Shuji Utsumi, Sega’s co-CEO, comments in a new statement that there is no point in implementing blockchain technology if it doesn’t make games ‘fun’.
Shuji Utsumi, Sega’s co-CEO, comments in a new statement that there is no point in implementing blockchain technology if it doesn’t make games ‘fun’.
What do you think about arguments for using it in cross-game “metaverse” type trading? It’s another buzzword but it would make centralization of the data hard to impossible.
My intuition is we’re seeing the first wave of snake oil salesmen adopting Animal Magnetism Quantum Whatsits to Manifest your Holograms who will poisoned the well and drove everyone away, then in 10-20 years someone will have a good idea using it at which point the scammers are no longer around to ruin it for everyone. What do you think of that idea?
There’s no value in cross-game sharing of assets, nether for the developer nor the players.
When the game dies so does anything of value related to the assets themselves. The blockchain will probably die too. Someone one day resurrecting the game is a pretty flimsy reason at best to justify all of the negatives that come with blockchain in games, because 2 decades later it wouldn’t matter anyway.
Could you detail what negatives come with blockchains in games? I’d like to better understand your perspective and position. I don’t know of any games that use blockchains and aren’t some kind of scam, but then again it’s not a hammer’s fault if it’s used to bludgeon someone to death. If a hypothetical good dev somehow put a blockchain in, what negatives are there due to that specific inclusion which aren’t the result of malicious intent?
The negatives are similar to ordering a hamburger inside a restaurant, and having it be delivered via a car down at the nearest bus stop.
It’s just a lot of waste and hassle for everyone involved.
It’s still an entirely implausible scenario. There’s too many hypotheticals here to even properly argue this as “cross-game metaverse trading” is kind of hand wavey in how it would be implemented at all, but getting back to the core issue of centralization just being a mask for trust and authority. If there’s truly no trust between the parties, which would be extremely odd of them to set up a giant cross-game metaverse in the first place, it would be better to have an agreed upon third party trustee host the data. Or each host their respective data with an API for others to access it when needed. And ultimately, the final authority lies with each game itself on how it implements that data. They can read whatever data they like off the blockchain, but how it’s implemented locally is their final say, the game can warp that data or ignore it in any way it wishes. To say nothing of what that data looks like. Does the blockchain contain the entirety of the model, texture, and stats for all games implementing that item? Does that lock the schema in place at inception? How do new games enter the metaverse then? What about bugs? What about balancing of stats and economy across multiple games, it’s hard enough in one. Are all the games similar in nature? How do you implement an AK-47 from a CoD-like game into a fantasy MMO?
The whole premise is nonsense.