I had intended to write more about my game design for my Deck Trading game, but I ran into a person who strongly believes that NFTs and crypto in general are absolutely useless. They passed to me this article. https://docseuss.medium.com/look-what-you-made-me-do-a-lot-of-people-have-asked-me-to-make-nft-games-and-i-wont-because-i-m-29c7cfdbbb79. I think there are a few issues with the article, A large portion of their arguments boil down to "people suck", but let me address a few of their comments.
All Cryptocoins are a security: This is at best a Half truth. Which is, as we will all know, makes it a lie. The reality is that most crypto coins are not securities. There is investing like staking tokens that do qualify as a security if they are not sufficiently distributed. Sufficiently distributed means that you can't pin the transactions to a single controlling entity.
Cryptocoins are fake currency: Not true. They have all the tell-tale signs of being real currency. i.e. they can be exchanged for goods and services. Is not being government backed a downside? Maybe. But they are working hard to work their way into the system.
Taxes: governments are going to government.
Uniqueness of Characters: you can't balance millions of unique Characters, that is probably true for indie developers. You can balance abilities and groups of Characters. Or you can go the other route and have a limited number of unique Characters, balance, and lock balance and ship NFTs. This works reasonable well for digital TCGs like Splinterlands and Gods Unchained.
Ownership: All Ownership is imaginary, even in the current system it boils down to a social agreement, easily fake-able and doctored. The question for me is can NFTs simplify the law and execution of rights enforcement. I think when combined with "smart contracts" i.e. code, The answer is yes. Reserving the legal system for the truly strange or difficult rights questions.
Scarcity: The use of artificial scarcity is very common in current NFTs scene and can be terrible. Making a million Apes, Toads, or other random thing with the impression that they are unique and thus valuable. This falls into the people suck category. That said, if an NFT has some utility or use case, it might actually have value.
Long-term Support: No, you obviously don't have to continue supporting the NFTs after you are done spending time on the game, and certainly not guaranteed into the next version of the game. This can be resolved for users who still care by being FOSS and releasing the code.
Pseudo-anonymus blockchain: people using this to scam people, falls under people suck. However, the same sort of deception can happen in the real world. You don't always know who you are buying from or whether they actually own the thing they are selling. Secondly, no blockchain that I'm aware is truly anonymous.
Money Laundering / Theft: Yup, People suck.
Data vs hard copy: Yes, it is easier to copy data, which the author seems to argue is good for digital goods but not NFTs. NFTs are data, but that doesn't mean they are useless. The distributed nature of them makes that data easier to verify, and NFT projects should be leaning into this.
Anti-gambling: hypocritical, you don't have to make money on your game bro, but from the customer's POV your game is a gamble on fun
I do think that the NFT space and blockchain technology have a lot of room to growth into use cases that will be actually useful. The NFT scene today is in fact full of scams, bullshit, and pure meanness. They need to be evaluated based on their use case and not just speculation for future value.
P.S. The first link in that article does give an interesting look at blockchain tech.
