Maf Posted January 31, 2022 Author Share Posted January 31, 2022 The Worms developers Team 17 are also getting in to NFT's. Sigh. They're coming out the gate swinging on the environmentally friendly aspect Quote Worms developer Team17 has announced it is getting into NFTs. These "limited edition" unique pieces of computer-generated artwork will be sold by Reality Gaming Group, which uses a "side-chain" of the "Ethereum mainnet". This means, the company says, registering your unique ownership of each Worms collectible is "environmentally friendly". So, should 100,000 people buy one, the energy used to register these unique images would be "the average annual kettle usage of just 11 households". There's also a partnership to donate a portion of proceeds to NFT sustainability firm "Coin 4 Planet", and specifically its Refeed Farms idea. This invests in worm beds which process food waste, and the claim here is it results in a cleaner output than commercial fertiliser. Images of the Worms NFTs themselves seem to be thin on the ground, but today's announcement feels a little rushed. There's a website - metaworms.live which currently shows a rotating 3D worm covered in glitter. There's also a MetaWorms Discord, where a project roadmap channel includes a post saying "do a roadmap". Other channels such as "NFT Discussion", "Speculation" and "Shilling channel" are currently empty. Clearly, it is early days. Here is one of the things I really don't understand about NFT's. Quote So, should 100,000 people buy one I thought the point of the NFT was it's 'uniqueness'. So if I own one, but then 100,000 other people also own their own one. What's the fucking point lol. Why does it need to be a NFT just sell it to me (Not that I want to buy a JPEG) and I'll save it on my computer. Why does my signature need to be saved in a node/blockchain/ledger/whatever if 100,000 people also own it anyway. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maryokutai Posted January 31, 2022 Share Posted January 31, 2022 31 minutes ago, Maf said: the average annual kettle usage of just 11 households Thats still 11 households too many for what is essentially an utterly pointless scheme. Id accept NFTs if they miracoulously ran on nothing because in that scenario theyd only affect dimwits who think buying into it is a good idea. Not the case though. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maf Posted January 31, 2022 Author Share Posted January 31, 2022 The Worms guys are getting fucked up on social media. Which means good tweets inbound Oh and Troy Baker announced he was stopping his NFT collaboration thing haha. I love drama Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DANGERMAN Posted January 31, 2022 Share Posted January 31, 2022 The last game was an absolute shit show, so, be a little mean spirited, the Worms devs have bigger things to worry about than NFTs Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maf Posted January 31, 2022 Author Share Posted January 31, 2022 I wasn't aware of this because I don't follow Team 17 at all but apparently they are really well liked because they publish and house a lot indie games which has generated a lot of goodwill amongst those smaller communities. Guess what those smaller communities hate and don't want to be associated with, though. You guessed it. So this is where a lot of the backlash is coming from it seems. Not only fans, not only internal staff and teams that didn't know this was happening, but now business partners too. I have a feeling they will be withdrawing this NFT venture by the end of the week. The thing that gets me is NFT's are so toxic and to my knowledge not a big money maker for video games yet. So why is everyone so quick to jump in the shark tank to quickly come out legless and limping going sorry, sorry. Why not wait for a big company like Square or Ubisoft to take all the shit first and see if there's actually money to be made first. Not that I would think NFT's are Ok even if they were making a lot of money but right now it's all toxic for no reason. Unless there's something in the 'How to Business for Dummies' text book that says if potential for cash then go Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mfnick Posted January 31, 2022 Share Posted January 31, 2022 Gutted. Team 17 have published some great games over recent years, Overcooked, Blasphemous, Moving Out, Narita Boy. This is a real shame. @MafI believe they’re so eager because it has potential to be a huge money earner while basically costing them nothing. But for it to work they need everyone to be in, as all these companies do, so they’re all pushing it hard so we buy them to sell them to make them (the companies) more money as they’ll earn a cut for every sale. From what I understand the earlier you’re in the more you stand to make too, like cryptocurrency and other pyramid schemes. The fact that companies are trying so hard to make this a thing even with the backlash should send alarm bells ringing for any sane person. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
one-armed dwarf Posted January 31, 2022 Share Posted January 31, 2022 They want in on the ground floor, it's very funny to see how shameless and desperate they are about it. They saw bitcoin and want to be the early adopter of this version of BTC, as they see it. It's one of those things where the reputational hit is 'worth it', except for Troy Baker I guess who's bailed out (maybe because the company he partnered with was involved with intellectual theft as well) edit just to add without double posting, I'm watching that video @OCH posted on the last page and it's very good. Not just about NFTs, but speculative bubbles in general 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maf Posted February 2, 2022 Author Share Posted February 2, 2022 Team 17 not doing NFT's anymore 😆 https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2022-02-01-team17-u-turns-on-controversial-worms-nft-project-following-intense-backlash Quote "Team17 is today announcing an end to the MetaWorms NFT project," the company wrote in a statement on Twitter. "We have listened to our Teamsters, development partners, and our games' communities, and the concerns they've expressed, and have therefore taken the decision to step back from the NFT space." *Puts on Mortal Kombat trailer voice* Who's next? Not the main story but things from the article I thought worth highlighting Quote Atari recently released giftable "surprise" NFT lootboxes Wut Quote while Konami (rather depressingly) earned over £118,000 from its Castlevania NFT auction. Double wut But in better news https://www.pcgamer.com/electronic-arts-is-having-second-thoughts-about-nfts/ Quote Just three months after describing NFTs and the blockchain as "the future of our industry," Electronic Arts seems to be easing up a bit. ... "I believe that collectibility will continue to be an important part of our industry in the games and experiences that we offer our players," Wilson said. "Whether that's as part of NFTs and the blockchain, that remains to be seen. And I think, the way we think about it is, we want to deliver the best possible player experience we can, and so we'll evaluate that over time. But right now it's not something that we're driving hard on." So EA backing off NFT's? That seems positive. If they don't do it then I think a lot of other companies will back off also Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mfnick Posted February 2, 2022 Share Posted February 2, 2022 Come on people!!! Yes! Keep it going! Hopefully we can stop this before it actually becomes a thing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nabby9 Posted February 2, 2022 Share Posted February 2, 2022 It says something when even EA are distancing themselves from something. On 30/01/2022 at 09:32, OCH said: A longer video going into the whole thing. Same. Watched that video yesterday & it's such a good explanation of what is going on. Will need to watch it again though to get my head around everything. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maf Posted February 2, 2022 Author Share Posted February 2, 2022 This is not game related but I'll post here anyway. I wanted to try the right click + save thing. So I went on NBA Top Shot which is the NBA's offical website for buying and selling NFT's. They're essentially 15-30 second video clips of Basketball players doing Basketball things. So I went on the top valued NFT which was $9, right clicked, saved, opened in windows media player, now I can watch the basketball thing all I want. So why is anybody buying them I own it as much as anyone else owns it now. I just don't get it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jimboxy Posted February 2, 2022 Share Posted February 2, 2022 I'm not sure I want to be the forums defender of NFTs, but I guess here we go. So you've downloaded the image and essentially that is no different to the person who buys the NFT, but they own the digital watermark for that image. It could be the same of any media, documents or whatever. In a similar way to how pictures can be shared online but the person who took the photo would be the copyright holder. There isn't a lot anyone can do to prevent distribution, but you can at least prove some sort of "ownership". All of this NFT shit at the moment is nonsense and a blatant cash grab, however, much like crypto currency, the technology behind it is quite interesting and could have some real world benefits. Legal documents, for example, could be stored online, registered as an NFT in your name and now you have some evidence that it is yours. Obviously, that relies on whoever deciding that an NFT can be used as proof of ownership. So, yeah, NFTs in games can fuck off, but let's not just condemn the technology to the scrap heap. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
one-armed dwarf Posted February 2, 2022 Share Posted February 2, 2022 I'm not certain tho that that is a specific 'problem' that needs to be solved with blockchain, or what you could do to stop the opposite problem of someone forging your legal documents and claiming their ownership for themselves (btw the above video does go into this specific application, but I cant remember the timestamp. Probably 40 minutes in or so) (There's also an aspect of tech utopianism here, you need to trust the programmer to create a system resilient enough not to be exploited in this fashion, or to not have any bugs at all. Lots of shit programmers out there tho. There's a reason banks are so afraid to upgrade their 50 year old COBOL backends) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maf Posted February 2, 2022 Author Share Posted February 2, 2022 So what is the difference between storing your legal document on the blockchain vs the cloud? It's all servers, right Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
one-armed dwarf Posted February 2, 2022 Share Posted February 2, 2022 Well imo it ends up being a more brittle means to enforce ownership of lets say jimbo's property deeds or maf's skittles collection. Cause the blockchain basically contains a 'pointer' to where the item exists, but the location being 'pointed' to can be changed. The blockchain isn't a server, it's a big ledger we can all download, I think So someone could replace jimbo's property deeds with maf's skittles collection maybe. The blockchain might be 'immutable' (cannot be 'mutated', changed, ostensibly) but the locations being pointed to may have their contents changed as the blockchain cannot do much about that (I think) To be fair, I don't really know tho what a legal document on the blockchain would even look like. Maybe it tries to generate something more uniquelly binding to that specific document. But that's another thing I wouldn't personally trust, leaving that kind of proof of ownership to an algorithm another edit, but that sums it up I think. Trustworthiness, I just don't see it. Here is an article on 'smart contracts' https://www.ibm.com/topics/smart-contracts How to enforce high programming standards in a smart contract? Who's job is it? Can we trust the peer review process for these programmable contracts? It's like creating a whole new set of problems with a solution that replaces existing solutions Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
merman1974 Posted February 2, 2022 Share Posted February 2, 2022 While I am glad Team 17 performed the button combo for a U-turn, they really should not have strayed into Exploitative NFT Territory in the first place... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jimboxy Posted February 2, 2022 Share Posted February 2, 2022 @one-armed dwarf That's actually a much better write up than I did, well done. I still stand by that it is has interesting possibilities in terms of digital future. I'm not sure my house is worth as much as Mafs skittles. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HandsomeDead Posted February 2, 2022 Share Posted February 2, 2022 I'm pretty okay with condemning the blockchain to the scrap heap. Even in a best case scenario I don't understand how it improves the systems of trade and ownership we already have and all this development and technology is wasted on recording who owns what. I think fundamentally its a remix of what is bad already and sucks all the air out of the room when who owns what should be challenged not building super computers and server fields to really make sure all the money and deeds are in the right place. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
merman1974 Posted February 3, 2022 Share Posted February 3, 2022 On 02/02/2022 at 15:10, HandsomeDead said: I'm pretty okay with condemning the blockchain to the scrap heap. Even in a best case scenario I don't understand how it improves the systems of trade and ownership we already have and all this development and technology is wasted on recording who owns what. I think fundamentally its a remix of what is bad already and sucks all the air out of the room when who owns what should be challenged not building super computers and server fields to really make sure all the money and deeds are in the right place. So much this. But apparently all this negativity towards NFTs is a bad thing and will stop it working to its potential. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maryokutai Posted February 4, 2022 Share Posted February 4, 2022 I think one of many red flags is also how none of those people who defend NFTs or see some "big potential" in them has yet managed to provide a convincing argument or example of what theyre talking about. Every "but look at what we could do here" I've seen is either substantially uninteresting for games or can just plain and simple be done already with different tech. Theres just no reason for NFTs to be a thing. Compare this to DLC, which I overall rather dislike, but which does have some positive side effects, like keeping certain positions of a studio open and busy for longer compared to them becoming vacant by the time a game goes gold. Or microtransactions, which I dislike even more, but famously and single-handedly saved the Tales of series from getting axed after Vesperia flopped. But NFTs can fuck off, theres literally no upside. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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