Sega calls video games that use blockchain technology 'boring'
Sega calls video games that use blockchain technology 'boring'
Shuji Utsumi, Sega’s co-CEO, comments in a new statement that there is no point in implementing blockchain technology if it doesn’t make games ‘fun’. Sega...
Shuji Utsumi, Sega’s co-CEO, comments in a new statement that there is no point in implementing blockchain technology if it doesn’t make games ‘fun’.
He is right.
We're at the stage of capitalist indoctrination where even the games we play have to generate a sellable artifact of some sort or another. The number of games I see on the app store where you pretend to buy and sell land using real money has kinda become ridiculous.
Or better yet, games where you get monopoly money for pretending to do a job in the game
I have never been able to figure out the answer to this, so maybe someone here knows: exactly how does one implement blockchain technology into a game, and what's the purpose of doing so? Like in terms of actual gameplay, what's it supposed to achieve? Is there a valid reason you'd want to include it?
There's no reason, and there never, ever, ever will be. Ever.
There's a temptation for a lot of people to shrug their shoulders and admit to themselves that it's a complicated topic outside of their reach, but it's honestly not. Like any technology, there's two sides to it: the implementation and the execution. The implementation is admittedly quite complicated and even honestly a little cool if you're a techie, but the execution is very simple. We know it's an append only database with a fully public history. That's all it is. So ask yourself how you could ever make that an interesting part of a game that would entice players to ... anything really. At best/worst it'll be used to introduce artificial scarcity and value which most people who just want to have fun playing games aren't clamoring for.
But more to the point, anything stored in a database needs to be actionable by a governing body. In terms of videogames, this is the game itself. The game is the authority on what can and can't be done with the data stored in the blockchain, you can't change the rules of the game, they're hard coded. So why bother having it publicly available on the blockchain at all? Sorry, not sure if I'm making my points clear enough, but does that follow? There's zero benefit to the public blockchain vs. an internal database because the game is the final authority and going to action on it the same either way. Owning something on the blockchain is useless, anyone who knows anything about games at all always knew that line about transferring items between games is total BS.
Any cryptobros already furiously typing out a response, don't bother. I'll argue any worthwhile points you might try to make, but I've heard most of the arguments before and they just don't even bear responding to so ya know ...
The only plausible use case I could come up with is if a game company earnestly and legitimately wants to allow but outsource a real-money marketplace. As a cost saving measure for their own benefit.
If e.g. Diablo allowed legendaries to be owned based on an NFT, offered zero opinion on its legitimacy, said "whelp nothing we can do" to customers losing their items to scams or accidents, and didn't add any smart contract taxation or other shenanigans, it could work.
It wouldn't improve the game for the players, but it would finally be a legitimate use case that improved something for someone without being a pixellated ponzi scheme.
What do you think about arguments for using it in cross-game "metaverse" type trading? It's another buzzword but it would make centralization of the data hard to impossible.
My intuition is we're seeing the first wave of snake oil salesmen adopting Animal Magnetism Quantum Whatsits to Manifest your Holograms who poisoned the well and drove everyone away, then in 10-20 years someone will have a good idea using it at which point the scammers are no longer around to ruin it for everyone. What do you think of that idea?
Unless the game was some decentralized open source game, but I'm having a hard time imagining a game like that also needing blockchain tech, outside of maybe having a record of games played for speedrunning purposes, but that's extremely niche.
It's all just buzzword bingo.
We can use the blockchain to track ownership of in game items!
That's just called a database. Databases on a central account server are several magnitudes more efficient. Using blockchains for this is stupid.
You can transfer game items from one game to another game!
This would be a ton of efforts on part of the devs, and even then it wouldn't really work in most cases because it turns out different games are different games. And even when it does the player experience of being handed end game items when starting a game is also questionable. Even if blockchains for games catch on, this idea never will.
The entire point of the blockchain is to create a decentralised zero trust database, but even if there are legitimate use cases for such a thing (which I'm not convinced of myself), games aren't one of them.
The reason the blockchain pops up in games (and everything else) is that cryptocurrencies have an extreme illiquidity problem and the crypto "millionaires/billionaires" need new fools to buy cryptocoins so they can turn their illiquid cryptocoin "fortunes" into actual fortunes. This is why NFTs exist, this is why Axie Infinity (which is just NFTs with a terrible game built around them) exists, and sometimes they also dupe established companies into motioning something in the direction of "the future" (every crypto game project by an actual game studio).
NFTs: Block chain based money laundering.
But I guess BCBML didn't sound as good.That’s just called a database.
That's the rub. Eventually blockchain will be useful for tracking ownership of things like land and cars, whose current ownership is tracked by an analog token minted by a a validator and stored offline (which is to say, the government has a piece of paper on file). I recently bought a house, and I had to buy mortgage insurance in case it turns out that 50 years ago someone fraudulently or mistakenly sold this house to someone else when they didn't actually own it, and then I bought it from the guy who bought it from the guy who bought it from the guy who bought it from the guy who bought it from the guy who sold it illegally, so it's not really mine. Blockchain will eliminate that. Game companies mint tokens to represent digital "assets" that they say you "own" but in reality it's the asset creator that can make more of the asset, destroy the asset or deny others usage of the asset (which is the real, functional definition of "own").
I'm still working my way through my thoughts on this after Bored Ape Money Pit but I think that blockchain is one of the infinite number of ways that traditional ownership models are trying to impose themselves on digital assets when it's the fundamental nature of digital assets to be infinitely replicable for a cost so low as to approach $0/per, and to make it very hard to exclude people from having or using these replicas. I work in software. We're getting to a point where the real value in software is in designing ways to stop people from using it unless they've met certain conditions (usually, having paid for a license). Most of what I do is authentication and authorization. That is to say, determining who a user is and what they're allowed to do. These are external, artificial controls. In real life when you eat an apple the apple is gone. When you and your family live in a house, that house is full of people. When you "eat" (or in some other way extract the value from) a digital apple that apple can still be there. An infinite number of people can exist in one digital space via instantiation without ever having to acknowledge one another. Digital assets defy exclusivity, and without exclusivity their can't be ownership. So what we end up with is a million people who have the same bit-for-bit perfect picture of a monkey, but one guy who has a certificate from the monkey picture center that says he's the "owner" of the monkey picture when ownership doesn't really confer any rights, privileges or abilities that everyone else didn't already get for free.
I wonder what kind of games have Blockchain technology in them?
I am sure I never encountered one, but I guess I am not the target audience.
Yeah I've been wondering the same thing too, like what's the point? I've seen some devs try to use blockchain for tracking ownership of items, so you could trade/sell items to others and it would all be tracked and verified through the blockchain. But if you're playing a game that's hosted by a centralized server, then just use a database. I don't see any benefit for a decentralized blockchain when you're playing on a centralized server.
The only justification I’ve ever been able to think of is Pokémon. The idea is supposed to be that every Pokémon is unique but there’s actually only a limited set of variables to define each individual ‘mon. I can trade you a Zubat I just caught and it can be identical to one that I first caught in Fire Red twenty years ago and have traded through every game since.
If each Pokémon was truly unique and on the blockchain, it could be meaningful in ways they currently aren’t. There could be only one Coalossal that Wolfe Glick won the Player’s Cup with. He could trade it away for charity and someone would pay for it. I could trade Pokémon away and track them as they’re traded around the world.
It’d be cool. But it would not meaningfully make the game more fun. And it’s Nintendo so they’re never going to do blockchain. And that is the best pitch I can give you.
And even then, you could still do that unique Pokemon idea without using a blockchain. Use unique identifiers in a good old database, or, heck, just tell the user with words, “there are many pidgeottos but this one is yours”.
A blockchain idea has to not only be a good idea, but also not possible with simpler technology for it to be genuinely worthwhile.
This isn't even necessary to do. You can already do this with systems in place. There's no good use of nfts/blockchain except if your goal is to scam people.
I've got to give you credit, this is the first time I'm hearing of a situation where blockchain actually serves a purpose in a game. It's a pretty niche scenario, but yeah it would add some value in this case.
So basically if something in a game (item, character, account, etc) needs to persist beyond the game then blockchain could be a solution. You could probably still do this with some kind of traditional database, but maybe blockchain has some technical advantage?
Yeah, this is a solid use case situation that actually makes sense to me, since right now even unique Pokemon can be cloned and traded - I have a number of cloned event Pokemon in my collection, because they were events held in geographically impossible locations, and generous players distributed them online.
But I suppose that's why, even though using blockchain to enforce uniqueness on Pokemon is a genuine use case that I can see the potential value of, there's elements of it I'd hate if they were implemented. I've never been a huge fan of artificial scarcity, and using blockchain only makes sense if artificial scarcity is to be enforced. Right now, Nintendo seems to disapprove of cloning event Pokemon, but generally turns a blind eye to it outside of the official competitions.
So it'd definitely be a trade-off. Is it worth knowing for certain that your Zubat is 100% unique, if it also means that you can never "catch 'em all" because an event-only Pokemon was only available at an event 300 miles away?
The most successful example for a blockchain game is "Axie Infinity" which is something of a Pokémon-like. It used blockchain technology to track the unique "Axies" (= Pokémons) which could be traded and sold. So the blockchain was used to do just that.
The big promise of games like "Axie Infinity" was "play-to-earn", games which allowed players to earn money through playing the game, such as trading in "Axie Infinity".Could this only be done with blockchain? No. All of that could technically also be achieved by other means.
So ultimately all of the talk about the blockchain was mostly PR and a way to distinguish the game. Nobody would have cared about it, if it had not had this feature. Which is very representative of all blockchain games.The talk of how blockchain technology would allow players to transfer items from one game to another; or create unique characters which could be transfered between games; etc. have always been pipe dreams, They would have required a level of cooperation between publishers and developers of games that was simply impossible to achieve.
As a footnote: The use of blockchain in "Axie Infinity" ultimately resulted in an in-game economy that was largely a pyramid scheme. The game is still there, but the economy imploded and most players only ever made cents, if they earned anything through the game at all.
Simple rule of thumb; any time someone says blockchain in a sentence, replace it with "big slow database". Now you can think about it clearly.
It's only purpose is to monetize your gameplay time with some kind of real world "value".
Everything else is just the lies they tell you to get away with enshitifying the game.
You're not wrong, but MMOs have been enshittifying the gaming experience by selling in game items in a shop for decades. Many even have player trading systems which inevitably create a real money black market for the game. While most don't legitimise this in the way blockchain games do, there's no technological reason they couldn't, only legislative ones.
The only thing the "blockchain" part actually does is allow you to add another buzzword to your project and company, as well as make all of this cost a lot more electricity.
It's mostly hype from the marketing team pushed onto developers. 90% of use cases of block chain are just over eager MBAs pushing developers to add blockchain so they can be excited about it.
For this, it's probably NFTs, which are guaranteed to be unique, but... the cool thing about blockchain is that the guarantee is true even in a decentralized service. A video game company is centralized, they can make whatever they want unique already. So it's 99% likely to just be a buzzword.
There are some really good uses of blockchain. A decentralized steam-like platform would be amazing. A decentralized venmo/paypal. The ownership of a game would be great to have on a blockchain so even if a company goes out of business you can still say you own this game. Any game mechanics themselves are stupid.
So far it seems to be to make money off gold grinding in the Philippines if Axie Infinity is any indication.
Most of the supposed benefits of blockchain in gaming would either never actually be realized due to the infeasibility, or would be just as easily implemented using alternative, pre-existing methods.
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Those play to earn games, unless there is some weird magical source of outside revenues, are all convoluted ponzi schemes, though. The only money coming in is from new players (it takes hundreds or more dollars to join Axie Infinity, for example). You can earn real money while the game is growing, but as soon as growth stops, the whole system collapses
One reason to include blockchain tech in games is to enable trading of in-game assets without needing to build a trading engine from scratch. It also offers the chance to tie in-game assets directly to real-world values, and have certain assets be useful across games in a franchise. Basically everything Magic The Gathering or Pokémon does, except that you don't have to worry about the cards deteriorating as you use them.
Once you realize that Magic and Pokémon were just cardstock NFTs all along, the whole idea of NFTs in gaming start to make more sense. Not every application that the the Crypto Bros propose to solve with NFTs are really appropriate, but some are.
TCGs use fungible resources, though. Except for very rare cases like misprints or limited releases, two cards are completely interchangeable so long as they're the same card. I could maybe see Pokemon using NFTs because they're supposed to be your special semi-sentient animal friend, so making them non-fungible is a natural progression. They've approximated this with IV and PV, but ultimately you can still clone your shiny pikachu with hacks. An NFT pokemon could have a personal history on the blockchain (battles/contests won/lost, grooming/play sessions, parental/trainer involvement, regions they've seen, battle partners they've had, etc etc etc) which affects its behavior in subtle ways that simple numbers can't achieve. You could do this without NFTs using a centralized service, but I given the radical backwards and forwards compatibility of the games decentralization might make it a lot simpler to implement.
Note too that this is a strictly non-financial application of NFT. You could potentially exchange money out-of-band like you would in selling a card, but it doesn't require the pokemon cost anything. If I were to implement it, I'd probably avoid calling it "NFT" like the plague because it'd pull in cryptobros like a swarm of locusts and ruin the fun for normal people who don't want to pay $3000 for a Zigzagoon.
Calling blockchains in video games "boring" is like calling backface culling "boring". It's an algorithm, not a game mechanic. Companies make it boring by treating it like one.
Backface culling provides efficiency and performance. Blockchains provide nothing that can't already be done through more efficient means. There is literally no viable use case for blockchain or NFTs in video games, which is exactly why every implementation has righteously failed or never got off the ground to begin with.
Efficiency and performance are valuable, not entertaining. My point is that "boring" is a category error for these things, they aren't game mechanics and they have no entertainment value.
I wouldn't go so far as to say there's no viable use-case, but every example I've seen has been a terrible misappropriation. This is largely because they make the mistake of inclusion of an algorithm to somehow be featureful or entertaining. As I see it, this discussion is a bit like ransomware becoming very prolific and people are saying there are no viable use-cases for encryption because it's been used to scam so many people.
To be clear, literally all NFTs are is a key: value mapping on a blockchain. That has nothing to do with finance, art, games, or anything else associated with them at present - the value of a tool is in how it's used. They've been used extensively by shitty people, so now people only know of the shitty ways to use them.
That's an iffy analogy. Backface culling makes for a higher frame rate, which makes the game more enjoyable (or playable at all).
Yeah, but it doesn't seem like he actually said that if you read the article.
The article is more correct than what I've been seeing in this thread - their inclusion doesn't make games fun, which is correct. People are essentializing the use-cases of an algorithm, some saying NFTs make a game fun (somehow?) and others pointing out that they're trash cash grabs that seem to actively make the experience worse.
My mistake, I should've read the article. I didn't think OP editorialized the title.
Things I often find lacking in videos games: good storytelling, adjustable subtitle/UI size, immersive world with adequate pattern of life (eg background characters, random environment animations, ...).
Things I don't miss: NFTs, microtransactions, constant in-game awards/points collections.
That's the biggest issue with a lot of Blockchain or micro transaction games; they are first and foremost a way to make money for the company. Look at any web3.0 nft game on the market. All the marketing is "play to earn" bullshit. If a company really wanted NFTs or whatever to take off, make an exciting, engaging, fun to play game and then you can get a player base nft or no.
NFT sounds like a convoluted way to earn money for games. If a company can make a exciting, engaging, fun to play game, can't they just sell them? Adding NFTs into the game/gameplay might just annoy players and scare people away.
They're absolutely right. Blockchain is a good representation of whats wrong in tech
Can you unpack this? Not saying you're wrong, I'd just a clearer idea of what it demonstrates.
The big thing that web3(which includes the blockchain) represents to me is big tech's magpie-like tendencies, an attraction to shiny and new things for the sake of them without any thought towards how it will bring value to the customer. Everything new has to be presented as big and inevitable as home computing was in the 80s. The problem though is that even if we give web3 the most generous bearth it is at best an iterative improvement that can only truly improve certain niches. And we've seen this toxic hype cycle with everything whether that be the cloud or VR/AR or even 3D Technology back in the day.
It's trying to shoehorn a technology where it adds zero value.
My past child self feels vindicated for being a Sega fan.
normal money is also boring
based
I honestly kind of miss when sega made consoles. I never had a Saturn but it got a lot of great titles for a short lived system.
And DC we all know was a phenomenal system from that era that died due to business issues, sadly.
I feel like they would do something quirky and unexpected in the modern era. I mean, they did make the 32x after all.
Based.
It seems like blockchain stuff is so heavily capitalized that the potential technical benefits to users elsewhere are ignored. Of course most of those benefits would not be profitable to developers, reduce their control, and require new game engines that aren't just NFT garbage. Properly implemented, they would be an invisible part of the gaming experience