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Game Developer On 'Why NFTs Are a Nightmare' (pcgamer.com) 89

Game developer Mark Venturelli received a spirited ovation at Brazil's International Games Festival on Friday after he surprised the audience for his "Future of Game Design" talk with a new title: "Why NFTs are a nightmare." PC Gamer reports: Venturelli, who is best known for the game Chroma Squad, didn't just push back against those talks by calling NFTs a nightmare: He argued in detail that they're bad for gaming and run directly counter to his vision for the future of game design. In a follow-up interview with PC Gamer, Venturelli said the event's blockchain sponsors needed "to buy their relevance, because they're not relevant." [...] NFT projects in particular quickly became savvy enough to use phrases like "environment-friendly technology" in their press releases, but none of them grapple with the deeper criticisms of their ideas. That's what Venturelli zeroed in on in his talk and in our follow-up interview. There's the uncanny resemblance between these profit-driven grifts and pyramid schemes, but there's also the philosophical concern that things like cryptocurrency represent a libertarian ideal founded in paranoia about institutions, and about other human beings. That, Venturelli says, is in part why they're so inefficient in the first place.

"Computationally, like in real life, if you don't trust the people that you're working with, you have to spend a lot more energy to achieve the same things," he says. "If I'm living with you in the same house and we don't trust each other, I have to, every time before I leave my house, hide my valuables. I have to make inventory of the things that I own, and maybe put cameras or locks inside of things. When I come back home I need to check everything and see if you messed with any of my stuff, and make sure that you don't get into my room when I'm sleeping and all that shit. It's so much energy that I have to use just to exist in a room with you, because I don't trust you. That, I feel, is a very good metaphor about how computationally blockchain works, and what is the underlying philosophical idea behind it, which is, 'We want a world without any sort of centralized authority because we cannot trust any of them ever.' And that is the opposite of what we want as a society, in my opinion." [...]

Investors see potential value in South America right now due to exploitable political and economic instabilities, which for Venturelli means that presenting his counterargument is more important than ever. "If we don't take up some spaces, and we let these kinds of people take these spaces, suddenly they're dictating what's the future, suddenly they're taking the investments so that they are building our next big projects," he said. "That's when it starts to get really dangerous, because it can jeopardize our future as an industry, in my opinion. Because I don't feel like these things have long legs. I feel like they might be successful in the short term, but they are going to fall on the long term for sure." [He went on to say:] "Right now we are living in a crisis of trust in Western society -- trust in each other, in institutions, and even in our future together is in decline," Venturelli says. "We should be building systems that help connect people and build trust, build sustainable solutions, and build infinitely scalable human solutions. We should not be shifting away from culture, entertainment, and storytelling towards economic activity. We should not just be eliminating the final hiding places that we have to run away from the oppression of capitalist society."
You can watch Venturelli's The Future of Game Design talk on YouTube. An English version of the slides accompanying it is available here.
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Game Developer On 'Why NFTs Are a Nightmare'

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  • There's the uncanny resemblance between these profit-driven grifts and pyramid schemes, but there's also the philosophical concern that things like cryptocurrency represent a libertarian ideal founded in paranoia about institutions, and about other human beings. That, Venturelli says, is in part why they're so inefficient in the first place.

    I don't quite understand this. I guess we should have pure and unwavering trust for the corporations around us? All the tech companies that people complain about all the time that they can't trust for numerous reasons? Or I guess people should be okay with electronic payments going through a handful of companies (Visa, MasterCard, etc.)? I wouldn't mind an alternate to giving those corporations a cut of everything.

    Of course there's distrust. He acts like there shouldn't be. There shouldn't be that distrust

    • First, the libertarian ideal isn't about distrust of institutions. In particular, it's never been about distrust of corporations; it's about limiting the role of government to what is absolutely necessary, nothing more.

      Second, if this is a game, and the NFT is for an item in the game (ie, The Sword of a Thousand Truths), then you had better trust the game deverlopers and publisher. You cannot allow a third party to create a Sword of a Thousand ReTruths and expect that to be honored in-game. For in-game i

      • Re:A Few Things (Score:4, Insightful)

        by barc0001 ( 173002 ) on Monday July 11, 2022 @09:25PM (#62694946)

        > First, the libertarian ideal isn't about distrust of institutions. In particular, it's never been about distrust of corporations; it's about limiting the role of government to what is absolutely necessary, nothing more.

        The problem is that is HIGHLY open to interpretation. Which explains why every "Libertarian town" experiment fails, usually in spectacular fashion.

        • by mjwx ( 966435 )

          > First, the libertarian ideal isn't about distrust of institutions. In particular, it's never been about distrust of corporations; it's about limiting the role of government to what is absolutely necessary, nothing more.

          The problem is that is HIGHLY open to interpretation. Which explains why every "Libertarian town" experiment fails, usually in spectacular fashion.

          The Libertarian ideal is to be able to do whatever I want whilst you are prevented from doing the same to me.

          It fails for the same reason as all other extremist ideologies, it fails to account for simple human nature. In this case, human greed. The notion that people will be dishonest or underhanded to gain money or power, Libertarianism always assumes the honour system will work on dishonourable people.

          • by CAIMLAS ( 41445 )

            I don't fundamentally disagree that libertarian ideals, absent a conservative backing, employ a great deal of hubris. They do.

            But that sword cuts both ways - you've got dishonest, dishonorable people who have manipulated the existing non-libertarian systems to gain money or power. This existing socialistic system exists precisely because of libertarian ideals being employed without sufficient fencing and hard limits to power.

            This is a fundamental concept of archotropism.

          • by xalqor ( 6762950 )

            The Libertarian ideal is to be able to do whatever I want whilst you are prevented from doing the same to me.

            No, that's a kind of hypocrisy and is not a libertarian ideal.

            Libertarianism always assumes the honour system will work on dishonourable people.

            No, that's naive and is not a libertarian assumption.

        • by CAIMLAS ( 41445 )

          Can you name a 'libertarian town' which has failed in spectacular fashion?

          I see a lot of towns incorporating blockchain technology, sometimes in leau of actual taxes. The oil scheme in IIRC Galveston, TX - wealth distribution of the oil instead of taking the dole of Social Security - has turned many of its residents into millionaires. Miamicoin and the other citycoins have been immensely successful already.

          Meanwhile, your precious centralized fiat is 20%+ inflated in the past year. Expect even more inflatio

          • https://letmegooglethat.com/?q... [letmegooglethat.com]
            Grafton NH closed due to BEARS
            Keene NH ran it's own unlicensed Bitcoin exchange
            Colorado Springs CO Imploded due to lack of tax revenue before the invention of automatic traffic cameras
            Von Ormy TX ALMOST imploded due to lack of tax revenue but then shifted the burden to passing vehicles with rigged traffic cameras on downward slopes
            And those are just the American ones. The houses, the people, the towns keep existing but the fools running it change... except Von Ormy bu
            • Bullshit. I lived in Colorado Springs during the "implosion". It wasn't shit. The city had a fireworks show and cops still harassed the population and gave out many citations, driving plenty of revenue to thieving city government. Teachers still bilked the public for pensions, essentially robbing kids in the process. They stepped up harassing folks on their prodigious section of I-25 interstate, myself included. There was next-to-zero "Libertarian" policies in The Springs at that time or any other besides a
      • it's about limiting the role of government to what is absolutely necessary, nothing more.

        dont the conservatives in the US say the exact same thing?

        • No. The conservatives always want war to feed the military industrial complex, evangelical religious governance, little/no school choice plus forced curriculum (just theirs, not yours), forced police charter turfs, forced zoning, empowerment of the surveillance state (NSA/CIA), forced censorship of music ("Warning: Explicit Lyrics" -- total Conservative dick move from the 1980's), censorship in general, tax breaks for corporations while the little dude gets crushed with taxes, and refuse to see that polluti
      • I absolutely trust game developers to add dupe bugs that could devalue any ingame item at any time. So if NFTs are used to prevent this then it's a definite improvement.
      • > First, the libertarian ideal isn't about distrust of institutions. In particular, it's never been about distrust of corporations; it's about limiting the role of government to what is absolutely necessary, nothing more.

        Yeah and who the fuck gets to decide what's "absolutely necessary"?

        Who the fuck actually KNOWS what's "absolutely necessary"?

        This is why I find libertarians to be screamingly irritating, childish crybabies. They whine about government but have absolutely sweet fuck all knowledge about t

    • by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Monday July 11, 2022 @08:28PM (#62694836)
      and democratic governments. It's kind of telling that when you think "institutions" you think corporations (a hierarchical institution) rather than democratic ones. I'm not calling you out, but rather I'm saying your thinking has been constrained.

      As for centralization, Crypto has it. It centralized around the exchanges and mining pools. The two combined can easily mainpulate the market up to and including a 51% attack. Smaller chains have already done it, calling it a "community vote". Ethereum didn't want the bad press but they'd mess up their chain to the point where the founders (i.e. the people who matter) lost money so they just forked it. Google "Ethereum Classic". And of course there's good 'ole Wash Trading and the like which, when done at scale, completely eliminates any decentralization in the market.

      Crypto is just another failed experiment. It will die, the only question is how many victims will go down before it does, and if it'll get big enough to take down the whole economy and our jobs and retirements with it.
      • Wow, you really went off the deep end here. Miners voted on how to handle the Dao hack. The EF didn't impose anything on anyone. Are you becoming an ultra anarcho-capitalist along the same vein as an Ethereum Classic supporter? Probably not. You're just being a clueless idiot.

        Also it wasn't just the EF losing money on the Dao hack. Get your facts straight.

        • so Miners can any time they want do a 51% attack. Miners. That have been consolidating. For years. Into large companies.

          At this point the only reason a couple of big mining pools don't just 51% attack their way into taking all the money is because they don't think they can get away with it. Either they'd be facing lawsuits and criminal charges or they'd lose everything when the spell is broken and folks realize this is all nonsense. But there's nothing stopping the big 3 or 4 pools from just taking ever
          • No I didn't! Stop being ignorant!

            Miners signaled which chain they wanted - the pre-DAO hack chain (which became Ethereum Classic, basically) or the post-DAO hack chain with the DAO hack reversed in the ledger. By mining to nodes that supported one chain or the other, effectively Ethereum hard forked itself out of the DAO hack. Mining pools provided the tools necessary for miners to signal what they wanted. I was mining for nanopool at the time. I remember.

            That is not a 51% attack, and you know that it i

    • I guess we should have pure and unwavering trust for the corporations around us

      No its about having the right level of trust, about balance, crypto is about having no trust at all, everyone should be able to validate very transaction. Taken to an extreme it becomes unfeasible, like crypto.

      You shouldn't trust the the untrustworthy but you need to build that trust. In his roommate example you may check your stuff at the beginning to see stuff is stolen, but eventually you stop or check less often as you begin to trust them.

      • So instead of trusting the US and Wells Fargo to honor fiat currency, you have to trust Comcast and Centurylink to keep providing unfiltered internet service. Sure, that sounds reasonable.
    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by DrMrLordX ( 559371 )

      It sounds like this game dev knows only a little about blockchain, saw the word "trustless" used in reference to something-or-other, and went off on some stoner tangent on matters having nothing to do with the actual context in which the word "trustless" might be used in relation to blockhain transaction verification (etc). It has zero to do with actual issues related to NFTs in video games. Nothing, zip, nada.

      Funny to watch all the posters here go along with this tripe in some manner or other.

      • "It sounds like this game dev knows only a little about blockchain"

        And civilization, systems of political-economy...

    • by N_Piper ( 940061 )

      There's the uncanny resemblance between these profit-driven grifts and pyramid schemes, but there's also the philosophical concern that things like cryptocurrency represent a libertarian ideal founded in paranoia about institutions, and about other human beings. That, Venturelli says, is in part why they're so inefficient in the first place.

      I don't quite understand this. I guess we should have pure and unwavering trust for the corporations around us? All the tech companies that people complain about all the time that they can't trust for numerous reasons? Or I guess people should be okay with electronic payments going through a handful of companies (Visa, MasterCard, etc.)? I wouldn't mind an alternate to giving those corporations a cut of everything.

      Of course there's distrust. He acts like there shouldn't be. There shouldn't be that distrust, but anyone who's paying attention knows that's an idealistic world in some parallel dimension.

      Or maybe we should trust those companies that will pull games (like UbiSoft)? Why shouldn't we trust a company that sells a game that, in a couple of months, will no longer be playable? I could go on about the scummy things that companies do.

      He's not speaking about the existing companies but about the companies in an ideal Rodenberry Star Trek future. Blockchain is literally called a "Trustless System" and to that end you currently have to deal with about 800Gb of every piece of trash ever put on the Ethereum block chain if you want to run a basic node about 4Tb for a full archival node. To borrow from a popular saying "Program for the world you want to live in", we SHOULD be able to trust each other.

      Investors see potential value in South America right now due to exploitable political and economic instabilities, which for Venturelli means that presenting his counterargument is more important than ever. "If we don't take up some spaces, and we let these kinds of people take these spaces, suddenly they're dictating what's the future, suddenly they're taking the investments so that they are building our next big projects," he said. "That's when it starts to get really dangerous, because it can jeopardize our future as an industry, in my opinion. Because I don't feel like these things have long legs. I feel like they might be successful in the short term, but they are going to fall on the long term for sure." [He went on to say:] "Right now we are living in a crisis of trust in Western society -- trust in each other, in institutions, and even in our future together is in decline," Venturelli says. "We should be building systems that help connect people and build trust, build sustainable solutions, and build infinitely scalable human solutions. We should not be shifting away from culture, entertainment, and storytelling towards economic activity. We should not just be eliminating the final hiding places that we have to run away from the oppression of capitalist society."

      This kind of sounds like the gamers that started to panic around the time Gone Home came out, and some of them thinking that most future games would be walking simulators because several websites heaped awards on the game. No Mr. Paranoid, the Nifters are not going to prevent you from making non-NFT games. I don't see NFTs becoming ubiquitous in gaming anytime soon.

      Fuck, I don't even have anything to say about NFTs. This guy sounds like he's using his hate against NFTs to try and tell people that they should just trust companies and corporations.

      You are misunderstanding the breadth of "WE

  • by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Monday July 11, 2022 @07:49PM (#62694768)
    Has a good video about Diablo Immortal and how it's making a million dollars a day. Activision itself made the point that it's okay that they're free to play game is making so much money because only a very small percentage of players are actually having to pay to play the game.

    Sterling brought up a good point which is that's actually worse. Because it's highly unlikely that money is coming from a bunch of rich people and much more likely that the money is coming from people with various forms of mental illness or neuro divergence. What the industry calls Whales. Basically e /. crowd. Various forms of nerds and neckbeards ripe for taking advantage of in the worst way is possible.

    In Vegas they have strict laws designed to identify those people and shut them out of the casinos before they lose their homes. But we do nothing of the sort for video games. It's gotten so bad that one of the NBA 2K games put a actual casino in game with roulette tables and slot machines. And it somehow is still Rated E For Everyone.

    If you dig around Sterling's YouTube channel you'll find videos where they've tracked down whales and interview them and they've talked about how free to play video games took advantage of their depression and mental illness.

    If we had a functioning government I think we'd see some regulation here to protect people who are clearly not in a right headspace. If we had a functioning government.

    And as always you might be wondering, why would I care? Well first and foremost you never know when age related cognitive decline will strike. Never mind the fact that this site is full of nerds and we're the ones being targeted with these manipulative tactics. But then there's also the possibility one of your family members might get dragged into this.
    • This is a much better argument against NFTs than the OP, which basically sounds like a flavor of utopianism, and functions more as an advertisement for NFTs than against them.

      • it's just stupidly long winded. It's points boil down to:

        1. Markets inevitably consolidate as there are winners and losers, crypto's no different (e.g. exchanges & mining pools).

        2. Crypto has too much overhead to be useful for a game.

        I guess the point I'm trying to make, tying Jim into this, is that I don't think we as gamers can prevent it. The market will be dominated by mentally ill Whales being taken advantage of. Which is all kinds of messed up. And it means we'll get at best watered do
    • by godrik ( 1287354 )

      In Vegas they have strict laws designed to identify those people and shut them out of the casinos before they lose their homes.

      Do they? (That's a real question.) How are these laws called?

      • They don't. They have a self reporting organization that "fixes" the problem by placing the person's name on a list that is checked against large wins and if their name has been self-submitted, then the casino doesn't need to award them their winnings. The idea is if they voluntarily submit to the list it disincentiveizes gambling as they cannot win big any more. In reality they play cash or chips on smaller amounts at a time that won't be subject to the list being checked for cashout.

        If rsilvergun knows

      • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        In Vegas they have strict laws designed to identify those people and shut them out of the casinos before they lose their homes.

        Do they? (That's a real question.) How are these laws called?

        I think the law is more akin to self-declaring that you're got a gambling problem and basically they take your information, photo, fingerprints, etc and posting that up. If you're seen inside their casino, they will have security escort you out.

        It's not an automatic thing - you have to go to them and self-declare. Casinos

    • Diablo IV did not launch in The Netherlands and Belgium. For legal reasons, aka the anti-gambling laws.

      The EU is working on an EU-wide regulation for various gambling schemes in games. It cannot come fast enough.

    • In Vegas they have strict laws designed to identify those people and shut them out of the casinos before they lose their homes.

      Better still, in Belgium and the Netherlands there are laws banning lootboxes and gambling in video games. One of their victims: Diablo Immortal.

      It's worth noting at every opportunity: that million dollar a day game is deemed illegal in some countries due to precisely what you mentioned. It's about time more countries enacted such laws.

      • "For the children" this time, is it? Was "terrorism" already taken? More like it's about time the government fucked off a bit more on gaming and gamers.
    • "If we had a functioning government I think we'd see some regulation here to protect people who are clearly not in a right headspace."

      That's unwise. You would need to have an objective standard for "headspaces", and a government whose authority is so vast and unchecked that it can force the people to undergo frequent psychiatric screenings and then disclose the results to casinos, GameStop, or whoever else.

      In the past, when governments have given themselves that authority, the standards for mental heal

  • All one has to do is behold the caterwauling on Reddit when the subject of NFTs in gaming came up (in one of the crypto subs, no less). Nevermind that using NFTs would enable product validation without Ubisoft or EA having to actually run an activation server, or (as we're seeing presently) access to even a single player game you bought going right away the moment they decide to stop running the servers. Gamers equate NFTs with play-to-win mechanics and will hear nothing to the contrary.

    • by splutty ( 43475 ) on Monday July 11, 2022 @09:42PM (#62694986)

      Not really. The problem with NFTs in gaming is that the people pushing the idea have absolutely, zero, none at all, completely no understanding of games and how game development/coding works.

      "But you can take your NFTs from one game to another!"

      "No. No you can't. And no. That will never, ever, happen. You're either utterly clueless, or utterly delusional. I hope it's clueless. Although since you're pushing NFTs, delusional is a very strong option."

      • Sez you. Anyone using the same game engine can likely re-use models, textures, etc. Especially if it's something like Source. People routinely import assets from TF2 and Half Life into Garry's Mod, for example.

        Besides, if you actually understood what an NFT is, it's a link to a resource. All it does is prove you own a copy of that resource. It doesn't obligate the game dev to copy the resource 1:1 in their game. They can reinterpret the skin/model/whatever to fit their game if they so choose, and offe

        • Besides, if you actually understood what an NFT is

          yikes, it sounds like this guy knows his stuff

          All it does is prove you own a copy of that resource

          oh wait, hes just a buffoon.

          you dont own a copy of the "resource", you own an entry on one of the many, many blockchains... and if that sounds uninteresting, its because it 100% is.

        • by splutty ( 43475 )

          Thanks for proving my point.

    • by black3d ( 1648913 ) on Monday July 11, 2022 @11:01PM (#62695130)
      But that's not a use-case being explored by publishers. They have absolutely zero interest in developing technology to let you escape their walled gardens. Every publisher wants you online, in their marketplace, whenever you want to play one of their games. The only use-cases that publishers are interested in are those that extract additional income from customers. There is a massive disconnect between what starry-eyed developers envisage for NFTs, and publishers expectations of what they'll bring to the table.

      Utopian ideals of what "NFTs could be used for" is fine. But it's not a counterpoint to publishers invested in bringing NFTs to games, as they have no altruistic motives whatsoever. Furthermore, most AAA publishers are developing their own independent blockchain, handled entirely by their own servers. In this form, they're bringing nothing to the table that traditional databases don't (or at least, couldn't), and no better longevity when the servers are taken down.
  • just the game (Score:5, Insightful)

    by awwshit ( 6214476 ) on Monday July 11, 2022 @08:03PM (#62694804)

    I just want to buy the game, just the game. I don't want NFTs, I don't want in-game purchases of skins and other digital garbage, I just want the game.

    • Fortunately the indie scene seems rather accommodating in this respect.

      As for A+ titles, yeah, that train has probably left for good.

      • Not really, there's a couple of monster hits which can sustain a microtransaction income while the rest of the games have to make their money the old fashioned way. They tried to push microtransactions in every game and failed, whining all the way.

        The suits think NFT will magically transform all their games into GTA Online and FIFA where microtransactions failed, because they are idiots. Reality will disabuse them of that idea and they will just have to go back to making money off sales. There's only room f

  • Just make the game fun. That's all.

    • Indeed! How hard could it be? :)

      Unfortunately, if 1M players enjoy the game through buying stuff in it, and 1M players enjoy the game for its game play, it is economically more attractive for the companies to cater to the first category.

      On the indie scene you can still see focus on game play and catering to the community. I doubt that we will see something at the level of GTA5 or RDR2 with the same basis.

  • ... what is being sold here. In-game objects, contents of loot boxes, etc? Stuff you've bought in-game? Or won in-game?

    It seems to me that NFTs are a means of monetizing these phantom acquisitions and actually walk away with real cash. Doesn't that sort of close the loop on these game environments being casinos? And subject to all the on-line betting prohibitions or regulations? State gambling commissions and all, isn't this something that game developers would like to steer clear of?

    • Yeah, like Uber drivers aren't employees. They'll continue to make out like bandits until somebody stops them... with regulation.
    • It's just microtransactions/games-as-a-service part two.

      They think NFTs will succeed where microtransactions failed because of reasons ... the reasons being they are morons.

  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmlqO2NoF1M [youtube.com]

    NFTs have great potential to decentralize assets, but that would benefit the gamer, not the game dev.
    • Besides that, there are nearly insurmountable technical hurdles.

      Game assets are simply not interchangeable. Every game has uniquely defined assets that can't simply be traded among other games, even those utilizing the same engine, or by the same company from game to game.

      For example, shaders are almost always unique per game, utilizing textures and lighting effects to compliment the desired aesthetic of the game, or to support gameplay features. Same with skeletons, often per character type (body type, c

      • Like I said to another poster above, bollocks. Assets can often be used 1:1 between games using the same engine. Go look at Garry's Mod for crying out loud.

        • Its all well and good presenting the program with a 3d model (from a blockchain or wherever, the problem is the same), but DutchGun is mostly right in what he says, you still need additional logic in the code to utilise the asset.

          in the same way, DLSS isnt just "available" to a game - the programmers have to incorporate it into the codebase

          • Wtf does DLSS have to do with this? Do you even know what you're talking about?

            Do you know how easy it is to reuse models and tectures between Source games?

        • But that's a modification of another game; which means it does not in any way represent the sharing of assets between two different games. Even with games from big publishers that have crossover content, those assets are recreated, not copied.
          • Yes it does! You could port assets from Half Like 2 to TF2 and vice versa as developer!

            Wtf is wrong with you people?!?!?

            You can do basically the same thing with Unigine and similar. They sell asset packs for engines like that.

            • Yeah, what the hell does a professional videogame programmer with several decades of experience know, huh?

              For your information, asset packs are typically only starting points for game developers to customize to fit their games, and they are either engine-specific, or limited to just models, textures, and animations. Any cross-game compatibility is due to deliberate design decisions to retain that compatibility. You can't cherry-pick a couple of examples and extrapolate that across the entire industry. Ye

      • Yeah, if it was as simple as proponents want it to seem, projects like Skywind and Fallout 4 New Vegas would be done already.
    • by Misagon ( 1135 )

      I would go as far as saying that decentralisation of in-game assets in multi-player games is the only valid use of NFT-like constructs that I have ever heard of.

      When a game publisher ultimately stops supporting a multi-player game and closes its servers, what players want is to be able to transfer the game to their independently run servers. But players don't want any new master to own "their" avatar's in-game assets - they want to have digital control of them themselves.

    • You don't need NFTs for that. Like everything else NFTs have been suggested for, they are just unnecessary bloat on top. Because get this: NFTs does nothing!

  • The paranoia that central banks and governments print money and by doing so de-value money by half every 20 years in the best case and much faster in the worst. I wish this was a paranoia and something that never happened or maybe in only a very rare special case where the country had no other options to survive. But in this world it seems every single "fiat" currency is being diluted exponentially. I think the power over peoples money should be in the hands of the people. Centralized, decentralized, blockc
    • by splutty ( 43475 )

      Everything you state is what's actually keeping the economy running instead of falling off a cliff. They don't just "print money" to annoy you.

      And the power of global fiscal policy in the hands of "the people" would be the worst thing anyone's ever invented. And probably the last thing, as well.

      • I wouldn't waste your time with that. "Fiscal conservatives," as they call themselves, conflate micro-economics with macro-economics, as if there were some meta-ledger in the ether that must eventually be balanced or the sky will fall in.

        The economic instability we experience is due to far too much money being owned/controlled by far too few people (the so-called 1%). It makes living, working, being creative, etc., more expensive & so more exclusive, i.e. feasible for fewer people. Massive wealth is b
    • by AvitarX ( 172628 )

      Inflation seems to be far more impacted by war.

      https://www.macrotrends.net/24... [macrotrends.net]

    • by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Tuesday July 12, 2022 @06:18AM (#62695784)

      The very last thing an economy needs is a 100% "stable" currency that doesn't lose any value or, worse, gains value. What you want is a currency with low enough inflation that people accept it as tender for their goods and serrvices but high enough inflation that people don't want to sit on it instead of spending it.

      • Well, first, poor people sit on their currency Independent of the inflation rate.
        And rich people mostly hold assets not currency. And are not affected much by it.
        Ive never in my life spend money because of its inflation and i doubt very much other people do that. If iam concerned about inflation i dont hold it in USD/EUR. If i need something then i buy it not because the currency inflates away.
        But my real point is. Ask where the problem is. Its not the rate by which your economy pours value into the gove
  • An artist might take a month to create a single oil painting and sell it for a few thousand. The owner gains social status and bragging rights while public often gets to see the work for free by visiting art galleries or taking pictures in owner's home/public space.

    So why would anyone not want the same option for digital works, than can take just as much time to create? Over time this has potential to reduce reliance on patents, copyrights and DRM. Ordinary users can enjoy the work for free in most scenario

    • The question is not why anybody should 'want the same option for digital works', because that option is actually created out of necessity: with for instance a painting there is only one instance. So having ownership of that one instance is actually quite a thing. You have it, and nobody else has it. So you _need_ ownership here to handle the economic scarcity of that one painting.

      With digital artwork every instance or copy is indistinguishable from all of its siblings. Which means that there is no scarcit
      • by tepples ( 727027 )

        What it basically boils down to, is that with NFTs you artificially create scarcity for something that is not scarce at all.

        Credit for being a work's patron/executive producer is scarce. Proper application of NFT tech makes executive producer credit easier to verify and harder to forge.

        • by xalqor ( 6762950 )

          Strong verification of "credit" could be accomplished by the artist posting a copy of a pgp-signed message containing the receipt and thank you note by the artist on the artist's own website. Naturally there would need to be an easy tool for doing that, such as a WordPress plugin or whatever.

          The internet is already decentralized that way, and if you need to lookup the artist's wallet public key somewhere to know the NFT is legitimate, that's not much different than looking up the artist's pgp public key som

    • An artist might take a month to create a single oil painting and sell it for a few thousand....So why would anyone not want the same option for digital works, than can take just as much time to create?

      if you go to somewhere like shutterstock, you will find people selling digital images. no blockchain required

      Over time this has potential to reduce reliance on patents, copyrights and DRM

      im unsure how copyright disputes will be resolved by the blockchain... you'll still be using the courts for that, which as you know are quite "centralised". as well, Im not sure how it could replace DRM? the blockchain entry is unique and immutable, not the jpeg its linking to.

      Ordinary users can enjoy the work for free in most scenarios, while patrons get special benefits like being able to use it in participating games that enforce ownership of original or "authorized print".

      I love this.... "enforce ownership". Again, the blockchain does nothing to protect you from copyright infringement, the court

    • NFTs are the best form of IP. An artist might take a month to create a single oil painting and sell it for a few thousand. The owner gains social status and bragging rights while public often gets to see the work for free by visiting art galleries or taking pictures in owner's home/public space.

      So why would anyone not want the same option for digital work

      Sorry, what? You can achieve the same effect with a crowdfunding to finance the creation and releasing it to the Commons, with no distributed crypto at all (nor any other kind of DRM, btw).

      What crypto creates is artificial scarcity, i.e. a way to prevent everyone from getting the work for free, which is the natural status of digital art. Why would the artist want any of that that scarcity, if their purpose is for everybody to be able to enjoy the art?

  • "Why NFTs are a nightmare." it's why we as a species tolerate the grasping greed of the 1% and the politicians and corporate oligarchs who do their bidding.
    Wan't change, buy nothing but essential items for two months prior to the mid-term elections.
    • grasping greed of the 1% and the politicians and corporate oligarchs...
      Wan't change, buy nothing but essential items for two months prior to the mid-term elections.

      So like...
      While ~40% (at best) [pewresearch.org] will even bother to spend time to vote, where the value of all votes is equal...
      You are suggesting "change" through "wealth voting" - in a system where 1% hold about 32.3% of wealth, compared to 30.2% of wealth held by the 90%. [cnbc.com]

      I.e. Even if every single man, woman and child invested all of their earthly possessions in such a "voting" scheme - they'd still be outvoted by the 1%.
      And that's a complete investment, forever. Not a two-month blip in sales of pencil erasers and lip-glo

      • I believe that you missed my point. I am not suggesting that Joe Public invest to counter the control of the 1%. The American economy runs on consumer spending. I am suggesting that if we all got together and stopped buying, it would get the attention of American politicians very quickly. Even if we just put the money saved under our mattresses.
  • Fish on how bicycles are a nightmare

  • And in the same paragraph! He talks about a lack of social trust, and then (with a slew of errors) and then announces he doesn't trust the systems that make our society work. The real shames, so far as I'm concerned, are that he has no idea how connected culture and political-economies are, and that he clearly has no idea what Capitalism is.

    Or maybe the real shame is that he was so right about some things, but discredits himself by then bringing into his argument issues about which he is clearly ignoran

  • So this guy's rejection of NFTs and crypto in general is that it is computationally "hard" and costly in terms of time and resources - despite that it's farmed quantity, and not something you've got to physically toil over. OK.

    There's plenty of evidence in the 18 months of what an inflationary, centralized fiat currency does, by its very nature. That 20%+ inflation over the past 18 months, is one thing. The fact that you can literally not save anything and retain its value is another. Inexpensive debt cause

    • > So this guy's rejection of NFTs and crypto in general is that it is computationally "hard" and costly in terms of time and resources -

      If so he's a fucking moron. Mining is computationally hard and trying to break crypto is computationally hard, but literally nothing else in this space is.

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