BBC: Sid Meier warns the games industry about monetisation

[The_J]

The BBC has an article with Sid Meier, where he talks about the current development in the games industry. The views in the article probably come due to the recent increase in the monetisation in this industry, not only with in-app purchases and micro-transactions, but also with the recent NFT hype.
Firaxis has gladly never said anything about the latter, and we are very happy about it.

An excerpt from the article:
"Sid Meier says that if major companies continue to focus on ways like this to monetise gaming, they risk losing the audience: "People can assume that a game is going to be fun and what it needs for success are more cinematics or monetisation or whatever - but if the core just is not there with good gameplay, then it won't work.

"In a sense gameplay is cheap... The game design part is critical and crucial but doesn't require a cast of thousands in the way some of the other aspects do. So it's perhaps easy to overlook how important the investment in game design and gameplay is.""

Read the whole article here: https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-60304123

 

[blackbutterfly]

I agree with Sid, keep crypto out of Civ.

 

[Deggial]

NFTs are not only a predatory concept and horrible idea for games.
They are also a deeply immoral innovation, that violates every endeavor of energy conservation and our (hopefully) communal effort to save the planet (actually: ourselves) from climate change.

An interesting read, not only for those so far unaware of the topic: “The Third Web”

 

[Civinator]

What is meant by NFT hype ? Please understand, that not everybody is understanding these shortenings and their meanings.

 

[Kjimmet]

What is meant by NFT hype ? Please understand, that not everybody is understanding these shortenings and their meanings.

I don't know much about them either, but what I know is: a, NFT stands for non-fungible token and b, they are extremely controversial. I've also heard something about NFT scams.

 

[Deggial]

What is meant by NFT hype ? Please understand, that not everybody is understanding these shortenings and their meanings.

Please follow the link I've provided.
I think, the (admittedly quite long) article explains the technology quite well.

I don't know much about them either, but what I know is: a, NFT stands for non-fungible token and b, they are extremely controversial. I've also heard something about NFT scams.

Regarding the scam: another hilarious and at the same time deeply depressing website: Web3 is going just great

(Please note the increasing number at the bottom right. Here, she adds all money lost so far by the scams she tracked on her site.)

 

[The_J]

What is meant by NFT hype ? Please understand, that not everybody is understanding these shortenings and their meanings.

NFT is basically a digital ownership certificate, of which only one can exist.
Artists have been using it to sell their artwork on the internet, so that someone can prove they own it. This doesn't really give you any other benefits though, and for digital art (e.g. jpegs on the internet) having or not having a digital certificate really doesn't matter.
A lot of gaming companies have now started or thought about using these also for their ingame items, e.g. if you buy something over the ingame shop, you get such a certificate. Which TBH again isn't useful for anything. But it's a trend right now . Firaxis hasn't said anything in these regards, and I think they also will not in the future.

 

[blackbutterfly]

What is meant by NFT hype ?

My understanding of NFT games is this:

Instead of purchasing a digital download on Steam (for example) for a game, you purchase a NFT for $75 (or whatever the price of the game) from Steam (or publisher).
You need one of these tokens to play the game.

As someone said it is predatory, b'cos AFAIK in typical NFT games, winning gives you more tokens. Losing, loses you tokens.
That's gambling.

NFT Casinos basically.

This model totally doesn't suit Civ IMO.

But there may be other models. IDK

 

[Civinator]

Thank you very much for your answers. I think now I have at least a small glimpse about NFT.

 

[tedhebert]

To add to the discussion on NFT…

The crypto currencies like bitcoin are bought, sold and encrypted using a technological invention/system called BLOCKCHAIN… I’m sure you’ve heard that buzzword before.

NFTs are using the same technological means, but instead of being used for currency transfer, it’s being used for transfer of images/work of art. Like bitcoin, the item is encrypted in a way that proves you’re the owner and only you can prove it is so.

hope this helps

 

[Protok St]

Companies use NFT marks to create inner market system where people can throw they money in.

The game starts, the opportunities to buy/sell NFTs are advertised. The media and bloggers raise the hype.
People are investing in the empty digital signature market for in-game items.
A year passes, half a year the players are pumping, the market is oversaturated with items, everything is getting cheaper, people are losing their investments, the campaign remains with money.
Game died.

Copy/paste repeat with a cloned game or another Moderator Action: watch your mouth. The_J . mobile game.

Profit

 

[uhu]

you purchase a NFT for $75 [...] You need one of these tokens to play the game.
[...]
This model totally doesn't suit Civ IMO.

So they'd use several $5 chips instead.

E.g. heroes:

Yep! Heroes like Hercules or Sinbad are the sort of exciting thing that should be happening all the time. Being able to trivialize the rest of the game is an ugly myth.

Surprise yourself and seize the occasion to upgrade your meh heroes even further: give them the rainbow unicorn ultra promotion for only 99cents!

Or make one more step and break through to the other side with the one and only: Gnampf, master of the universe - available now for only $3.95 ...

Civ6 tested how endeared unbalanced single effects can be, how necessary a coherent balanced gameplay actually is -- celebrated yield porn & "if you don't like it, switch it off, it is nevertheless / because of this a great feature" gave the right answers ...

 

[blackbutterfly]

Let's be honest.

Who playing Civ VI has thought: "Oh, you know what Civ needs? NFTs!"

Well, not gamers for sure.
Maybe 2K execs

 

[UWHabs]

So they'd use several $5 chips instead.

E.g. heroes:


Civ6 tested how endeared unbalanced single effects can be, how necessary a coherent balanced gameplay actually is -- celebrated yield porn & "if you don't like it, switch it off, it is nevertheless / because of this a great feature" gave the right answers ...

That's more a general microtransaction setup. So it would be like playing a game, and then you hit a goody hut and it pops up and says "do you want to pay 1$ to gain Sinbad?"

NFT in gaming would be more like them deciding that one person could own the Sinbad hero, and they alone would get to use him. Granted it doesn't really work in civ since it's not like a single global online mode, so I can't see anything come to civ. But for other games, that would be an option.

Where I don't understand NFTs for gaming is that there's nothing really stopping the developers from having a single unique Sinbad hero available in the game without using the NFT structure. The only thing different is that someone could sell the NFT outside of the game and presumably the developers would have to track that and transfer ownership within the game. But I know a lot of game platforms like Steam really don't like having transactions happen outside of their system, since that sale wouldn't give a cut to the devs or to Steam. That's why I don't really see them take off - seems to transfer too much control outside of the system, and I just don't see enough bonus to users for devs to go down the road of making them work.

 

[uhu]

That's more a general microtransaction setup. So it would be like playing a game, and then you hit a goody hut and it pops up and says "do you want to pay 1$ to gain Sinbad?"

yep, for the single players

not like a single global online mode [...] there's nothing really stopping the developers from having a single unique Sinbad hero available in the game without using the NFT structure.

I think too, in multi player the block chain overhead isn't really needed. Also Sinbad doesn't need to be unique in a strict sense: could be just limited to one player in one specific multi player game. And different players actually using different decks of "unique" tokens.

(I'm not interested in micro transactions and not at all in unique gimmick multi player; I just try to understand why civ6 is so horribly degenerating)

 

[CurtSibling]

Current gaming trends of gouging the consumer is the main reason I have not bought a game since 2011.

I'll stick with CIV2, and have no desire to check out the series after that.

PS
Long live Sid!

 

[Zaarin]

Current gaming trends of gouging the consumer is the main reason I have not bought a game since 2011.

I'll stick with CIV2, and have no desire to check out the series after that.

PS
Long live Sid!

TBH I don't think "gouging the consumer" is a serious problem in the industry overall. Certain corners of the gaming industry--especially online games and competitive games--have an issue with lootboxes and microtransactions, but overall, given how the price of new games has remained virtually unchanged for well over a decade against considerable inflation, video games are one of the cheapest hobbies to have.

 

[Andrew Johnson [FXS]]

video games are one of the cheapest hobbies to have.

Going for long walks? Reading novels at the library?

 

[Zaarin]

Going for long walks? Reading novels at the library?

Sure, I suppose some hobbies could be pretty close to free (though I might be inclined to call them "enjoyable activities" rather than "hobbies," but I'm not the hobby police ), but when I compare video games to my other hobbies, particularly tabletop roleplaying, book collecting, and coffee, I can definitely tell you I spend less money per hour of enjoyment on video games than I do the others. And that's saying nothing of really expensive hobbies like model trains, for example.

 

[AsH2]

Going for long walks? Reading novels at the library?

or Posting in forums..