Play to Earn

[Nort]

I've heard a lot of talk about this new concept of "Play to Earn" during the recent months, and I just don't get what it is.

People have been selling in-game content for online games, for many, many years. People are saying that games must be played to have fun, but I'm in full disagreement with that. I largely play games for educational value and skill challenge, and I genuinely hate fun. Why can't we not have fun? If people want to treat something virtual like it's a dayjob, then why not? Are you afraid that every game will be like that, and that there won't be any fun alternatives to that? Come on. Even if all large game companies went Play to Earn today, there would still be countless indie developers who wouldn't.

I hear that cryptocurrency is bad for the environment because of how much energy it takes to validate it, so why not just sell and buy for regular money instead, like it's always been done? The cryptocurrency market seems to be crashing now anyway, so it's obviously not a stable currency. It doesn't take some NFT tech, to keep a simple server-side transaction receipt, or a validation code. You don't need to validate game content like it's gold bars you've purchased.

...so I don't get the sudden resistance against this, and the treatment of virtual economies like it's a new concept. It doesn't need to involve NFT:s at all. Is it just some weird "fun" revolution, where gamers are trying to enforce "fun" in games?

I feel like I'm missing an "outrage train" here, and maybe that's ultimately for the best.

[_Atti_]

I guess you can only play to earn, if your 'playing' creates value. Most of the schemes involving this phrase thinks that skipping the value creation is somehow enabled when cryptocurrencies are involved.

I don't think people are particularly against games designed for players to earn money, they are against the deceit that these efforts are anything else than gambling and pyramid schemes.

I would not worry about the phenomena in this form getting anywhere big, like lowering interest in actual games. Its a self felling tree.

[Nort]

But it's not like we haven't have virtual currencies before. Every time there's some kind of MMORPG, there's always a marketplace in it. There is just no point in adding blockchain validation to it. If they want to have a cross-game currency within a company platform, then they can easily have that too, without it involving blockchain. If they want real money, then they can pay out real money. We've already had the pyramid schemes from the moment where you were able to buy things like for example Steam credits. It's nothing new; it's been around for decades now.

This "Play to Earn" push only makes sense, if it's a masked push specifically for blockchain, and the heating of the planet and the sealing of the doom of the human race that comes with it.

...and so then I guess my question is, if Satan is secretly running all these game companies.

...because that's the only thing that would make any sense, why all these game companies are suddenly going completely bonkers at the same time. They're already profiting from people buying the regular virtual currencies. They're not going to profit more from a currency that also destroys the planet. This just doesn't make any sense.

 

[ChronA]

This stuff is basically just resume bling... like an unpaid internship at a prestigious law firm... or a college diploma. 

Jumping on dumb "cutting edge" trends like this is a way for the people involved to establish themselves as "movers and shakers" in the tech world, which will make them a hot commodity for a) clueless corporate hiring managers who don't actually know anything about the business, b) tech illiterate con-artists "tech" entrepreneurs looking to make a lot of money by inventing the next dumb cutting-edge trend, and c) other would-be "movers and shakers" in need of some extra legitimacy for their own cutting-edge project (usually meant to pull the same trick).

None of these project need to make any money, or even deliver a product to pay off for the people behind them. Ultimately they will collect at some point down the road thanks to the the generosity of lazy/elitist corporations and fraud victims. It's an entire global industry of wearing and selling the emperor's new clothes, continuously playing out on multiple layers. And it is one of the pillars of our entire modern technological civilization...