Small rant re: Linus vs NFT's

[CryptOGamers]

As you can tell by my name I am a crypto fanboy, but try to consider the below before applying any bias.

It seems that when NFT's are brought up on the channels they are always laser-focused on the 'picture-trading scam' that NFT's are most well-known for. I totally understand why this is the main talking point as it's the most 'popular' part of NFT's right now. But talking so negatively about the NFT ecosystem as a whole is short-sighted.

If you think NFT's == pictures, just stop. You're wrong.

I started learning about crypto in 2011 because I found the technology interesting, well before it was drawing in droves of the get-rich-quick. Back then it was nearly impossible to find anyone who took the tech seriously, even among hardcore tech enthusiasts. 'Nerd-money, scam, pyramid scheme, it will never work, lulz etc.' Today there is still a very large, possibly majority, of people who are automatically against anything crypto or related to it. Time has proven that not having an open mind about this tech and how it can potentially be a big deal was a gigantic mistake.

 

There are a myriad of different use-cases for NFT's. The 'picture-trading' bubble that is ongoing is just one of the simplest that has now built up a small amount of infrastructure around it that enables average users to access it, similar to the ~2017 'ICO bubble' that occurred after Ethereum tokenization became accessible to everyday users. Disregarding NFT's just because of the current bubble would be no different than disregarding crypto and all the projects built on it during and after the ICO bubble ... which would be insanely short-sighted.

 

I won't go into specifics as I would have to name-drop specific tokens/projects and don't want to be accused of shilling, but how do these gaming NFT-uses sound:

1. Re-sell your Steam games, items, skins, etc. for cash on the secondary market, fully sanctioned and encouraged by developers and publishers
2. Allow devs to create cross-game items and currency. Take your skins to other games, or use your WoW gold in FFXI? Easy.
3. Rent out your rare items - or games themselves - for an income with no chance of theft. You have 500 games in your digital library? Why not let it work for you when you're not using them. 100% possible.
4. Modders could create content (e.g. a dungeon) and get rewarded by players who interact with their content, even without the players paying for it themselves. (e.g. if the game has a tradable & valued currency, a portion of the found loot goes to the modder)

Maybe I'm just too involved in the space as all of that stuff is very old news to me. I know all of it is coming. Very big industry names talked about here daily are behind some of it. Even just #1 by itself will cause industry-changing waves throughout the gaming scene, and it's not far from public release.

Seeing all of that boiled down to 'ape picture lame, NFT bad jajajaja' is just ... SMH.

[Zando_]

20 hours ago, CryptOGamers said:

Re-sell your Steam games, items, skins, etc. for cash on the secondary market, fully sanctioned and encouraged by developers and publishers

You can do this without NFTs or other blockchain tech.

20 hours ago, CryptOGamers said:

Allow devs to create cross-game items and currency. Take your skins to other games, or use your WoW gold in FFXI? Easy.

Not feasible, at least not on any sort of scale that would make an impact. I don't think you understand how games are made, or even something as basic as differences between engines. 

20 hours ago, CryptOGamers said:

Rent out your rare items - or games themselves - for an income with no chance of theft. You have 500 games in your digital library? Why not let it work for you when you're not using them. 100% possible.

You can already do this, for free, by setting your friends up with the family sharing feature on steam and many other platforms. Why would you charge for that? Also even if you wanted to, why would someone rent the game from you instead of just buying it off the summer sale for $5 or something. Also this could be done without the need for blockchain, and you'd have legal recourse if you were robbed

20 hours ago, CryptOGamers said:

Modders could create content (e.g. a dungeon) and get rewarded by players who interact with their content, even without the players paying for it themselves. (e.g. if the game has a tradable & valued currency, a portion of the found loot goes to the modder)

You can do this without NFTs or other blockchain tech. 

20 hours ago, CryptOGamers said:

If you think NFT's == pictures, just stop. You're wrong.

You are correct here, from my understanding the NFT is specifically the token the image represents, and you have no rights to the image itself.

 

Which makes it even more silly, you're just buying a ticket in a set of tickets someone made up, merely so you can say you have the ticket, and maybe sell it to someone else who wants that ticket more, so then they can say they have that ticket in the set of tickets. But anyone can make up and "mint" their own set of tickets, so what's the point of them to begin with?

 

Most of the problems with crypto are that none of it solves anything without creating more issues. The coins are just as imaginary as "real" money without the backing of legal and federal entities (which also has the fun side effect of leaving you with no legal recourse if you are robbed), and the NFTs are about as valuable as paying to name a star. And any arguments for them to be actually tied to anything useful is just an attempt to force scarcity in an inherently non-scarce medium, purely to make a quick buck. All the things people say NFTs could be used for, can either already be done with current tech and without the drawbacks of blockchain, or are so impractical and ignorant that they were never feasible to begin with. 

[Spotty]

5 minutes ago, CryptOGamers said:

Allow devs to create cross-game items and currency. Take your skins to other games, or use your WoW gold in FFXI? Easy.

That doesn't make any sense. When you buy DLC or skins it's made specifically for that game. What good would my oblivion horse armour be in payday 2? Or my pubg schoolgirl outfit in civilization VI? There's no way for me to use it in that game. Even with skins like outfits where it might make sense to transfer them over it would still require developers of other games to create that skin/outfit in their game to support it so that it renders on screen in game, which is additional work for which they're not going to be paid for since it was originally purchased for a different game.

You mention using WoW gold in FFIV... Who would want that? It wouldn't be good for either games economy and games like MMOs wouldn't be fun if you just transferred assets over from a different game.

 

9 minutes ago, CryptOGamers said:

Re-sell your Steam games, items, skins, etc. for cash on the secondary market, fully sanctioned and encouraged by developers and publishers

You don't need NFTs to do this. Steam marketplace already allows selling skins and items to other players. They could make it so you can transfer/sell your games to different people if they really want to, but there's zero incentive for publishers to allow that (they'd rather get a new sale) and honestly I wouldn't want it to be possible to transfer all the games in my library to another account, that would be a wet dream for account hijackers who could empty out steam accounts of all the games in the library.

[Zando_]

5 minutes ago, Spotty said:

Even with skins like outfits where it might make sense to transfer them over it would still require developers of other games to create that skin/outfit in their game to support it so that it renders on screen in game, which is additional work for which they're not going to be paid for since it was originally purchased for a different game.

Oh yeah, another note onto this, every player would now have to download those assets even though they couldn't use them. Increasing the install size for everyone at no benefit to anyone but the single person owning that skin. 

[Arika]

19 minutes ago, CryptOGamers said:

, but how do these gaming NFT-uses sound:

Until any of the below is actually used in real life, it's pointless to try and make this argument. There is a lot of tech out there that COULD be used for something great, but its not, and is used for something asanine or just as scammy as NFTs currently are.

[Kilrah]

1 hour ago, CryptOGamers said:

Disregarding NFT's just because of the current bubble would be no different than disregarding crypto and all the projects built on it during and after the ICO bubble ... which would be insanely short-sighted.

Most people who are against NFTs are against crypto in general...

Crypto enthusiasts have for about a decade been saying "yeah the current popular thing is not great, but the tech is capable of much better stuff!"... but they still haven't shown an example of that yet.

 

1 hour ago, CryptOGamers said:

• Re-sell your Steam games, items, skins, etc. for cash on the secondary market, fully sanctioned and encouraged by developers and publishers
• Allow devs to create cross-game items and currency. Take your skins to other games, or use your WoW gold in FFXI? Easy.
• Rent out your rare items - or games themselves - for an income with no chance of theft. You have 500 games in your digital library? Why not let it work for you when you're not using them. 100% possible.
• Modders could create content (e.g. a dungeon) and get rewarded by players who interact with their content, even without the players paying for it themselves. (e.g. if the game has a tradable & valued currency, a portion of the found loot goes to the modder)

None of these require NFTs, blockchain or crypto. 

Blockchain is just a storage/database medium like any other except for the location it's stored at and how terribly inefficient it is, anything done with it could be done with any standard database, usually better. 

 

The reason these things don't exist isn't that the tech needed to make it doesn't exist, it's because the market actors involved aren't interested in making it happen, or at least not enough to put the effort in.

If they end up doing it with NFTs it'll just be because they see an opportunity to cash in on the artificially-generated hype, not because the tech is the miracle that was needed to make it happen i.e. again the quick buck.

 

Dropping that here is now inevitable for everyone's information too:

 

It's long but detailed and worth watching for someone really interested in the whole crypto topic.

[KaitouX]

10 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

Which makes it even more silly, you're just buying a ticket in a set of tickets someone made up, merely so you can say you have the ticket, and maybe sell it to someone else who wants that ticket more, so then they can say they have that ticket in the set of tickets. But anyone can make up and "mint" their own set of tickets, so what's the point of them to begin with?

Also quite often those images that are sold as NFTs are just links to the image somewhere else, because it would be unfeasible to store the images themselves in the blockchain. Meaning that those images will disappear when the server they are stored at go down, so the blockchain will just keep a dead link there.

[Zando_]

Just now, KaitouX said:

Also quite often those images that are sold as NFTs are just links to the image somewhere else, because it would be unfeasible to store the images themselves in the blockchain. Meaning that those images will disappear when the server they are stored at go down, so the blockchain will just keep a dead link there.

Yeah, they're just linked to the token so people feel like they actually bought something, and not just a ticket from a set of tickets someone made up because they wanted to sell tickets to nothing. 

[Chris Pratt]

You need to consider what Linus Tech Tips is. Although they cover crypto on occasion, they do so from the place of this is a thing happening in tech, not as an actual source for crypto info. There's plenty of channels and content producers for that. It's the everyman's perspective, which admittedly isn't going to play to someone who lives and breathes crypto.

 

In that regard, whatever NFTs could be, LTT covers what they are, and what they are currently is scammy crap. The majority of LTT viewers aren't tuning in because they want to get in depth knowledge about what NFTs are and how they could be utilized in a perfect world, but rather, because they heard EA is making NFTs, for example, and they want to know what that means for them: i.e. nothing good.

 

Could LTT do more to differentiate what NFTs actually are versus how they're being used? Perhaps. However, again, that's not the type of content they produce, and the majority of viewers probably don't care.

[Poinkachu]

1 hour ago, CryptOGamers said:

I won't go into specifics as I would have to name-drop specific tokens/projects and don't want to be accused of shilling, but how do these gaming NFT-uses sound:

1. Re-sell your Steam games, items, skins, etc. for cash on the secondary market, fully sanctioned and encouraged by developers and publishers

1. Aaand.... why game devs wants players to be able to resell their skins ?  that's less money. They can implement this anytime they want too, without use of blockchain/NFT. Yet they don't, there must be a reason. Maybe profit?

If you sold a jeans to Customer A 10 days ago then Customer A don't want it anymore, will you say to potential-Customer B : "Hey man, don't buy from me, please buy from Customer A" ??

And if we want an example of this being implemented, Diablo 3 have an Auction House for in-game items bid and bought using real money btw. It's not illegal, it's made so by the devs.

Quote

Allow devs to create cross-game items and currency. Take your skins to other games, or use your WoW gold in FFXI? Easy.

2. I happen to have played both WoW and FF11, and I can say with confidence, this ability will break the game. Gold is waaay easier to get than Gil. And... oh... if you played WoW or FF11, surely you know "CGF" and how crazy they were / are with their "zombie army". Both games even made various updates to battle CGF, that often made normal player's life harder. Remember how bad it was leveling at Valkurm Dunes / Qufim when there's "Zombie Army" around leveling 18 characters at once with multiple escorts ?  Remember how many claim bots, search bots, fishing bots, mining bots?

 

Again, it's doable without the use of NFT, Just need Blizzard & SquareEnix to cooperate together, each game have been running for like... 16-18years now, Have they?. They haven't. Not when they were at their peak time, neither now, when they are already waned.

Simplest way ? Both companies could just legalize buying/selling in-game currency instead of banning. Many websites sells/buys them.
Heck, FFXI is seriously strict (at the very least up until the last time I logged on) when it comes to buying in-game currency.

Quote

Rent out your rare items - or games themselves - for an income with no chance of theft. You have 500 games in your digital library? Why not let it work for you when you're not using them. 100% possible.

3. Again, why would a game dev wants players to be able to rent out their digital copy, especially en masse?  That's less buyer for them. They'd take off the ability to share games with family members if they can.

 

As for items..., Both WoW & FFXI (also various other MMO) even implemented Account-Bound or Character-Bound items just so it can't be traded. Part of it so that it can't be stolen, part of it is to make sure you can't give it to someone else when you're bored with it. I mean, Blizzard could've made all those special mounts non account-bound, yet they didn't. Heck, I'm sure they thought of making it Character-Bound first.

Quote

Modders could create content (e.g. a dungeon) and get rewarded by players who interact with their content, even without the players paying for it themselves. (e.g. if the game has a tradable & valued currency, a portion of the found loot goes to the modder)

4. Pretty sure even now modders can be rewarded, in real money.

[Blademaster91]

35 minutes ago, CryptOGamers said:

Allow devs to create cross-game items and currency. Take your skins to other games, or use your WoW gold in FFXI? Easy.

This sounds a lot like microtransactions, everyone has to download the content, but cannot use it unless you pay extra.

And it sounds like a lot of work most devs aren't going to want to do, and publishers wouldn't like it either as it means you're spending money on other games.

35 minutes ago, CryptOGamers said:

Rent out your rare items - or games themselves - for an income with no chance of theft. You have 500 games in your digital library? Why not let it work for you when you're not using them. 100% possible.

Why are NFT's or blockchain necessary to rent out items? A standard storefront would be better, and you'd be able to get your games back in case someone decided to borrow them without giving anything back.

36 minutes ago, CryptOGamers said:

Modders could create content (e.g. a dungeon) and get rewarded by players who interact with their content, even without the players paying for it themselves. (e.g. if the game has a tradable & valued currency, a portion of the found loot goes to the modder)

Why not just pay the modders for the items with real currency?

NFT's are just something scammy, while it could be used for better things, I haven't been convinced it isn't anything more than a money laundering scam. And with games, NFT's sounds like another way to sell microtranactions with a different name, based on hype companies are trying to capitalize on, but so far a lot of people seem to think its a money grabbing scheme.

[CT854]

30 minutes ago, CryptOGamers said:

Maybe I'm just too involved in the space as all of that stuff is very old news to me. I know all of it is coming. Very big industry names talked about here daily are behind some of it. Even just #1 by itself will cause industry-changing waves throughout the gaming scene, and it's not far from public release.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the reason why people are behind it aren't excited for it because they genuinely believe that blockchain tech can do things that aren't currently possible, but because it's convenient to capitalize on the hype so they can make themselves more money without actually making things more efficient.

 

Even as a general critic of crypto, NFTs, and blockchain, I can appreciate the perspective of someone who truly believes in its technology. However, I have yet to see a single proposed example of blockchain utilization that is (a) impossible to implement without blockchain, (b) commercially viable, and (c) measurably more efficient and convenient than competing measures, if they exist. Blockchain is still a subject of immense hype, and hype is a dangerously vibrant yet unsustainable market without considerable market pressure. If everybody decided streetwear like Supreme was lame, its value would plummet overnight. Their value would be slightly buttressed by the fact that their drops are limited which creates supply pressure, but it's still primarily a hype-driven economy. I don't see how blockchain tech is, at present, any different.

[Poinkachu]

2 minutes ago, CT854 said:

I have a sneaking suspicion that the reason why people are behind it aren't excited for it because they genuinely believe that blockchain tech can do things that aren't currently possible, but because it's convenient to capitalize on the hype so they can make themselves more money without actually making things more efficient.

 

Even as a general critic of crypto, NFTs, and blockchain, I can appreciate the perspective of someone who truly believes in its technology. However, I have yet to see a single proposed example of blockchain utilization that is (a) impossible to implement without blockchain, (b) commercially viable, and (c) measurably more efficient and convenient than competing measures, if they exist. Blockchain is still a subject of immense hype, and hype is a dangerously vibrant yet unsustainable market without considerable market pressure. If everybody decided streetwear like Supreme was lame, its value would plummet overnight. Their value would be slightly buttressed by the fact that their drops are limited which creates supply pressure, but it's still primarily a hype-driven economy. I don't see how blockchain tech is, at present, any different.

Ugh... now you make me remember Supreme brick.
XD

[CT854]

5 minutes ago, Poinkachu said:

Ugh... now you make me remember Supreme brick.
XD

The Supreme Brick was the manifestation of the present GPU market before the chip shortage ever happened.

 

I'm surprised nobody's drawn comparisons between it and the RX 6500XT...

 

For the uninitiated:

Spoiler

 

[whm1974]

AS far as #3 goes, I'm sure actual Copyright Holder will have issues with you Renting Out your games. In other words, you will get majorly sued.

[da na]

OP been real quiet since these good arguments dropped

But yes, there's a major issue with things being locked to each game

[Spotty]

2 hours ago, CryptOGamers said:

Re-sell your Steam games, items, skins, etc. for cash on the secondary market, fully sanctioned and encouraged by developers and publishers

One thought I just had about this is lootboxes. Currently they're in a bit of a grey area in a lot of regions regarding whether or not they are classed as gambling. One of the arguments the game publishers have for them not being gambling is it's not possible to transfer them back to real world assets/cash. If games with random chance lootboxes would allow players to sell those items on a secondary market it could result in those games being classified as gambling in even more regions, something the game publishers (*cough* EA *cough*) have been fighting against.

[Quackers101]

What one could do with this data, if it's really feasible?
rant

Spoiler

Is to create an universal data set that can be used in most games, but this means that some balance might have to be adjusted or being able to adjust the "NFT item".

 

From having the skin (texture + UV), model set, animation data, stats of the item and etc. Again issues around custom games with shaders or items that works differently. then you just upload the data, get the textures and animation, but what about particles/effects? sound? wouldn't this be a lot of data compared to just an image to the resolution being used? Or would they have their own AI's that is trained to reproduce animation and visuals to sound effects? Also would be limited towards more dynamic items that maybe have more modes, physics, abilities, etc. Maybe an universal program can cover some of that, but certain aspects would be very basic?

(sorta like resource/tool/weapon mods in minecraft)

 

First use would likely be limited to simple click + button abilities (0 or 2-4 max), like guns or generic melee, while bows and stuff like that could be harder.

Spoiler

The selling part could become a major scam, with no refund in sight.

Only through their platform, then it's not much different from microtransaction items only that it can be used between games or hold a longer value or break the game or its value. Also how will this impact developers both in the legal aspects and harassment? If one suddenly tanked a 2 million priced item by a bug or update or the hate that will be gathered around these items. If it also made the "rich richer". Where a more stable price and asset can be a lot more fun and be used in better ways. One could say steam items are a bit like those NFT items, which had a lot of issues too and in how the value is set or using bots.

Which can be another concern, bots vs players and players trying to survive the attacks on gameplay and scaling from people using bots. Kind of what people did in WoW and RuneScape, some to escape the grind

[8tg]

NFT stands for “no female touch”

 

[Arika]

7 minutes ago, 8tg said:

NFT stands for “no female touch”

 

+1

 

I wouldn't date anyone that is "invested" in/praises NFTs.

[alberto23456]

I was gonna write something big but reconsidered haha.

 

To me, NFTs in the gaming space, at least the way they've been discussed in this topic, I don't think will entirely be what they're used for.

 

Like many have said above, some of the proposed ideas for use cases either wouldn't exactly work, or would just be easier to implement in another way.

 

Crypto and blockchain technology is infant. So many ideas, so many potential use cases, its the wild west right now.

 

NFTs are cool, and I believe will stay, but perhaps not in the way we currently see them. 

I don't quite understand the current NFT space, but I'm still watching, as theres more to come. More use cases that could actually solve real issues and make it easier to do tasks that currently, require immense amounts of time and effort.

 

I'd just watch the space. Let whoever, think whatever, and say whatever they like, it's the internet haha.

 

I don't think LTT are coming from a place of hatred towards NFTs. I just think, like many, it's confusing and hyped af (for the CURRENT NFT space, not for NFTs and crypto as a whole).

[TrixieTang]

5 hours ago, CryptOGamers said:

I won't go into specifics as I would have to name-drop specific tokens/projects and don't want to be accused of shilling, but how do these gaming NFT-uses sound:

1. Re-sell your Steam games, items, skins, etc. for cash on the secondary market, fully sanctioned and encouraged by developers and publishers
2. Allow devs to create cross-game items and currency. Take your skins to other games, or use your WoW gold in FFXI? Easy.
3. Rent out your rare items - or games themselves - for an income with no chance of theft. You have 500 games in your digital library? Why not let it work for you when you're not using them. 100% possible.
4. Modders could create content (e.g. a dungeon) and get rewarded by players who interact with their content, even without the players paying for it themselves. (e.g. if the game has a tradable & valued currency, a portion of the found loot goes to the modder)

The ones that are actually feasible and not just random word salad sound like they'd be things worth implementing if they did it without NFTs.

[Quackers101]

2 minutes ago, TrixieTang said:

The ones that are actually feasible and not just random word salad sound like they'd be things worth implementing if they did it without NFTs.

but but, my % cut! and they will be up after our dead servers, isn't that fun?

[Error 52]

Quote

I won't go into specifics as I would have to name-drop specific tokens/projects and don't want to be accused of shilling, but how do these gaming NFT-uses sound:

1. Re-sell your Steam games, items, skins, etc. for cash on the secondary market, fully sanctioned and encouraged by developers and publishers
2. Allow devs to create cross-game items and currency. Take your skins to other games, or use your WoW gold in FFXI? Easy.
3. Rent out your rare items - or games themselves - for an income with no chance of theft. You have 500 games in your digital library? Why not let it work for you when you're not using them. 100% possible.
4. Modders could create content (e.g. a dungeon) and get rewarded by players who interact with their content, even without the players paying for it themselves. (e.g. if the game has a tradable & valued currency, a portion of the found loot goes to the modder)

1. Yes, if only Steam had the ability to sell items and skins that you earn in games onto a marketplace. What a novel, crazy idea. Valve should really get on implementing that. OH WAIT.

 

Hell, the Steam marketplace is already notorious for how much money laundering goes through it. NFT gaming would be that x100.

 

2. Yeah, have fun pitching that to the publishers.

 

"I think we should spend a lot of time and money adding skins from other, competing games into our own, that way our rivals can make all the money from something we spent time implementing into our own gam- hey, where are you going?"

 

Not to mention that also sounds kinda terrible regardless. Most games aren't Fortnite, they aren't insane mashups that let you play as the Xenomorph doing the Gangnam Style in front of racially segregated bathrooms. Like, what, would I be able to bring my Warcraft character into Halo? That'd look absolutely ridiculous. And don't get me started on the idea of transferring items and currency across games, jesus christ.

 

Also: not something that needs NFTs either. There are PS1 games that unlocked items and easter eggs for having another game's save on the memory card. Remember Psycho Mantis? Or, come to think of it, you know Pokémon, that ludicriously popular franchise that has this exact thing as one of the core tenants?

 

3. Steam has had "Family Sharing" for a long-ass time now. Also, why would I rent a game when I could just, y'know, buy it on sale?

 

4. Games giving you rewards for people using your custom content is not exactly a new idea. Forza does it, GTA Online does it, Ubisoft even had a now-defunct free-to-play game based around that exact idea.

[Jaesop]

Talking about what NFTs could be used for isn't particularly compelling when they aren't used for that, and even less so when all of those things could be done without them. It's a tool to grift.