The Emperor's $10,000 Clothes Receipt: NFTs, Blockchain, and Web3 In Gaming

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > The Emperor's $10,000 Clothes Receipt: NFTs, Blockchain, and Web3 In Gaming

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Hub Cat: Aug 3, 2011; Trunk Lover

Some places in the US have moved to a registry system similar to the UK others are still using a chain of title deeds system theoretically recorded by a local governmental body(in practice not always). The issue isn't the tech it's the lack of political will to move to a different system.

Blockchain doesn't solve IP or land conveyance issues any better than a simple secure registry backed by law and a governmental body and in many cases, it's worse(even before considering the negative externalities)

Opensea is a great example of how NFT's aren't solving IP ownership at all, people are freely stealing artwork and Opensea's solution is to ignore it and say "gently caress you make us take it down!".

Hub Cat fucked around with this message at 20:01 on Dec 20, 2021

# ? Dec 20, 2021 19:13

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# ? Apr 29, 2024 11:19

kw0134: Apr 19, 2003; I buy feet pics🍆

Deltasquid posted:

(I'm not American but I understand American real estate conveyance is not registered with a public notary but by private companies?)

In every state (haven't looked into the territories; American Samoa has different rules I believe) there is going to be a local register for various records, with whom you file the deed showing the conveyance of the property from the seller to the purchaser, along with the terms of that transaction. You may or may not have a finalized transaction until it's registered, but for all intents and purposes it's not really a done deal until you pay the filing fee and hand it to the clerk who notes that plot 345135 on the county plat book has been sold/leased/seized/judicially vacated/etc. You have private parties who can verify that the chain of possession is good and that the seller has a valid right to sell, there are no other claims, and it is unlikely that you will be challenged in your ownership from a past claimant (title search and insurance). All of this is by definition public; I can go in and ask to see who owns 123 Main St, Anywhere, US, and trace that line back to the original grant by government, and that's how real estate attorneys do their job. It's not centralized at all, every locality has different registers, but that's the nature of the federal form of government, but it's still a governmental function.

# ? Dec 20, 2021 19:38

RPATDO_LAMD: Mar 22, 2013; 🐘🪠🍆

Deltasquid posted:

So, looking at NFT's from an intellectual property law perspective, one could argue that NFT's are a way to prove ownership of intellectual property over an artwork.

For example, let's say you're a digital artist selling smut commissions online. Under a lot of legal systems, the artist keeps the intellectual property rights (eg they can stop unauthorized third parties from altering the image, profiting off of it, resharing it etC. without their permission) but you can legally "sell" the intellectual property rights (for example, the person commissioning the art piece) so they can use it for whatever they feel like (eg, using it on their company website, for advertising, etc.) One of the issues in litigation is the burden of proof: it's not too problematic in fight between parties A and B themselves (the purchaser can point to the contract by which they bought the IP) but things get messier when, for example, the original artist (or an agent claiming to represent them) tries to get a third party (eg a hosting website) to remove content that was allegedly uploaded without permission. The third party has no real way of knowing who sold their IP to whom.

My understanding is that NFT's could be used as a public registry to prove that ownership has been transferred from party A to party B, so that when party B goes to court they can point at an NFT (similar to how you can go to a notary and prove, on the basis of a public registry, that you own a piece of real estate or a security on some assets or whatever)

However my understanding is also that, in practice, the NFTs you can buy online are not actually sold alongside the intellectual property rights, so the artist keeps the rights to do as they please with the image?

I feel like theoretically NFTs linked to images could be used in an interesting way (increase legal certainty in fringe cases which might be useful like with copyright litigation and proving who is owner of an image) but techbros aren't actually doing that?

The problem with using NFTs on the ~decentralized trustless blockchain~ for things like legal ownership and contractual agreements is that those things can change.

What if I an artist, create some promotional work for a company and sign a contract assigning my copyright to them, but keep the NFT?
What if I give you a 5-year copyright license to play my music in your TV show, but then 5 years later when the license expires you don't send the token back?
What if I send you an NFT but never actually sign the legal contract assigning copyright?

In real life, registries and documents can go out of date all the time, but we can still fix and update them after the fact. But the whole main feature of NFTs (and blockchain stuff in general) is that you can't do anything without the NFT owners' private cryptographic keys, meaning the records can never be fixed. If someone stubbornly holds onto an NFT representing a copyright that they don't legally have any right to anymore.... you can't do anything about it.
So you still need some actual centralized public record that courts and lawyers can actually modify to represent the real owner, outside of all the NFT stuff. But once you have that you have no more need for the NFTs.

# ? Dec 20, 2021 19:54

Tanreall: Apr 27, 2004; Did I mention I was gay for pirate ducks?

~SMcD

It's youtube but this is a discussion with Geoffrey of nftbay fame. This won't be new to people in this thread who already understand how nfts work but I think it was interesting to hear him talk about nftbay.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_VsgT5gfMc

Tanreall fucked around with this message at 09:49 on Dec 21, 2021

# ? Dec 21, 2021 05:30

Hub Cat: Aug 3, 2011; Trunk Lover

https://twitter.com/zachbussey/status/1473324507200905226?t=orDv73tYMEgv9j7tZ-nKlQ&s=19
"How could this have happened?" place where this regularly happens etc.

# ? Dec 22, 2021 22:12

Triarii: Jun 14, 2003

Gotta say it must be an exciting time to be a scammer. Real kid in a candy store vibe. You could run a different hustle every week and have them all succeed wildly with zero possibility of repercussions.

# ? Dec 22, 2021 22:22

Hub Cat: Aug 3, 2011; Trunk Lover

Oh boy A new years letter from the president

Yosuke Matsuda posted:

I would like to begin by wishing everyone a Happy New Year.

The metaverse was a hot topic in 2021, inspiring a lively global conversation first about what the metaverse is and then about what sort of business opportunities it presents. Against this backdrop, Facebook changed its name in October to Meta, serving as evidence that the concept is not a mere buzzword but here to stay. The metaverse garnered so much attention that 2021 was dubbed the “Metaverse Year”

I attribute this in large part to advances in extended reality (XR) technology, the increasing prevalence of the cloud and 5G, more sophisticated blockchain technology, and other technological evolutions that have taken place in a variety of fields over the past several years. That is because these advances are giving rise to services that fall under the metaverse umbrella. The metaverse will likely see a meaningful transition to a business phase in 2022, with a wide range of services appearing on the scene. As this abstract concept begins to take concrete shape in the form of product and service offerings, I am hoping that it will bring about changes that have a more substantial impact on our business as well.

Another term that gained quick currency in 2021 was “NFT” or “non-fungible token.” The advent of NFTs using blockchain technology significantly increased the liquidity of digital goods, enabling the trading of a variety of such goods at high prices and sparking conversations the world over. I see 2021 not only as “Metaverse: Year One,” but also as “NFTs: Year One” given that it was a year in which NFTs were met with a great deal of enthusiasm by a rapidly expanding user base. However, we do observe examples here and there of overheated trading in NFT-based digital goods with somewhat speculative overtones, regardless of the observed value of the content provided This, obviously, is not an ideal situation, but I expect to see an eventual right-sizing in digital goods deals as they become more commonplace among the general public, with the value of each available content corrected to their true estimated worth, and I look for them to become as familiar as dealings in physical goods
<Note part removed>
Lastly is blockchain games. Be they single-player or online games, games have traditionally involved a unidirectional flow whereby creators such as ourselves provide a game to the consumers that play them. By contrast, blockchain games, which have emerged from their infancy and are at this very moment entering a growth phase, are built upon the premise of a token economy and therefore hold the potential to enable self-sustaining game growth. The driver that most enables such self-sustaining game growth is diversity, both in how people engage with interactive content like games, and in their motivations for doing so. Advances in token economies will likely add further momentum to this trend of diversification. I see the “play to earn” concept that has people so excited as a prime example of this.

I realize that some people who “play to have fun” and who currently form the majority of players have voiced their reservations toward these new trends, and understandably so. However, I believe that there will be a certain number of people whose motivation is to “play to contribute,” by which I mean to help make the game more exciting. Traditional gaming has offered no explicit incentive to this latter group of people, who were motivated strictly by such inconsistent personal feelings as goodwill and volunteer spirit. This fact is not unrelated to the limitations of existing UGC (user-generated content). UGC has been brought into being solely because of individuals’ desire for self-expression and not because any explicit incentive existed to reward them for their creative efforts. I see this as one reason that there haven’t been as many major game-changing content that were user generated as one would expect.

However, with advances in token economies, users will be provided with explicit incentives, thereby resulting not only in greater consistency in their motivation, but also creating a tangible upside to their creative efforts. I believe that this will lead to more people devoting themselves to such efforts and to greater possibilities of games growing in exciting ways. From having fun to earning to contributing, a wide variety of motivations will inspire people to engage with games and connect with one another. It is blockchain-based tokens that will enable this. By designing viable token economies into our games, we will enable self-sustaining game growth. It is precisely this sort of ecosystem that lies at the heart of what I refer to as “decentralized gaming,” and I hope that this becomes a major trend in gaming going forward. If we refer to the one-way relationship where game players and game providers are linked by games that are finished products as “centralized gaming” to contrast it with decentralized gaming, then incorporating decentralized games into our portfolio in addition to centralized games will be a major strategic theme for us starting in 2022. The basic and elemental technologies to enable blockchain games already exist, and there has been an increase in the societal literacy and acceptance of crypto assets in the past few years. We will keep a close eye on societal shifts in this space while listening to the many groups of users that populate it, and ramp up our efforts to develop a business accordingly, with an eye to potentially issuing our own tokens in the future.

Our lifestyles have changed, and we are learning to coexist with COVID-19. Against that backdrop, I believe that the new technologies and concepts that I have discussed and the changes that they bring to our business environment will provide us with numerous opportunities to enrich people’s lives through digital entertainment, which is at the core of our business. This at the same time means that we are seeing the beginnings of further leaps forward for our business. We remain committed to creating, developing, and providing world-class content, and we will contribute to the happiness of society and its people by offering new forms of excitement.

I wish you all the best for 2022.

Yosuke Matsuda
President and Representative Director,
SQUARE ENIX HOLDINGS CO., LTD.

That whole part about "play to contribute" seems pretty :yikes:

Hub Cat fucked around with this message at 12:35 on Jan 1, 2022

# ? Jan 1, 2022 06:39

lagidnam: Nov 8, 2010

quote:

...
Our lifestyles have changed, and we are learning to coexist with COVID-19. Against that backdrop, I believe that the new technologies and concepts that I have discussed and the changes that they bring to our business environment will provide us with numerous opportunities to enrich people�s lives through digital entertainment
...

Battling Covid by becoming Roblox sure is a hot take.

# ? Jan 1, 2022 17:07

Philman: Jan 20, 2004

so axie infinity is just pokemon but i need to take out a mortgage to play it.

# ? Jan 4, 2022 18:37

RPATDO_LAMD: Mar 22, 2013; 🐘🪠🍆

Really what happens is Western cryptobros "invest" in three of a million samey Unique Digital Pokemans, then they hire Philipino sweatshop workers for a few bucks per day (higher than the minimum wage there!) to play with them and earn ingame currency on their "investment".
The game has an official feature to let someone else play with your axies while you take 30% of their income or whatever.
Then you use that ingame currency to create more pokemans which you can then trade/sell to other players for realmoney, or lease them out to more sweatshop workers to grind ranked for you.
There is no actual cashflow beyond new players "buying in" to the game, and the min-wage "scholar" workers cashing out their axiecoins for realmoney to buy food/rent, so once the game stops growing and attracting new rubes to inject money, it will lose the 98% of its playerbase who are only there for the money.

As far as I can tell, nobody actually plays it for fun.

RPATDO_LAMD fucked around with this message at 19:06 on Jan 4, 2022

# ? Jan 4, 2022 19:01

Sage Grimm: Feb 18, 2013; Let's go explorin' little dude!

To be fair, that also describes most gacha games except you're not there for the money but for anime waifu JPEGs.

# ? Jan 4, 2022 19:56

Hub Cat: Aug 3, 2011; Trunk Lover

GameStop Entering NFT and Cryptocurrency Markets as Part of Turnaround Plan

So Gamestop has been working on NFTs since around May and it's now rumored that they're working on a marketplace and looking to sign deals with game publishers.

Hub Cat fucked around with this message at 19:43 on Jan 7, 2022

# ? Jan 7, 2022 19:12

Philman: Jan 20, 2004

https://youtu.be/u5haiXAHPnw

digital foundry talks about square enix CEOs letter about nfts at 32:11

# ? Jan 12, 2022 13:16

Hub Cat: Aug 3, 2011; Trunk Lover

This thread would be remiss without getting this shoved here
https://twitter.com/gregisenberg/status/1483432456548196358?s=20
Also, one of the Reddit founders is heavily invested in crypto and said some stuff on that guys podcast
Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian predicts play-to-earn crypto will be the only type of games people play in 5 years

Alexis Ohanian posted:

"In five years, you will actually value your time properly," he said. "And instead of being harvested for advertisements, or being fleeced for dollars to buy stupid hammers you don't actually own, you will be playing some on-chain equivalent game that will be just as fun, but you'll actually earn value and you will be the harvester."

Yes please make my every waking moment entirely transactional that's what I live for

Mostly I just wanted an excuse to post the phrase digital serfdom.

Hub Cat fucked around with this message at 04:07 on Jan 19, 2022

# ? Jan 19, 2022 03:18

RPATDO_LAMD: Mar 22, 2013; 🐘🪠🍆

If the "on-chain equivalent" play-to-earn game is just as fun as the one I paid $60 for, where is the money coming from?
If it's actually fun, who is paying me to play this game instead of playing it themselves? How does the money that leaves the system through "earnings" get back in?

# ? Jan 19, 2022 03:29

Dark_Swordmaster: Oct 31, 2011

The games have 8-bit graphics at 12FPS because the rest of your 3080 is mining.

e: Having read that Twitter thread I have no idea what this dude is on about. That's.... Not how companies or anything works?

# ? Jan 19, 2022 04:41

ultrafilter: Aug 23, 2007; It's okay if you have any questions.

Dark_Swordmaster posted:

e: Having read that Twitter thread I have no idea what this dude is on about. That's.... Not how companies or anything works?

crypto.txt

# ? Jan 19, 2022 05:01

cmdrk: Jun 10, 2013

Dark_Swordmaster posted:

The games have 8-bit graphics at 12FPS because the rest of your 3080 is mining.

e: Having read that Twitter thread I have no idea what this dude is on about. That's.... Not how companies or anything works?

Honestly I think that�s exactly what�s going to happen. Someone will build middleware that makes it easy to turn a game�s unused cpu/gpu budget into a crypto mining operation. You�ll earn, the game dev will earn, whales will shove real money into the system, etc. the top 0.001% of players will earn enough crypto to draw in the masses who think they�re gonna strike it rich. The game dev can insert themselves with mining fees and transaction fees and so on and profit the whole way.

I am so, so deeply unhappy with this oncoming trend

# ? Jan 19, 2022 07:13

RPATDO_LAMD: Mar 22, 2013; 🐘🪠🍆

Installing crypto miners on users' machines is so 2015
You'd get literal pennies per month per player nowadays, there are way too many actual cryptobro-owned warehouses full of gpus running 24/7 as your competition.

It'd be more profitable to just have pop-up ads in game.

# ? Jan 19, 2022 07:16

Owl Inspector: Sep 14, 2011

cmdrk posted:

Honestly I think that�s exactly what�s going to happen. Someone will build middleware that makes it easy to turn a game�s unused cpu/gpu budget into a crypto mining operation.

wasn't there a company that wanted to have an option in a game to do this years ago? I want to say it was super monday night combat.

# ? Jan 19, 2022 08:30

claw game handjob: Mar 27, 2007; pinch pinch scrape pinch
ow ow fuck it's caught
i'm bleeding
JESUS TURN IT OFF
WHY ARE YOU STILL SMILING

Gay Rat Wedding posted:

wasn't there a company that wanted to have an option in a game to do this years ago? I want to say it was super monday night combat.

"wanted to", nothing, they explicitly did give you the ability to get lootbox keys (an insultingly low rate, according to old comments) for letting the game's launcher mine bitcoin for the company.

# ? Jan 19, 2022 08:55

organburner: Apr 10, 2011; This avatar helped buy Lowtax a new skeleton.

That's one of the things I don't quite understand with all this:

For a crypto thing to be worth X$ someone else has to be willing to spend X$ to buy it from you, otherwise it's an empty valuation.

So when I start playing crypto wow and get my first drop who is going to pay me 5$ for this green rat fang on a stick?

# ? Jan 19, 2022 09:57

Hel: Oct 9, 2012; Jokatgulm is tedium.
Jokatgulm is pain.
Jokatgulm is suffering.

organburner posted:

That's one of the things I don't quite understand with all this:

For a crypto thing to be worth X$ someone else has to be willing to spend X$ to buy it from you, otherwise it's an empty valuation.

So when I start playing crypto wow and get my first drop who is going to pay me 5$ for this green rat fang on a stick?

This is why crypto evangelism is so important to the scam, by convincing people to buy in, you can offload your trash to them in exchange for real money. Which is why they shuffle nuts between wallets to make it seem like the price is going up.

# ? Jan 19, 2022 10:10

Instruction Manuel: May 15, 2007; Yes, it is what it looks like!

Hey everyone just saw this come up on my feed and found it humorous because of the very British presentor:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwMjPWOailQ

# ? Jan 19, 2022 10:12

Philman: Jan 20, 2004

is crypto big enough to tank the global economy when it inevitably crashes yet?

when it does crash is my tamagotchi gonna starve?

# ? Jan 20, 2022 00:10

Dark_Swordmaster: Oct 31, 2011

You're going to eat your tamagotchi so you don't starve.

# ? Jan 20, 2022 02:35

Less Fat Luke: May 23, 2003; Exciting Lemon

Goddamnit I hate this poo poo:

https://twitter.com/9_volt_/status/1483870092962238465

# ? Jan 20, 2022 02:48

Gaius Marius: Oct 9, 2012

The gently caress is with people thinking kickstarter is an investment.

# ? Jan 20, 2022 02:50

Gaius Marius: Oct 9, 2012

Like you dumb motherfucker, you can just invest your loving money, loving put it in a goddamn index.

# ? Jan 20, 2022 02:51

Barudak: May 7, 2007

If I wanted to invest in a game in development, isnt that what Fig was for?

# ? Jan 20, 2022 02:53

Hub Cat: Aug 3, 2011; Trunk Lover

Barudak posted:

If I wanted to invest in a game in development, isnt that what Fig was for?

Hey so funny story, guess who is also an investor in Fig

# ? Jan 20, 2022 03:07

Kanos: Sep 6, 2006; was there a time when speedwagon didn't get trolled

Hel posted:

This is why crypto evangelism is so important to the scam, by convincing people to buy in, you can offload your trash to them in exchange for real money. Which is why they shuffle nuts between wallets to make it seem like the price is going up.

Yeah this is 100% the keystone to the entire scam. Crypto poo poo 100% only makes people actual real money as long as crypto holders can convince other people to buy in so there's a steady influx of new rubes to cash out on, which is why cryptobros are so furiously evangelical about it and are constantly trying to debate and convince others that it's the future and that they should totally buy in so they don't miss out. It's so resilient because it's self-perpetuating - each new generation of marks that get fleeced is desperate to recruit a new generation of marks so they themselves can cash out.

# ? Jan 20, 2022 03:15

Ghostlight: Sep 25, 2009; maybe for one second you can pause; try to step into another person's perspective, and understand that a watermelon is cursing me

Barudak posted:

If I wanted to invest in a game in development, isnt that what Fig was for?

https://twitter.com/DR_ILL/status/1483872773650927622

# ? Jan 20, 2022 03:37

Barudak: May 7, 2007

With this additional information, please, friends, lmao

# ? Jan 20, 2022 03:42

Lammasu: May 8, 2019; lawful Good Monster

This NFT thing reminds me of emu ranching in the 90s. Huge money was moved selling them for breading but no one actually ate them.

# ? Jan 20, 2022 05:28

Chloe Jessica: Nov 6, 2021; Pick 2.0

Lammasu posted:

This NFT thing reminds me of emu ranching in the 90s. Huge money was moved selling them for breading but no one actually ate them.

there was an emu field in the woods behind my house when i was a kid, it was pretty surreal

this was in the 00s though, did the fad carry on that long?

# ? Jan 20, 2022 05:34

Grondoth: Feb 18, 2011

Hel posted:

This is why crypto evangelism is so important to the scam, by convincing people to buy in, you can offload your trash to them in exchange for real money. Which is why they shuffle nuts between wallets to make it seem like the price is going up.

It's just a pyramid scheme, basically. If you get in early you can get rich by selling off the stuff you bought early to people who came late.

It's so dumb.

# ? Jan 20, 2022 06:02

organburner: Apr 10, 2011; This avatar helped buy Lowtax a new skeleton.

Grondoth posted:

It's just a pyramid scheme, basically. If you get in early you can get rich by selling off the stuff you bought early to people who came late.

It's so dumb.

Jesus Christ you can't just go around calling crypto a pyramid scheme!

It's a ponzi scheme!

# ? Jan 20, 2022 08:41

Barudak: May 7, 2007

Also, getting in early means "being the person who created the NFT"

# ? Jan 20, 2022 08:46

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# ? Apr 29, 2024 11:19

FishMcCool: Apr 9, 2021; lolcats are still funny; Fallen Rib

Gaius Marius posted:

Like you dumb motherfucker, you can just invest your loving money, loving put it in a goddamn Index.

Nef Anyo Liked this post. :thumbsup:

# ? Jan 20, 2022 12:49

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > The Emperor's $10,000 Clothes Receipt: NFTs, Blockchain, and Web3 In Gaming

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