chess pieces if they owned an NFT in a specific category

- there would be a central asset authority

- that authority would oversee asset categorisation (or this categorisation will somehow be standard)

- game devs will willingly integrate with that central authority's API to find, list, and accept game assets

And the reason game devs will do that and are not doing it already is because?

> That's what crypto bros keep telling us.

I'm not a crypto bro so this is a more realistic take on how you can get actual NFTs into games. Yes, it has massive trade offs that would make the whole thing very roundabout, but I am simply arguing for that it is technically possible.

> I am simply arguing for that it is technically possible.

It's still not even remotely possible (except for games running more or less the same engine and implementing the same type of game like the Crusader Kings series). But even before we get to that, my last question remains: "And the reason game devs will do that and are not doing it already is because?"

> It's still not even remotely possible (except for games running more or less the same engine and implementing the same type of game like the Crusader Kings series).

Yes, and that's my whole point. It can be done, just not as general as the bros have you believe.

> But even before we get to that, my last question remains: "And the reason game devs will do that and are not doing it already is because?"

Because there is no benefit to the game developer.

It's possible to load assets from remote, it's basically not possible to provide meaningful value by allowing assets foreign and out of context to individual games. Thus the point being made is close to moot...

> 10 years is a long time

That period also excludes all the work and progress in phones it took to get there.

> I’ll ignore DeFi because I know it doesn’t necessarily sit well with HN

DeFi is revolutionary. The idea of programmable finance and bank which can be created by anyone (we have 12 year old engineers with complex defi financial products) is nothing short of eye watering. On top of it, all the primitives are composeable which makes risk stacking possible. That's capital efficient for the capital owner compared to tradfi.

You can criticise the grifters in the space which are too many but what it enables is amazing to me.

> we have 12 year old engineers with complex defi financial products

It means they are not complex. Honestly, none of the DeFi projects are (it's flash loans and currency speculation across the board).

And none of them are banks.

> but there are valid use cases for blockchain in Gaming

Like?

Trading game assets (items) outside of the mechanics of a game.

Loaning assets (items) to other players without the game developers building the loan functionality.

Clan memberships that are recognised across different games.

Devs still have to build blockchain functionality. Which one of the hundreds if blockchains?

And devs still have to build things like "ownership of item changed, reflect it in the game", "this guy is a member if a clan in game X, so has to be member of clan X(?) in this game" etc.

The hand-wavy way crypto proponents approach this is maddening.

> Devs still have to build blockchain functionality. Which one of the hundreds if blockchains?

No, you can bridge NFTs between chains.

It's a solved problem.

> devs still have to build things like "ownership of item changed, reflect it in the game

No. They should query chain data directly. They need to setup an indexer and route any query through it.

You can attach attributes and state to NFT which can be replicated automatically between chains when someone bridges.

> No, you can bridge NFTs between chains.

Who is this "you"?

> No. They should query chain data directly. They need to setup an indexer and route any query through it.

Right. They "just have to query". They "just have to setup" something.

> You can attach attributes and state to NFT which can be replicated automatically between chains when someone bridges.

Who is this "you"? Who is this "someone"?

Again, the hand-wavy way crypto proponents approach this is maddening. And of course, there are exactly zero examples of this working in real life.

Yes, there will likely always need to be some work done on the dev side to enable any of those use cases. A lot of the tools/services to enable these and other uses are either being built or haven’t even been started yet, so for the moment the level of effort from individual teams is higher than it could be.

> Yes, there will likely always need to be some work done on the dev side to enable any of those use cases.

Not "likely". There will always be work to integrate.

Trading game assets is a billion dollar industry in web2. CS:go skins, robux, etc.

By building on blockchain, you can save work building trading systems and enable cross-pollination (Take advantage of all the tools and bridges because of composeability).

Loaning items sounds like at most a weeks worth of work. Building in blockchain technology sounds like months worth of work.

All of this works better and faster on a normal database. All of the additional features marketed are just the removal of intentional restrictions by the developers. Why would the developers want to give up this power and if they did, they could do it without blockchains.

> Loaning items sounds like at most a weeks worth of work.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224

Loaning is just one potential use. The idea is that if you were to put ownership of items on a blockchain then you open up your game to all the external tools/marketplaces that have been built.

Who on earth is going to put ownership of game items on a blockchain?

There's a huge difference between "I own a level 28 sword of whacking in this game" and "I own the copyright to this level 28 sword of whacking and all the art-assets related to it".

I can't see many game designers selling the copyrights along with their fancy outfits, frankly.

a lot of web3’s critical infrastructure like ipfs, TheGraph and Infura, scalable L2s, and zk proof tech is all far more recent and still in development so it will probably still be another few years before it matures i think

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