Own part of the game, written after minecraft disabled NFTs

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Own part of the game, written after minecraft disabled NFTs

Jsquare Research

2022-07-26 14:00

本文约11032字，阅读全文需要约44分钟

"You own a piece of the game and make your own mark on its history."

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Criticized NFT and GameFi

On July 20, Minecraft developer Mojang Studios stated that it will disable the integration of NFT and the entire blockchain technology in Minecraft. Blockchain technology may not be integrated into Minecraft client and server applications, nor used to create NFTs related to any game content, including worlds, skins, character items, or other mods.

In the statement, Mojang Studios defined an NFT as "a unique, non-editable, digital token that is part of a blockchain and typically purchased using a cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin" (a unique, non-editable, digital token that is part of a blockchain and often purchased with cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin).Mojang's rationale for this ban can be summarized as follows:

1. The ownership and speculative nature of NFT is not in line with the community spirit of Minecraft.

NFTs and other blockchain technologies create digital ownership based on scarcity and exclusion, which is at odds with Minecraft's values of creative inclusion and shared play. NFT does not have the inclusiveness of the community, but creates a scene of rich and poor. The speculative pricing and investment mentality surrounding NFTs divert attention away from playing the game and encourage windfall profits, which we believe is inconsistent with the long-term happiness and success of our players.

2. Out of concerns about the unreliability of some third-party NFTs.

This unreliability can end up costing the players who buy them. Some third-party NFT implementations also rely entirely on blockchain technology and may require asset managers, which may disappear without notice. There have also been instances of NFTs being sold at artificially or fraudulently inflated prices. We recognize that the creations in our games have intrinsic value, and we strive to provide a marketplace that recognizes these values.

At the same time, Mojang Studios also stated that it will pay close attention to how blockchain technology develops over time to ensure that the above principles are preserved and determine whether it will allow for a safer experience or other practical and inclusive gaming applications. However, there are currently no plans to implement blockchain technology in Minecraft.

Criticism of NFT or blockchain technology by the traditional game community is by no means a minority.

In November 2021, when Ubisoft announced the launch of NFT, there was an uproar among fans. Ubisoft is positioning NFTs as a reward for players who have invested more than 600 hours in the game, enabling them to buy a limited number of NFTs and sell them for a profit. Gamers see it as a scheme to exploit gamers. In April 2022, Ubisoft had to announce that it would stop providing NFT updates for Ghost Recon: Breakpoint.

In December 2021, GSC Game World, the developer of the Ukraine-based Stalker game series, stated that they would stop all plans to include NFT elements in the upcoming game Stalker 2. "Based on the feedback we've received, we've decided to cancel any NFT-related content in STALKER 2. The interests of fans and players are the team's top priority...if you care, we care," they tweeted.

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Figure 1 Mark Venturelli's speech "Why NFT is a Nightmare", screenshot from YouTube

Amid the booing and applause at the scene, at this Latin American game event sponsored by several blockchain companies, Mark Venturelli called on the game industry to boycott NFT and blockchain in his speech, even though there were many attempts to disrupt NFT during his speech. No, from the live video, we can still see the attitude of most of the audience.

It is undeniable that we are hated by traditional games-figuring out the exact reason for being hated, whether it comes from prejudice, misunderstanding, or fact, is more important than constantly clarifying ourselves.

At this point,We can get a glimpse of this from a speech delivered by Mark Venturelli. Since the content of his speech was in Portuguese, we found an English translation of the PPT transcript (see the link at the end of the article) and summarize his views here as follows:

1. From the social level, the concept of "decentralization" of the blockchain comes from "distrust", and this distrust will lead to loss of efficiency and energy loss, which is wasted by the encryption and decryption process of the blockchain The power of blockchain is far more than that of centralized economic institutions that blockchain users do not trust.

2. From an economic perspective, cryptocurrency and NFT are speculative activities. The so-called play to earn mode encourages players to earn cryptocurrency through games, which is essentially a gambling behavior because the game itself does not create any Value is "zero-sum", and the gains of some people must come from the losses of other people. Excessive monetization and lack of supervision will inevitably lead to monopoly in most games, and many large groups have plundered wealth from retail investors or ordinary players.

3. From the perspective of game design, he believes that Fantasy, lack of consequence, and artificiality are necessary for the magic and escape from reality of the game. In this process, the game creates a magic circle. However, the emergence of NFT has brought financial nature, and reality has invaded the game, which will only make the game evolve into a purely real economic activity with strong utilitarianism. In the end, "no play", "only earning", in the process of making money, " The experience of "playing a game" is gone. There is no “PLAY AND EARN”. There's ONLY EARN.

He believes that the "innovation" promoted by NFT and blockchain has been an old product during the long period of game evolution, nothing special, or even worse.

Trading of in-game items?

— We have Team Fortress 2.

The deal for user-generated content (UCG)?

— We have CS:GO.

A transaction based on the entire gaming experience?

- We have Roblox.

A deal on services?

- We have Final Fantasy XIV.

Simulation of economic behavior (speculation as entertainment)?

- We have "EVE online".

Illegal casino experience?

— We have Diablo Immortal.

All the elements in P2E games that have existed in traditional video games for decades, there is only one thing - gold mining (RMT).

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Monetized Gaming Experience

In fact, human cognition is often a product of experience, and no matter how unbiased we claim to see the world, we will always use historical data and personal experience to judge the future. Much of the hostility toward cryptocurrencies seems to stem from the negative impact of monetization on traditional games, such as developers deliberately limiting features to push users to pay more to get the full experience.

The attack and rejection of MRT by many traditional games comes from such a simple logic: Since the original game design did not add monetization logic to the system balance design, so when such a dominant and destructive element When entering a system that has already been balanced, it will challenge the overall ecology of the game and the player experience.

Just like Hearthstone, players can't trade and resell cards like they would in a real-world card game—only through the more elusive act of reselling accounts. Why do games like Hearthstone not support the marketplace at all. Its roots lie in the fear that people or bots with multiple accounts will game the system in an effort to earn rare cards and then trade all the loot to a single account. Cards can lose their value, games can lose their purpose.

However, they cannot justify themselves.

Tencent, with the blessing of channels, traffic and capital for many years, has firmly taken the absolute top spot in Chinese games. In addition to the suspicion of excessive reference over the years, another type of criticism is also heard endlessly: spending money will become stronger. The voice of this criticism comes from the bad game experience of the players: the paying players become the real players of the game, while the players who refuse to pay will become the objects of entertainment-they become the NPCs of the paying players.

In the gamer community, there are generally two general terms to measure the price a player pays to win. Players usually call them "liver" and "krypton". "Liver" refers to the time, energy, skills and all other payment methods used to replace paid purchases. "Krypton" refers to krypton gold, which describes paying players, people who are willing to pay for better props, better equipment, and better characters. The balance between these two factors has always been a frequently seen and new proposition in the industry. The problem is that this is a delicate balance that requires a lot of time and energy to build. The existence of paying players will affect the game experience of free players to a certain extent: the achievement that originally required 60 hours of game time to achieve can be achieved with 60 RMB It's done, the players who spent 60 hours, what about their sense of satisfaction and accomplishment.

All of the above, after careful study, is a paradox that is difficult for many game developers to explain: the disguised encouragement of "paying players" and the crackdown on "illegal" RMT.

In a paper first published in the 2005 Future of Games Conference Proceedings, Dr. Vili Lehdonvirta, then at the Helsinki Institute of Information Technology, discussed the issue of secondary RMT markets for games. According to Dr. Lehdonvirta, the secondary market is a market where “users of the virtual world buy and sell virtual assets to each other without the involvement of the operator”. Tuukka Lehtiniemi defined the primary RMT market in 2007 as "a transaction in which the operator of some service sells virtual items to users for real money, and the player buys the service's own internal currency with real money, and uses this currency to conduct micro transactions within the service." trade". Services like this include the cash shops that are so common in games today, with Sony's Station Cash and ArenaNet's Gem Store being two clear examples of game operators being directly involved in selling in-game items. Typically, traditional gaming operators will allow real-world money to flow into the world -- but not out.

Trading time, experience, items, and levels directly with the game system, this primary market is legal and reasonable in many games.

Trading time, experience, items, and levels with other players in a private manner is a naturally derived secondary market that is not allowed and illegal.

In fact, it is difficult to find a rational logic that only allows the primary market and prohibits the secondary market in another area of the world. Usually, this situation only occurs in some transactions dominated by non-free economies. For example, you can send The government applies for a public rental housing, but it cannot resell this quota to others.

Are the time, experience, items, and levels in the game public rental housing?

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Monetization and game balance

In fact, it is not that traditional games have not tried to formalize the secondary market. For example, in 2011, Blizzard tried to introduce an auction house mechanism for Diablo, providing an internal alternative to eBay and other unauthorized trading forums. However, the auction house had unintended consequences, and many players played the game with the help of bots in the form of economic mercenaries to acquire and sell used weapons. These interlopers will peddle their digital wares at the official auction house, where wealthy merchants trade. Soon, more and more players emerged from Diablo's elite ranks, participating in pay-to-win. The ensuing backlash from the player community led to Blizzard closing down the auction house in 2013.

Blizzard's failed attempt has given many game developers a better reason to believe that the secondary market is a kind of damage to the player ecology. However, this is only a superficial attribution, and the deeper reason is: balance.

game balanceIt is an exquisite game design, which is described as a mathematical algorithm model of game parameters, game mechanics and the relationship between them. It involves adjusting these factors to create the desired experience, usually a positive one - the perception and experience of the player is the goal of game balance. It usually includes a lot: opportunity/probability, difficulty, economy, fairness, decision/strategy, feedback, combat power, cost, reward, etc.

In this sense, the purest numerical balance is a card game.

Card games are a genre with a long history. However, as Kathleen Breitman, the founder of Tezos, said, "Just as all philosophies are the footnotes of Plato, all card games are the footnotes of Magic." Breitman deeply knows that to make a Web3 card game well , it is not enough to just integrate blockchain technology in its back end, it is necessary to learn from the mechanism design in traditional games to improve its balance and playability.

Magic: The Gathering was originally an offline card game designed by Richard Channing Garfield, a Ph.D. in mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania, and produced by Wizards of the Coast. The reason why it is emphasized that the designer Richard is a doctor of mathematics is because players who are familiar with card games know that the key to the success of a card game is not only the sense of card design, the imagination of the deck, and the integrity of the world view. most importantly,It is whether the mathematical model after it is abstracted into a probability problem is balanced——In game theory, this type of game is collectively referred to as "non-complete information game".

TCG-based games are among the most difficult to balance and fine-tune. Just changing the details of one of the cards by a small amount can mean huge changes to the entire game and metadata. To make things even more troublesome, when new cards are introduced into the game to keep growing, each new card added risks making the old ones obsolete, which can easily lead to new ones for players who already have a strong deck or a fixed strategy. The cost of learning, and more seriously, caused them to lose interest in the new version-so to balance the checks and balances of each single card under each meta (version) is the core of the card game. Abstracted, it is some mathematical problems. In this sense, people who are good at mathematics or game theory can usually learn and master card games faster. Victory over many game veterans or professional players may be proof.

The actual game balance also includes more than numerical balance, such as game feedback and player psychological perception-even the player's perception difference between the combat power of the game character rising from 50 to 100 and 100 to 150, There is also a need for balance.

To put it simply, traditional gamers’ opposition to RMT in the secondary market is not only due to the damage to the balance of the game’s original combat power system after adding monetization elements, but more from itsanticipation and perceptiondestruction.

This explains why many players can allow primary market transactions and oppose secondary market transactions-this is an expectation of the game. When the game originally had a krypton gold model in the primary market, both the original combat power system and the player's perception of the game included expectations for this part, while the natural transfer and transfer of the secondary market did not No, or not included here for the time being, which caused the collapse of the system balance and discomfort in the emotional feedback of the game.

Also on July 20, Delphi Digital published a report exploring how NFTs can be incorporated into games without compromising the core gaming experience or "true competitive play" that gamers tend to value. The report argues that if monetization and NFT elements are properly integrated, gamers may be less adamant about opposing them, "If left untamed, money will always tend to become the dominant motivation. Therefore, the priority is to integrate market games with core The game loop itself is separate." Delphi Digital cites a possible way, for example, to make the game provide the core free-to-play experience for anyone, while using NFT to provide optional experiences, such as tournament tickets, new character skins, side games and competition rewards . "By maximizing meaning and competition in the core game, we're able to maximize revenue by monetizing the periphery around it."

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Following the other two ideas of Delphi

If we follow this line of thinking, we also propose two possible solutions here:

1. Collectible return in the form of NFT

Or turn back to the card game. According to a market report from superdata, the digital game market size will reach $126.6 billion in 2020. Compared with other types of games, such as RPG, MOBA, and shooting games, the market share of online card games has not been at a high level. Even in 2015, when "Hearthstone" exploded, the market size was only more than one billion Magnitude. The reason is that card games are weaker than other types of games in terms of immersion and instant appeal. At the same time, due to the complexity of their mechanisms, the learning curve is relatively steep, making it difficult for players to get good positive feedback for entry and improvement.

However, the lower market share of online games does not mean that the card game itself has a low market ceiling. In the offline mode of tabletop battles, card games have characteristics that other types of games do not have-transactional and collectible.

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Figure 2 Single card price of black lotus on eBay

To give another example, in a judicial auction in 2021, because the court did not know the market value of a pure gold blue-eyed white dragon card in "Game King", the evaluation price was 100 yuan, and the starting price was set at only 80 yuan. All of a sudden, it sparked a lot of discussion among players in the circle. Tens of thousands of players participated in the bidding. Later, due to malicious bids, the price was pushed up to 80 million yuan, and then it was stopped. In fact, the market value of this limited-edition Blue Eyes White Dragon Card with an official certificate is probably more than 500,000 RMB.

Therefore, if we estimate the market size of card games, we should not only look at the realization and value capture brought by its online client, but should further pay attention to the huge collection market derived from its offline physical cards. The price of a single card is often related to many factors such as its version, printing language, series, whether it is a flash card, strength, card drawing method-the rarer these factors are, the higher the value of the single card added together. Does this remind you of the moment to check NFT rarity?

In many senses, a card is a kind of NFT. For example, for the "Yu-Gi-Oh" blue-eyed white dragon card mentioned above, it will be officially released by KONAMI in 2019, limited to 500 sets, and each card will be printed with the collection number and certificate of "No.1-500" - each card is With its own individual market value, each one is irreplaceable. It can be said that cards are naturally compatible with NFT in terms of transaction and collection. Therefore, when the concept of GameFi emerged, we witnessed the birth of many TCG mechanisms or games with TCG elements, such as Gods Unchained, Splinterlands, Parallel, Skyweaver et al.

But unfortunately, so far there is no card game that can release the collection attributes that card games should have like Yu-Gi-Oh or Magic: The Gathering, and return to the "initial heart" of NFT that came out as digital collections - there seems to be a , we can get a glimpse of some similar ideas and clues.

SKYWEAVER

SKYWEAVER is a card game with high playability. From the design point of view, it downplays the impact of monetization on strategies and decks to a certain extent. First of all, it has no entry threshold, and players can play without paying in advance. As far as this game is concerned, secondly, it has three levels of cards: basic cards, silver cards and gold cards, but these cards have no difference in the functionality of the game, and their difference is only that: silver cards and gold cards can The deal, it's a little prettier with shiny borders and a smaller supply.

There is no difference in gameplay, but there are differences in whether it is available for transfer, supply, and appearance, which will cause a pure scarcity that is not based on utility. Therefore, it can be expected that if players who only consider gameplay, gold cards The scarcity of cards will not have any effect on it, and another part of players who enjoy collecting or trading will find the value of these gold and silver cards.

Of course, how strong the collectibility of these cards is depends on how the game project party operates the IP, how to create an enduring and active player community, and form the emotional and value projection of the brand. But we still believe that the separation of in-game and out-of-game attributes may be the first step in NFTs that do not destroy gameplay.

2. Distinguish between ordinary players and competitive players

Venturelli may be right. The "innovation" promoted by blockchain games may be the old path of traditional video games. Then we might as well look at the concept of battle pass. One of the most prestigious known battle pass operations currently comes from Dota2.

The International, usually abbreviated as TI, is the most important e-sports series about the Dota2 project year organized by Valve. Beginning with The International 2013, tournament prize pools have been crowdfunded through something called Compendium battle passes, which raise money from players who buy them for exclusive in-game virtual goods and other rewards. 25% of all proceeds from annual battle pass sales go directly to the prize pool. Each iteration of The International has surpassed the prize pool of the previous one, most recently The International 2021, which rewarded teams with a total of $40 million — while Valve’s initial investment may have been $1.6 million, in the occasional dead game and the like Today, when taunts appear, this is a rather staggering number, surpassing the combined prize pools of many other e-sports events.

As time goes by, Compendium contains more and more content, but it does not hinder the essence of the operation of this event. Valve relies on a huge player base and their youthful beliefs and enthusiasm to "supply" a A global event with only 20 teams participating.

The traditional perspective holds that ordinary gamers cannot be separated from the e-sports they support, but the current trend is that e-sports has increasingly become a mainstream entertainment that is not exclusive to players-according to statistics, in About 30% of the viewers of League of Legends e-sports events, another moba-like game, rarely log in or even install the client at all.

This model can actually be transplanted to partially monetized games. Imagine such a game economic model, its participants are divided into several categories, one is ordinary casual players, their expectations of the game are free, earning, easy, fair, and light games every day; the other is competitive players , They may be individuals, or they may belong to a certain game union. They have superb technology, strong treasury support, constantly update equipment, and constantly read various strategies. Their goal is to win in the non-stop game series. Divide the prize pool.

The current question is how to avoid the impact of the expansion of the combat power of the latter type of players on the overall ecology and combat power balance? The simplest answer is - let them separate naturally.

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native blockchain games

However, the above ideas, including peripheral monetization, distinguishing between collection and utility, and different types of players, are all compromises at this stage. This kind of compromise comes from an assumption: once monetization invades the core game mechanism, it will definitely cause damage to the game life span and game balance, and will cause damage to "playability", so we can only use peripheral, The method of splitting and isolating protects the core game mechanism.

Is this assumption necessarily correct?

uncertain. Because the game is too complex a subject, the positive incentives and negative feedback involved, the numerical balance and the player's psychological perception involved are not only a mathematical problem, but also a psychological problem. In many krypton gold games, in order to allow players to make as many in-game purchases as possible, they will set the marginal output of the first 10K yuan investment very high, and then gradually reduce it between 10K-100K yuan, and then once it has accumulated to a The amount of consumption will start to increase. To put it simply, when you spend the first 10,000 yuan, you will feel that you have become very strong. Every 648 yuan has gone where it should go. If you exceed a certain amount, you will find that your improvement has slowed down. , it seems that the immediate effect cannot be achieved. There are countless games like this in the mobile game world. Traditional mobile game teams are already very familiar with this mechanism.

But did the players resist? Are players asking for this element of monetization to be removed because it ruins their gaming experience - many don't.

One reason is that the experience accumulated by game developers for a long time allows them to balance this gap well, so that players of each type of choice can obtain psychological satisfaction and enter the magic circle mentioned above. One explanation is that this is a two-way choice. Players who can't bear it will naturally vote with their feet and go to other games.

As we emphasized in the previous article, people are the product of past experience. NFT has only been available for two or three years, and GameFi has only been available for one or two years. We have too little experience to compete with the traditional video game experience that has been developing rapidly for decades. contend.

Because the problems we face are problems that they cannot solve.

Because the subject we are facing is a brand new challenge at another level.

That is how to design a mechanism so that whether it is the economic cycle, combat power system, expectation management or feedback system, it can achieve a delicate balance and have a strong self-regulation ability. They cannot do it, so they tend to deny it.

As they criticize, not all blockchain games can be classified as games. In 2021, since the GameFi frenzy detonated by Axie, the rapid rise of gold and the rapid collapse of funds, many people call it GameFi1.0. And when we look back, does this play to earn mode, which has changed the operation of the game, really have an element of play? Should it be defined as a game or DeFi? How many people are willing to play those web games that seem to be replicas of 4399 if it is not for gold income?

But we should also realize that not all references to traditional games can be incorporated into Web3 native games. Because it's a whole different subject.

We clearly know that as long as the player devotes time and attention to all the characters, items, equipment, and gold coins in the game, he should enjoy some or all of the ownership. Even if the game disappears and the server is gone, he should also own or partially Own it, whether it has value or not.

We also clearly know that there is no better game mode for NFT than card games. It is inherently collectible, it needs to be traded, combined, and it needs to verify authenticity. NFT can revolutionize all of this, and NFT can reshape A new look at this ancient game form.

We also clearly know that if players are only allowed to trade combat power with the system, while prohibiting the flow of combat power between players, it is actually a kind of exploitation of players. This seems to be a conspiracy by game companies. keep flowing in, and use technical means to prevent flight.

We also know that we have ten thousand narratives to identify ourselves when confronted with criticism and criticism, but it doesn't seem to work.

It is the best self-evident to make a real original blockchain game based on the effective flow of ownership and value, and to solve the problems that they cannot solve. Venturelli mentioned in his speech that play to earn has enabled many people in Latin America and Africa to have a meager income. He believes that this is a kind of exploitation. But he doesn't know whether the model of axie and YGG should be defined as success or not, it actually implies a change in the production relationship. This is an attempt under the blockchain radiation chain, which makes game props a A production tool that allows for a natural stratification of players considered homogeneous in traditional games. This is not a new business model, after all, the Goldsmiths Union has existed for a long time, but it is a new social relationship, and all of this is based on ownership.

Why don't they accept NFT? Minecraft said it violated the principle of community sharing. Venturelli thought it was unnecessary in his speech. Before the emergence of NFT, we did everything we could do. But it's not, these are just appearances, they are blurring the point, the core of everything is ownership.

In fact, technology runs much faster than our imagination. The complete ownership mechanism brought by NFT has exceeded the social relationship we imagined, so we have not built a better game based on it.

As Ubisoft wrote in a message to players on its NFT page, "Thank you to all Ghost Recon Breakpoint players who got their first numbers! You own a piece of the game and make your mark on its history."

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