this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2023
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It just in general is pretty bad, for most use cases a traditional relational database is just ... better
Blockchain is just a spicy linked list
Yeah I play games to enjoy the game, not to speculate on real money investments.
If you want confetti every time you make a trade, just play Robinhood.
Database being a singular entity, holding up all the information, can be prone to manipulation. In case of game assets, while a person won't consider it as an investment (or valuable), it is pointless to use a blockchain to restore the integrity of that database.
All the pseudo hype surrounding the NFT, have given these gaming companies an inspiration to monetize their in-game asset, to stay relevant and sustain their business. Just because of that stupid vision, the gamer are in conflict.
I personally despise all these whale trades hyping up NFT by buying stupid jpegs, where at its core functionality, it can be quite useful.
Gaming may or may not find its use in blockchain, but the crypto innovation hasn't come across a level to be a part of the gaming industry.
No doubt its boring.
I agree with most of what you said, but I just wanted to add... Nothing is beyond manipulation, there's plenty of experience out there monitoring traditional databases, and software intended to aid in tracking down tampering retroactively:
https://severalnines.com/blog/how-to-audit-postgresql-database/
Not to mention you can implement things in your application to make it even harder for a single person to tamper with the database (arguably somewhat block chain inspired), e.g.: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1683434/detecting-database-tampering-is-it-possible
Does a ("proper") block chain make it harder to tamper in the first place? Yes, in theory, but is the associated cost really worth it? (If you ask me, the number of times it's actually worth using a blockchain is a near zero number).
Can you actually argue this or are you just parotting what other people parrot on social media? Databases require trust between parties, for example, so that's one of many, many reasons they don't replace one of the use cases.
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Can you elaborate on how that's useful for a video game (or a "majority of use cases"/"in general") or "are you just parotting what other people parrot on social media?"
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The block chain is only useful if you want a cooperative system that "trusts nobody"... And that's exceedingly rare (not to mention it's susceptible to attacks like the 51% attack ... which you can -- hilariously -- fix if the major stake holders in the chain decide to override the network and do what they want anyways).
There's no reason a video game needs a block chain, at all. The video game has a manufacturer, the video game's rewards are only going to be meaningful inside of that game and ecosystem. Valve's been running a store for CSGO for over a decade.
If you want federation... Lemmy is federated, Matrix is federated, email is federated, and they all allow dodging a central authority in favor of smaller authorities without using a block chain. But even that isn't useful for a video game or publisher.
I think you hit the nail on the head that blockchain doesn’t really provide value to an in-game video game marketplace other than trying to inflate IAP prices off NFT hype.
I think that blockchain could have a purpose in a marketplace for lending/trading/reselling digital licenses to games but developers/publishers don’t want that. They want everyone to purchase new licenses.
There are other use cases outside of video games where blockchain makes more sense but a lot of them are people trying to make money off bag holders
Even here, I think you'd really find that under technical scrutiny, this would be a much harder sell vs just having a federated license transfer system between Sony, Microsoft, and Valve. Making it a block chain doesn't really "add value".
Have you heard of P2E (Play to Earn) model?
The play to earn model is literally a ponzi scheme with a fancier name. The money you earn has to come from somewhere. It doesn't appear out of thin air. In 100% of P2E games, the earliest players get paid by the revenue from later players. Eventually, the game stops growing, so the later players are left holding the bag.
Obviously, some people make a lot of money in ponzi schemes (most notably, the people that start the ponzi scheme in the first place), but it's a terrible design for people that aren't the ponzi creators or the first adopters lucky enough to get in on the ground floor.