NFTs and gaming

System · 17-12-2021 11:46am #1

This discussion was created from comments split from: Game News 2.0.

johnny_ultimate · 16-12-2021 11:27pm

LOL at the absolute nonsense that is this statement.

Amazing to see companies willingly torching their reputation chasing the blockchain cultists. Kickstarter have doubled down as well despite extraordinarily negative feedback.

EDIT: Hahaha they deleted it already. This is the statement, from GSC Gameworld about the crappy STALKER NFTs.

https://twitter.com/stalker_thegame/status/1471602276993310726?s=21

Mr Crispy · 16-12-2021 11:45pm

It's sad. They could offer all those perks to "backers" without the need for blockchain. Besides, I thought one of the supposed benefits of NFTs was that they could be traded/sold later, but who's going to want to buy a digital certificate when it's not even their face/name in the game? Madness.

Jordan 199 · 16-12-2021 11:53pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118326832#Comment_118326832

What's a NFT?

JimBurnley · 16-12-2021 11:58pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118334190#Comment_118334190

Nice to see I'm not the only one wondering that :-)

johnny_ultimate · 17-12-2021 12:00am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118334190#Comment_118334190

Non fungible token. Basically crypto art and assets, where an asset (say a JPG or in-game item) is given a digital signature on the blockchain saying it belongs to a certain person. That can then be sold on to somebody else, often at an inflated price (albeit it’s all very unstable given the wildly fluctuating nature of cryptocurrency).

It’s incredibly environmentally unfriendly due to the mining resources required and in many cases is being used as glorified money laundering / pyramid scheme stuff. Most generously, it’s creating digital artificial rarity - but is ultimately a solution desperately in search of a problem. A couple of game companies like Ubisoft and GSC Gameworld are trying to get in the NFT game and being met with - quite rightly - visceral backlash, because they’re clearly just trying to please investors rather than creating something that in any way, shape or form helps the games they’re putting them into.

JimBurnley · 17-12-2021 12:30am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118334236#Comment_118334236

So digital cosmetic junk, which f#cks up the environment, that can then be traded on to f#ck up the environment some more, with possible fraud type uses also. That about the size of it?

Retr0gamer · 17-12-2021 12:48am

Yup. But you also forgot money laundering.

johnny_ultimate · 17-12-2021 12:54am

And the rollback:

https://twitter.com/stalker_thegame/status/1471620399997886472?s=21

J Mysterio · 17-12-2021 12:56am

What

Grumpypants · 17-12-2021 6:00am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118334409#Comment_118334409

No. It's Digital art. It can be anything. It could be a painting or it could be a song. Anything that can be created in a digital world.

There is a difference between the original artwork and the copies.

If I own the rights to an original Coldplay song. And you bought it on Apple iTunes. We both essentially have the same song and they will sound the same when we listen to it, but mine is more valuable. I can license that to movies, games, or other recording artists to cover.

That is something of value, and it makes my copy worth basically whatever someone is whiling to pay me if I sell it on the open market.

The problem with digital art is you could buy it, I could right click and press save and we both end up with the same thing. There is no way to tell which is the original.

Now if you are a huge band with loads of resources and lawyers you could chase it in the courts. But 99% of artists are not making huge money. There is a huge issue with artists getting ripped off, not just losing money but in some cases actually losing access to the rights to their art.

An NFT is a simple way to sign that original piece of art to say you own it. It's very easy, it's very secure, and it's badly needed.

The vast majority of NFTs are ERC20 tokens, created on layer 2 protocols that run on top of Etherium. And are proof of stake not proof of work. Proof of stake power usage can be as much as 1% of a proof of work model.

Etherium is moving to a proof of stake in the coming months so the whole power consumption line will not be an issue for long.

But it is odd to see people who watch Netflix, stream Spotify, download and play online games ( who are all using massive power hungry data centers) complain about the environmental impact of NFTs.

Penn · 17-12-2021 9:13am

Sure, when it comes to digital ownership to protect copyright and monetisation of digital media you've created, I can see some value in it (not much, but some, and especially not where existing copyright legal protections apply).

When it comes to "You can have a number printed on the side of a beanie your character in a multiplayer game wears that means only you own that", then it's just pure nonsense. Same goes for people "buying" unique images to use as avatars for social media platforms or anything of that ilk. You're not buying anything of value other than the right to say "I own that" even though nobody gives a good goddamn f*ck.

The best response to NFTs I saw was someone who saved a few hundred of people's NFT images by right-clicking them, then made a collage of them all which looked like a giant picture of someone right-clicking a mouse.

johnny_ultimate · 17-12-2021 9:42am

NFTs are exponentially more power-hungry than any other form of modern media distribution. We’ll wait til Etherium actually makes their long promised, oft delayed change to proof of stake - for now, it’s an environmental catastrophe on a mass scale. And yes, data centres are bad too - but again traditional internet protocols are exponentially more efficient than current blockchain technology.

Even putting aside the environmental concern, there’s nothing badly needed about NFTs. There’s probably a small amount of digital artists and collectors who would benefit from it. But for the most part it wraps up art in horrifying layers of post-capitalist speculation and financial chaos. It creates so many problems - from scams to crypto bubbles. It’s a hyper-libertarian take on art ownership that encompasses all kinds of nasty ****, from money laundering to straight up Ponzi schemes. And yes, the traditional art market is heinous in so many ways too. We’re now just creating a grim digital version of it. For the vast majority of people invested in NFTs, it’s not about a pure belief in its capacity to support digital artists - it’s about trying to make as much money as possible by being an early investor in a new technology. Its advocates use the language of dismantling problematic existing systems (and in a limited set of circumstances with cryptocurrency there’s some legitimacy to the argument), but in reality it’s just creating problematic new systems instead of actually addressing the many class and structural problems of modern society.

I have yet to see a single example of how any of this will benefit video games as a medium or art form, beyond making a quick buck for companies willing to cash in on the crypto cultists.

And you can still right click and save a cryptobro’s hilariously ugly and garish procedural monkey avatar :)

pixelburp · 17-12-2021 10:28am

At least Netflix, Spotify et al serve a quantifiable purpose and "need" for modern living; no more than old school broadcasting caused surges in the national grid when kettles were turned on nationwide during ad-breaks. It's just a cost of the standard of living we have.

NFTs are pointless grifts adding no demonstrable benefit except those coining it from the gullible. Just brainfarts of crypto-bros lost in their own hype, answering questions nobody asked while crucifying the environment as they go. My wife is an illustrator, and of her limited vantage, and the art community she swims, neither have either need or enthusiasm for NFTs as some protector of their rights. They're usually happy if they just get paid 🙂

Grumpypants · 17-12-2021 10:50am

You can right-click and save an Avatar. You can also take a photo of the Mona Lisa and hang it in your house and laugh at da Vinci for being a stupid painterbro.

The art world is a weird one built on hype. But art is subjective. If someone wants to buy a painting that is a red blob they can. If they want to pay €2 or €2million for it who am i to stop them.

I'm not arguing that NFTs in gaming is a good or bad idea. But I see no reason why it shouldn't be a thing.

I think funding via NFTs is short-sighted at the moment. The short term ability to pay for the spiralling development costs and stay independent is going to lead to long term legal battles down the line.

What happens when you want to shut down your online only game and everyone that owns that NFT is no longer able to access it, will you have to give them a way to access it forever. What happens if they "own it" and no longer want it in your game? Can they force you to pull it? What if there is a bug and it doesn't render properly. Will you have to maintain it for years to come?

It will get messy.

There is a tiny section of the NFT market that is in a silly bubble. Much like the .com and the video game bubbles in the past they will pop but the underlying technology will stay the course.

Crypto on the other hand offers a lifeline for so many of the worlds poor that have historically been kept out of the financial system. People that live a comfortable existence in countries with stable economies forget that most of the world doesn't have access to a bank account. Countries are held hostage to the dollar. Economies are destroyed to make the wealthy elite a few extra billion.

johnny_ultimate · 17-12-2021 11:06am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118335674#Comment_118335674

A copied JPG or MP3 is functionally identical to the the original. A digital or even physical copy of the Mona Lisa isn’t. That is the fundamental flaw at the heart of the NFT: physical and digital art are fundamentally different things.

As for the final paragraph, that’s the utopian ideal that has so far not been borne out by crypto. In fact, quite the opposite has come to pass: the creation of a *new* elite, with the wealth disproportionately distributed to a tiny amount of people and the emergence of new financial speculation markets. I do think cryptocurrency has some benefit in providing a more secure platform for, say, rights activists in authoritarian states who need to operate outside the traditional financial channels. That’s a minority use case so far. And NFTs are more worthless again.

Grumpypants · 17-12-2021 11:12am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118335783#Comment_118335783

That is literally the reason NFTs exist.

You can get an expert to look at a copy of the mona Lisa and say it is fake. You can't do that with most digital art because it can be copied exactly 1 to 1.

So how else do you show that it is the original?

johnny_ultimate · 17-12-2021 11:40am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118335809#Comment_118335809

Digital media can be infinitely replicated by its very nature. The concept of the ‘original’ file becomes meaningless. Adding a digital blockchain signature that affords no legal rights does not change that. It’s manufacturing an awkward non-solution that’s inherently contradictory to the nature of the medium, grounded in a deeply, regressively capitalist view of art and technology.

Besides, the whole central problem with blockchain is that it insists on placing ‘ownership’ - and, by extent, financial worth - on the file. That is fundamentally and dramatically at odds with the utopian ideal of a free, democratic internet that blockchain advocates purport to support. It’s all about trading and money - a very particular, narrow-minded and unequal perspective of artistic and technological freedom.

This is an excellent analysis that gets at the fundamental contradictions of Web3 in a way I cannot at: https://tante.cc/2021/12/17/the-third-web/

Penn · 17-12-2021 11:43am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118335809#Comment_118335809

Why do you need to prove which is the original? With physical media, sure, but not with digital. Artists should ensure they hold copyright over the art/song so that it can't be used or profited on without their permission, but the concept of ownership over a digital file in a public space is ridiculous.

NFTs have created the concept of ownership of digital files, in order to justify the existence of NFTs. You're not buying a product, you're buying a receipt. Even if you can prove a digital file is the original, why does that matter? Again, physical media, sure. But a digital file? So what? If I can rightclick the image and save it, I have an exact copy. That doesn't work with physical items, they're completely incomparable.

Again, NFTs have created the concept of ownership of digital files in order to justify NFTs.

Retr0gamer · 17-12-2021 12:11pm

I really don't see what NFTs do that can't already replicated with a piece of paper and current copyright law. It really is a technology looking for a solution.

CatInABox · 17-12-2021 12:52pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118335045#Comment_118335045

Your example of buying the rights to a song versus just buying that song via Itunes/Spotify is an interesting one, because buying an NFT does not confer any rights to you. You've got exactly the same rights to use it as someone that right clicked it, i.e. none, apart from the right to tell people that you "own" it. You can't license it commercially, you can't put it in an advert, etc.

Penn · 17-12-2021 12:53pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118336210#Comment_118336210

Something is only worth as much as someone else is willing to pay for it. The people who created the concept of NFTs and are propogating them have created the hype/value of NFTs. People are buying the concept/privilege/rights of owning something, as opposed to actually owning something.

Let's not also forget how exploitative things like this can be, especially in gaming. The whole CS:GO Lotto thing comes to mind in particular. Games introducing NFTs, to me, could see an introduction of similar means of exploitation. Lootboxes on steroids.

Grumpypants · 17-12-2021 1:02pm

Wikipedia just sold there first edit as an NFT. It went to auction at Christy's and they got 750k. That money will be used to keep Wikipedia going.

Grumpypants · 17-12-2021 1:11pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118336541#Comment_118336541

It depends on what is in the contract. Some NFTs will bring with it full copyright and publishing permissions others will simple be a proof of ownership but without the ability to sell or even display it and the artist would hold the publishing rights.

When you make the NFT you set the terms. Then someone that wants to buy it on those terms can. Simply and without a hitch ge cost of getting copyright lawyers involved.

Stone Deaf 4evr · 17-12-2021 1:12pm

johnny_ultimate · 17-12-2021 1:14pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118336631#Comment_118336631

It won’t go to Wikipedia though. It’s going to a social network thing Jimmy Wales set up called WT.Social.

“The Wikimedia Foundation confirmed in an email to Slate that its board of directors requested that Wales not earmark the funds for the foundation to make clear that this was Wales’ personal venture and not a Wikipedia-endorsed fundraising initiative.”

It also caused a huge debate in the Wiki community itself, mainly over the argument that an NFT is a fundamental betrayal of Wikipedia’s core ethos.

https://slate.com/technology/2021/12/jimmy-wales-birth-of-wikipedia-nft-auction.html

BlitzKrieg · 17-12-2021 5:56pm

I know the environmental aspect gets brought up a lot and I understand thats a big issue.

But putting it aside. Is this just not the same sort of c*nts that ruined comics in the 90's with over speculating their value and in the end forced us to endure a whole bunch of rubbish because the industry thought every shiny comic issue could be worth millions in the future?

You can talk about the potential of NFTS for ensuring that someone can claim ownership over something but

Currently thats not happening as anyone can put an image through to the blockchain and put it up to sale. There is no end of the stories of artists having their work turned into nfts and sold off without their permission (including some ghoulish sorts who did it to the work of an artist who passed away)
The Non fungible aspect of it hasnt stood any real sort of test legally or practically. I mean the human error aspect of it is already shot full of holes with social hacking proving more then capable of stealing them out from under most of the nftbro's noses. And there's as far as I've been aware no legal challenge to claim ownership of something via NFT. We'll have to wait til some tv show or something sticks one of those horrible apes in the background and gets sued.

Frankly it just feels like the same sh*tty speculation bullsh*t we get everywhere else just trying to hip with the kids.