> Video game skins become NFTs that you now "own" instead of just being in-game.

This use case actually doesn't make sense if you think about it. Items only make sense in the context of a game, and you trust the game makers to honor it. At that point, there's no incentive for them to actually allow you to port in/port out items.

Think about it this way: what good is the BFG from Unreal Tournament in Cooking Mama?

Even in related games, guns from Battlefield 2042 in say COD Vanguard?

Sounds pretty shit.

A more interesting example would be From software issuing a “moonlight sword” nft (maybe for an achievement like 100% elden ring) and various indie devs creating souls-like games choosing to honor it within their game.

I would like to be polite to you here, but it's going to be hard, because this take is wrong at every single level, and it feels like you haven't tried any sort of critical thinking whatsoever:

1) NFTs are the most expensive, least efficient way to implement the least interesting part of this technology. Even if you accept the dubious premise that they do even that job well.

2) You have explicitly described a system in which every single agreement between devs would require special testing. Is the moonlight sword balanced in the other game? Don't I still have to describe literally every aspecet of the moonlight sword other than who owns it in the second game?

3) Skins and other microtransactions are per game, by an absolute law of their design. That is the point. A game developer has no interest in honoring a microtransaction that I can prove that I paid some other game developer for. I would want my cut.

4) The condition upon which you have proposed that people can acquire the moonlight sword is... for beating Elden Ring? So it's a sign of status. Except that it's a sign of status that I can sell, so it's actually just a signal of wealth or status, maybe? Maybe I can't sell it. But wait, why did I make it an NFT then. So I must be able to sell it, but then it is presumed to have a dollar value, so why wouldn't Fromsoft sell it in the first place. Sounds a lot like a regular microtransaction.

Which brings me to my final point.

5) The market for microtransactions is already very optimized. Videogames are already very good at extracting every penny that people are willing to pay for bullshit cosmetics and play to win garbage. You can't even make money hucking this shit.

Also one final point, if 10 mutually independent devs share an NFT blockchain so the moonlight sword can be transferred between games... what stops me from minting my own moonlight sword? Or super moonlight sword? Or unauthorized micky mouse hats?

But again, not only is that trustful (after all, the "moonlight sword" name, image, etc, are subject to copyright and trademark) if From decides to allow that they can just open an API.

“Is thing in wallet” strikes me as much easier to implement then n^2 api integrations across companies. It’d be easier to do the api method via drm platforms like steam at the cost of lock-in to those platforms; cross pc/console access to any item would be far from guaranteed. Outsourcing all of that logic to a centralized (ex google blockchain) or decentralized blockchain and wallet just seems like a more scalable (num of actors not tps) approach with a low barrier for entry for each individual actor.

Your comment about “trust” has little to do with the technology. It’s a cross between legal gray areas (which would need to be solved/accepted if this becomes the norm) and dogma surrounding web3. I tend to agree that this isn’t likely to happen unless from software essentially abandoned their ip for some reason. But if that happened, it’d be a cool way for the legacy to live in future games in a way that pays homage to the original creators. It’s a use case that makes much more sense then just copying a random gun from one game to another because there are years of history in the item.

> Outsourcing all of that logic to a centralized (ex google blockchain) or decentralized blockchain and wallet just seems like a more scalable (num of actors not tps) approach with a low barrier for entry for each individual actor.

I do think for this to make sense you'd have to have, you know, one blockchain everyone used otherwise you still have the "10 app stores" problem, no?

if the game itself runs via a decentralized computational model then there’s no need to appeal to authority to honor the ownership. The game itself, just like the skin, would exist on the p2p network.

We are of course very far from that happening, or knowing if it can happen, but it’s still a possibility to consider

You have to make a game that supports every item. There's no such thing as a "generic" game. Games have balance - hours are spent tweaking relative attributes of items to ensure the game is, you know, fun. For instance, what's to stop me from making an NFT nuclear launcher item on my own, then porting it in and wiping out everyone else's stuff?

MINE + CRAFT

The fact that people keep trotting out this idea about the future potential of NFT gaming is evidence that people know basically nothing about making video games or the assets that go into them. And neither do the founders of any NFT projects with the rate at which they crash and burn if they aren't outright scams.

Crypto is held back by its own stupidity & inefficiency - the system self-regulates well enough.

The only thing a blockchain is good for is assets that fully live on the blockchain for which the source of truth is the blockchain itself - like cryptocurrencies.

Putting NFTs, video game/metaverse avatars, real-world assets, etc will never work; it's at best a very inconvenient, inefficient database replacement, and at worst a scam.

This is something few have realized. Crypto guarantees can only ever extend to things that are wholly represented on-chain, and that's basically just cryptocurrencies. As soon as the chain reflects the real world it's at the mercy of the correct data being entered, or reality not changing around it.

And this means pure cryptocurrencies, backed stablecoins do not offer any of the crypto guarantees either since they are representations of assets held in trust that can be seized.

For a system to be trustless, decentralized and permissionless it must be entirely trustless, permissionless and decentralized. It's not a gradient, it's a step function. Once anything creeps in, all guarantees are void.

Interesting take on this. Something to think about.

It's certainly better than paying companies for "licenses" we don't actually own or digital goods that amount to nothing but bits in their database. With these digital content NFTs, at least we get a real market.

I'm not sure whether these things will actually get integrated into video games or how well it's gonna work. It will certainly be interesting to watch this develop.