The fact that co-founder of Zynga and creative director of FarmVille 2 are behind this enterprise is extremely telling.<p>A few thoughts:<p>1. There is a small-but-non-trivial segment of gamers that are willing to spend huge amounts of money for in-game privileges.<p>2. There is a similar, somewhat-overlapping segment of gamers willing to spend huge amounts of time on a game, if that huge amount of time is rewarded with things that can't be accessed any other way (think grinding for top-tier rewards in a game like Path of Exile, some things just aren't accessible if you don't spend 1000+ hours)<p>3. Asia is driving the leading edge of game monetization now, and that leading edge is gacha games (lootbox mechanics/disguised digital slot machines).<p>Looks like a couple of experts on extracting money from casual gamers have turned their attention to the whale/core gamers, and this attempt is blockchain-flavored. As a sibling comment (duskwuff) pointed out, blockchain is irrelevant to the actual value in-game of the item. The devs can change the game world to make your $1k sword irrelevant, and based on how these kinds of games usually go, they probably will - and the whale gamers will gladly open up their wallets to gamble on the latest and greatest.<p>There is nothing innovative or exciting about Mirandus at all, unless you are looking for the fastest and most efficient way to fleece gamers - in fact, the Minecraft aesthetic feels like a little bit of a giveaway to the devs' real goals - lower the technical requirements to cast as wide a net as possible to pull in as many whales as possible.<p>Maybe I'm wrong and this is the start of an Ethereum-powered future where digital goods are freed from platforms, but I doubt it. Most likely this is a digital cash grab that will launch to massive early-backer-funded fanfare, but will sink into the abyss of forgotten gacha games, once the devs have made their millions and start looking for a new target. Just like all the others.
Man, I really don't get the point of this. (And I mean the game in general, not just the sale of this franchise.) It's like blockchain play-acting.<p>Using a blockchain to track the status of objects which only exist within an online game, and which are only accessible within that game, makes no sense to me. Ultimately, the status of those objects is subject to the whims of the game and its operator, not the blockchain -- since they control the rules of the game. If they want to make the game stop recognizing your "property", or change what it represents in game, that's always something they can do; throwing a blockchain at it doesn't change that.<p>Also: I can't help but feel really suspicious about a game whose primary feature appears to be its monetization strategy, rather than its gameplay. (Read the rest of the blog -- there's virtually nothing in there about what the game actually is!) Does anyone actually play these games to have fun, or is it just a way for cryptocurrency fans to find even more esoteric things to invest in?
I read a few sentences and am wondering what an NFT is. I’m familiar with OpenSea but there really is not much explanation here for people not already deeply embedded in this world.
Note for those surprised by the price tag and talking about whales: this is not like your typical in-game purchase like a special sword, unique mount, or even skins in CS:GO. These tokens implement core gameplay functionality that other players will have to pay to use -- think dungeons in Legend of Zelda, but if another player could own a dungeon and you had to pay them to go inside. So really, these people are buying a stake in the game with the expectation of profiting if the game is a success.<p>I expect the SEC will be all over this once they catch up. It took them long enough to take action against XRP though which is pretty open-and-shut, so this might take a while.
So this is some kind of blockchain thing? The article just kind of dives in and I’m lacking context, but it seems interesting. Can anyone give a brief overview?
Is there a game in there somewhere? Or just another way to speculate/gamble on cryptononsense?<p>(Wasn't Star Citizen bad enough for monetizing not-yet-created in-game items?)
NFT-releated: The Nine Most Innovative Crypto Artists of 2020<p><a href="https://decrypt.co/52447/the-nine-most-innovative-crypto-artists-of-2020" rel="nofollow">https://decrypt.co/52447/the-nine-most-innovative-crypto-art...</a><p>$MEME would make Duchamp proud ;)<p><a href="https://dontbuymeme.com/" rel="nofollow">https://dontbuymeme.com/</a>