Paid content in videogames (DLC, loot boxes, passes, currencies, "surprise mechanics" and - new! - pay more or wait!)

Drumstick wrote:

jawa_ wrote:NFTs are now in gaming.

Without reading further on, I knew it'd be Ubisoft.

Yeah, although all the big publishers are working on it, too, Drum. EA, Activision... they're all investing in NFT tech.

Can't quite get my head around this.. does this mean you could unlock buy a Sniper Rifle, with a gold skin and red foreskins with serial number 00001, and then it's the only one available ever?

Then after 4 years it's worthless because the sequel is out?

LewisD wrote:Can't quite get my head around this.. does this mean you could unlock buy a Sniper Rifle, with a gold skin and red foreskins with serial number 00001, and then it's the only one available ever?

Then after 4 years it's worthless because the sequel is out?

That's pretty much it, Lewis!

Potentially you'll be able to sell the item to someone else; although whether the game companies deliver a system for this aspect is another question.

This is just like the wonderful world of CSGO skin trading.
How someone can pay over $50K for a skin that brings no value other than a bit of willy waving is beyond me, but it happens.

LewisD wrote:Can't quite get my head around this.. does this mean you could unlock buy a Sniper Rifle, with a gold skin and red foreskins with serial number 00001, and then it's the only one available ever?

Then after 4 years it's worthless because the sequel is out?

Yes - and of course this has always been technically possible to implement and isn't some unique use of NFTs or blockchain.

I'm almost certain you could find a similar example of a unique weapon in an mmo, no NFTs required.

And as mommy says skin trading (on a greymarket) isn't anything new - the publishers just see that and want a cut, and are jumping on the NFT trend to get it.

Very few people in the "NFT" market are buying the art tokens for their own sake. (Why would they? The token doesn't confer any legal ownership of the art!) Many of the transactions involving these art tokens are scammers moving money around to create an illusion of demand. The goal is to trick rubes into believing the useless tokens are a good investment. It's all a big scam.

As you might expect, the art being made for the NFT scam is truly terrible. You need a unique image for each token to point to, so you draw a template (e.g. a face) and a few sets of decorations to overlay onto it (e.g. ten hair styles, ten skin tones, ten accessories), such that you can sell a token for every unique combination of decorations (e.g. 10x10x10 = 1000). This is obviously silly, but remember, it's just an excuse: it's the backstory to the con, it's only there to make it seem plausible to mugs.

And it's working! The narrative used in the NFT scam is now being widely repeated in uncritical news reports and so on, and that's having the cultural impact of popularising the idea that crap generative art might have value through uniqueness. An ugly portrait of a monkey with a hundred slightly different hats would have been dismissed as obviously without any value by everyone a year ago, but now some people think of that as "NFT art" and are willing to take it seriously to some extent (baffling, right?).

In videogames, people paying for some personal sense of ownership over jpegs is nothing new. FPS games have weapon skins, and a lot of gacha games basically revolve around the player wanting to collect and display art of their favourite anime characters, and so on. This is clearly very lucrative and videogames companies are of course always on the lookout for new and exciting ways to sell jpegs to their players.

Now they're talking about NFTs - but it being an "NFT" on a "blockchain" will be completely irrelevant to the user. That's just a box to tick so they can market it with a certain set of buzzwords. What these companies are really interested in is the generative art aspect that's sprung up around NFTs - the idea that some proportion of their userbase might be receptive to paying for unique assets, even if those assets are complete crap made with the absolute minimum effort imaginable.

For these companies it's just an opportunity to sell the laziest costumes and gun skins ever made. These "Ubisoft Digits" will make horse armour look like Bonaparte Crossing the Alps.

Good post.

LewisD wrote:Can't quite get my head around this.. does this mean you could unlock buy a Sniper Rifle, with a gold skin and red foreskins with serial number 00001, and then it's the only one available ever?

Then after 4 1 year it's worthless because the sequel is out?

Fixed, and yes. You get a silly in game item with a unique number and a list of who has owned it before, and that matters for some reason. I imagine ones with numbers such as 69 and 420 will become valuable, as will ones owned by YouTubers/streamers. I think I have picked the right time to broadly stop caring about videogames...

Trelliz wrote:

LewisD wrote:Can't quite get my head around this.. does this mean you could unlock buy a Sniper Rifle, with a gold skin and red foreskins with serial number 00001, and then it's the only one available ever?

Then after 4 1 year it's worthless because the sequel is out?

Fixed, and yes. You get a silly in game item with a unique number and a list of who has owned it before, and that matters for some reason. I imagine ones with numbers such as 69 and 420 will become valuable, as will ones owned by YouTubers/streamers. I think I have picked the right time to broadly stop caring about videogames...

There is going to be a fight over a picture of a monkey wearing baseball cap with the unique code 1488 and humanity will have officially failed.

Ironhide wrote:Dear Ubisoft ,

Please strawberry float off and die.

Sincerely, Everyone.

This. For so many reasons.

jawa_ wrote:

Drumstick wrote:

jawa_ wrote:NFTs are now in gaming.

Without reading further on, I knew it'd be Ubisoft.

Yeah, although all the big publishers are working on it, too, Drum. EA, Activision... they're all investing in NFT tech.

That's not all the big publishers though. Not yet at least. It's all the big awful Western publishers.

Anyway, should you need it (and you really shouldn't), another reason not to touch Ubi or ActiBlizz with a barge pole.

site23 wrote:Very few people in the "NFT" market are buying the art tokens for their own sake. (Why would they? The token doesn't confer any legal ownership of the art!) Many of the transactions involving these art tokens are scammers moving money around to create an illusion of demand. The goal is to trick rubes into believing the useless tokens are a good investment. It's all a big scam.

As you might expect, the art being made for the NFT scam is truly terrible. You need a unique image for each token to point to, so you draw a template (e.g. a face) and a few sets of decorations to overlay onto it (e.g. ten hair styles, ten skin tones, ten accessories), such that you can sell a token for every unique combination of decorations (e.g. 10x10x10 = 1000). This is obviously silly, but remember, it's just an excuse: it's the backstory to the con, it's only there to make it seem plausible to mugs.

And it's working! The narrative used in the NFT scam is now being widely repeated in uncritical news reports and so on, and that's having the cultural impact of popularising the idea that crap generative art might have value through uniqueness. An ugly portrait of a monkey with a hundred slightly different hats would have been dismissed as obviously without any value by everyone a year ago, but now some people think of that as "NFT art" and are willing to take it seriously to some extent (baffling, right?).

In videogames, people paying for some personal sense of ownership over jpegs is nothing new. FPS games have weapon skins, and a lot of gacha games basically revolve around the player wanting to collect and display art of their favourite anime characters, and so on. This is clearly very lucrative and videogames companies are of course always on the lookout for new and exciting ways to sell jpegs to their players.

Now they're talking about NFTs - but it being an "NFT" on a "blockchain" will be completely irrelevant to the user. That's just a box to tick so they can market it with a certain set of buzzwords. What these companies are really interested in is the generative art aspect that's sprung up around NFTs - the idea that some proportion of their userbase might be receptive to paying for unique assets, even if those assets are complete crap made with the absolute minimum effort imaginable.

For these companies it's just an opportunity to sell the laziest costumes and gun skins ever made. These "Ubisoft Digits" will make horse armour look like Bonaparte Crossing the Alps.

Super post and absolutely spot on.

Stalker 2 getting in on the NFT bullshit train

"Considering the global trends in gaming, we can do more than just offer an immersive game experience," GSC Game World CEO Evgeniy Grygorovych said. "Our players can get a deeper presence in the game, and we will give them this opportunity by presenting the first AAA game with a unique meta experience."

Also of course Peter Molyneux is getting in on this gooseberry fool too, having sold £40 MILLION in NFTs for his new "game" that isn't even out yet

"Owning a Land NFT allows you to start your own in-game blockchain business association in Legacy. You will be able to play Legacy, while earning and owning your gameplay,"..."Crucially, as a business association owner, you will have access to Legacy Keys. These items can be lent to other people who want to start an in-game business in Legacy, making them your in-game Business Partners. As part of your association, they will share a portion of their earned LegacyCoin with you."

I don't fully understand NFTs or "the Metaverse" but I know that gaming companies will be using them to make more money from us and so this already pisses me off.

I am harrumphing!

It makes perfect sense that Peter Molyneux would make $40 million off an unreleased game by selling NFTs

I hope the intention is for the game to never come out and all the people speculatively buying virtual land to become virtual landlords in the hope of running profitable virtual business at the expense of other virtual landlords to all lose their money.

No idea what an NFT is.

Buffalo wrote:No idea what an NFT is.

It stands for "Next Financial Toss" and it's a method whereby companies will try to extract more money from you whilst simultaneously destroying natural resources. It's the way forward for videogaming .

Buffalo wrote:No idea what an NFT is.

That's ok, having just read the interview The Verge did with Peter Molyneux about this game I don't think he has any idea either.

Trelliz wrote:Stalker 2 getting in on the NFT bullshit train

"Considering the global trends in gaming, we can do more than just offer an immersive game experience," GSC Game World CEO Evgeniy Grygorovych said. "Our players can get a deeper presence in the game, and we will give them this opportunity by presenting the first AAA game with a unique meta experience."

They just needed to make the strawberry floating game, nothing else. They done strawberry floated it.

twitter.com/MisterABK/status/1471151788099358722

What a load of bullshit (the tweet above, and NFTs in general)

Consumers have time and time again proved themselves to be utter morons though, so I wouldn't be surprised to see people throwing money at something like this, and publishers earning a fortune as a result. Can't wait to see EA's take on NFTs