So you’re a developer. Beautiful. That makes it easy then.

Look, you mentioned Postgres. But why use it at all for anything? Because redoing all the features that separate product provides is a giant pain in the ass. Now, what if your needs didn’t quite work with trad-relational DBs? Too much data, reads a million times higher than writes, no need for real-time accuracy. Then you use a specialized db like BigTable.

There are other services you plug into instead of reinvent. You stand up web servers with special features like redirect rules as configuration. You could write your own web service every time you start a new app, but that’s crazy. The need Apache or whatever is filling is a communications management piece.

Ok. Now. You are building a service and you need to build a transaction system for trading of digital assets with fiat currency. You could write your own or you could use a specialized service. NFTs on crypto currency are that prebuilt service. I’m switching metaphors now, but it’s just like picking a Docker provider.

I get that you are insulted by my comment about crypto critics, but a few of your comments have shown that you lack the understanding of crypto to criticize it. Thus, you have validated my comment you found insulting.

I listed a series of bullet points & you said Postgres can do that. Of course you can define those tables in any database. But the logic to perform operations on those tables for a transaction and accounting system must still be written. One of the main aspects of blockchains are exactly such an API.

Second, you have shown that you don’t understand NFTs either. But thank you for at least admitting that you don’t understand what I meant by refs to blobs of data. So there is hope. Almost no crypto currency stores NFTs on-chain. Blockchains are designed to be super efficient since they are distributed transaction systems. When you buy an NFT, the actual data for compromising the NFT itself is stored somewhere else. The blockchain just has the token proving ownership.

But the meta-problem is more important here. You are debating so confidently and asserting things so boldly, yet you don’t have the knowledge of the topic that a 2 hour tutorial would give you. That is the real problem. Why are people like this? Why do they read something that is essential an editorial and then go around vehemently repeating the points from that editorial?

You don’t need NFTs or block chain for any of that.

• unique items with serial numbers
• record of ownership for items
• transaction history of who bought/ sold the item
• currency to pay for items
• account balances
• all that tied to some external reference to a blob of data that represents the thing being traded

Sure, you don’t need blockchain and NFTs to do all that but once you invented that system you’d have effectively reinvented blockchain and NFTSs.

The meta-problem here is two fold:

1. For reasons I don’t comprehend, a lot of folks have been fooled by central banking propaganda that “crypto bad; me no like crypto bros”. Alan Greenspan, or whoever is modern equivalent is, ain’t yer buddy. And neither is the PR firm his friend hired to program y’all’s brains via Reddit posts from hundreds of deep socket puppet accounts.
2. Involved video gamers (as opposed to people who merely play video games) from my experience, more than a typical person, tend to angrily seek scapegoats for I’m-not-sure-what. Therefore, a successful profitable and enduring enterprise like Ubisoft is one of their favorite targets of ire. So like any angry mob, whatever Ubisoft is doing then they hate it.

NFTs don’t make sense for a ton of things, but item trading in video games is one of the few ideal use cases, and, implemented properly, it would benefit players.

There could be items that are literally unique and not just labeled “unique” but everyone can get one. Some collector-type players love that stuff. Limited run items could actually be limited run even if the studio waited a couple years and brought it back because you could tell original-run item vs cash-grab item by creation date and so on.

In the future, if standards are established, you could even move items from ESO to GW2, for example.

One benefit to devs and their players who care about fairness is rolling back (or entirely preventing) a duplicating glitch. I know there is always at least one case of this in every MMORPG I’ve ever played. Devs have to scramble, lock databases, screw up the rollback or don’t even attempt it, and the non-cheaters are all pissed.

Sega should should start a meatspace cab company and their fleet is operated remotely by players in the game.

Is that like a cryocurrency?

I’m getting chills just thinking about it.

Elder Scrolls especially Morrowind will always have a place in my heart but I’ve moved on. If they ever release a better game I will come back. What ever is running Starfield won’t be it.

I’ve found New World and as far as MMOs go, it’s the best I’ve played in comparison to Elder Scrolls Online and Guild Wars 2 (in depth) and a few others (<40 hours).

But New World has the lore, baby. That’s what seals the deal. Superior gameplay: check. Great art design: check. The lore is the final block and New World is so interesting. I didn’t think a fantasy setting could have new and interesting lore but they succeeded.

How the Lost came into creation from

is so tragic. I’m still learning what Angry Earth is all about tho.

And it’s just fun! Like, I would have never guessed that I’d enjoy running around in a pilgrim hat getting killed by a giant turkey with laser eyes. And who would have guessed you could successfully merge the giants from Nasusicca Valley of the Wind with 1500s Caribbean aesthetic?

But if you’re thinking: “We’re talking about single player games, dumbass.” Yea, I know, I like New World so much that I wish the same dev team would make a proper single player game in the exact same setting.

Short story time. In USA, over 25 years ago, a Russian immigrant used to give me rides down the peninsula to work in the early hours. I wondered at his ability to survive and provide for a family in our high cost of living area. He told me that applying for government and nongovernmental aid and so on was easy for him because he was used to the much worse Soviet bureaucracy.

Half the heavy hitters in Elder Scrolls Online are house wives because it’s a game where you get more power just for putting time into it. Also the collecting of pretty outfits.

The US needs more mutual companies in general but it could work for a gaming company too.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_organization

environmental storytelling

Oooo! That’s the phrase I’ve been looking for for a few years. Yes! You know what game has amazing environmental storytelling? The MMO RPG Guild Wars 2. It’s typical high fantasy on the surface with its own unique style but the environment slowly unveils that it’s really a post-post-post apocalypse world. I enjoyed that aspect the most. Leaving typical big city fantasy hub to find yourself swimming thru radioactive waters covering a submerged skyscraper. So cool.

Kinda like Elfstones of Shannara book fiction turned out to be.

achieved what it set out to do can be hit or miss

Damn. I know you meant well, but you sound like a project manager of a feature on an insurance website and the minimum viable product was kinda janky and you are trying to soften the blow to the team during the lessons learned meeting.

But this is a video game. For relaxation and recreation. With lots of competition in the market. What you wrote is more of a condemnation than any hyperbolic gamer nerd rant.

Oh no. The Click4Gameplay guy had me excited about their games. https://youtube.com/@click4gameplay

Entity-Component is so foundational I can’t imagine starting without it. Good on them for changing to that architecture tho