Generalized case: no one stands to benefit from putting such things on a blockchain.

Except the people making money by running or grifting off a blockchain.

I think it's possible they might see some benefit. It would basically hinge on people's faith in WotC vs a blockchain to administer that data. If the blockchain was more trusted - say because of concerns WotC might go out of business one day, etc - then using it might entice people to put more money in.

Your words are contradictions.

You say they will see benefit.

Yet all you mention is how the blockchain might usurp the faith wotc relies on.

Why would wotc ever fund their potential demise or depend on people that never had faith on their product in the first place?

WotC doesn't care if a potential consumer trusts their long-term business model, but they sure do care if the potential consumer trusts their purchase won't poof out of existence one day.

By throwing it on the blockchain, WotC could market it as the digital card being basically as safe from vanishing as a physical card. "Even if we go bust in 50 years, your digital cards will all still be yours! You'll still be able to prove ownership of all your cards, and will still be free as ever to trade coughsell for incredible profitcough them!"

I have no idea if the market as a whole would bite, or how deeply. But there is a not-insignificant number of people who count on Magic cards gaining significant amounts of value over time. Some use it as a way to justify the purchases, while others have turned it into an outright investment strategy.

I can only imagine that digital cards reliant on WotC's active involvement to exist would suffer significant discounts.

But maybe being digital is such a huge hit in the first place that it doesn't ultimately matter. I have no idea. Hence, why I said it seems possible.

What is this mysterious demographic that were never interested in the decades old proven track record of wotc but suddenly interested in digital marketing bullshit that don't actually last forever(links go dead all the time without a caretaker, nfts aren't an exception)

Ah, wild short term speculators while depending on another foreign caretaker with no interest in your products?

No thanks. Enough with the stupid ideas.

I don't get the hostility, nor why you keep trying to shove words in my mouth.

I never said anything about new customers, nor even old customers.

I've also been very explicit that I'm just talking about seeing a plausible possibility, and not made any claims about it's probability. Nor said I think any person or entity - WotC included - should actually do anything or not.

And I've absolutely not made any particular judgements on the intrinsic value of NFTs.

I get you don't like the whole crypto thing, but this reaction is way beyond the point of reason.

I'm really not much of a fan either, honestly. That doesn't mean we should demonize our own thoughts if they point towards a hypothetical possibility that some other people might find value in it.

If gameplay is also mediated through WotC's servers, though, then the cards would lose any intrinsic value when/if WotC goes under or stops supporting the game.

And if others are allowed to create their own servers so that the game can live outside of WotC's auspices, that would also undermine the value of the NFT cards, since anyone who is able to create their own implementation of the game could just as easily start creating non-NFT versions of the cards that people can use.

I don't think that's the case. It's also a tabletop game so the rules are all out there in public and not even inhumanely complex.

Even if WotC's servers go down, you could use the blockchain to prove ownership of a card for use in a live tournament. It's also possible for a third party to create their own server to implement the game, and then refer back to the blockchain for ownership.

As for non-official cards, I mean, yeah? That's the case with physical Magic cards too. Not even actual counterfeits have held the MTG secondary market back from astounding prices. Meanwhile non-NFT cards would be the equivalent of proxy cards - cards that aren't X, but both players agree to treat as X - which haven't been any more successful than counterfeits in holding Magic prices down.

I'm not claiming there would be greater faith in a blockchain than WotC, I'm just saying I see it as possible.

> It's also possible for a third party to create their own server to implement the game

No, it wouldn't be possible because the concept of IP and copyright exists regardless of blockchains.

Neither apply to game mechanics.

Even if all the WotC IP ends up with the most determined patent troll ever, the game itself could still be implemented.

As for the card art... who knows what the legal situation would end up being. But even if it's totally legally off limits, the ability to load custom art would render it practically moot anyway.

That really depends on the community that grows around the game. People spend money on all kinds of expensive stuff that they could replace with a cheap replica if they wanted to, but they don't, they want the original thing. If the community sees value in an original WotC NFT, they'll have value.

Furthermore, if said community creates tournaments and online services that require official WotC NFT to participate, that will further cement their value.

That you can create your own NFTs and your own tournaments isn't going to be of much use when the rest of the players only plays with the official NFTs and won't accept yours.

The collectibles WotC issues could be much more valuable if they are issued on the blockchain where both exchangeability and access to provenance are guaranteed.

I would argue it's the opposite. The physical copies are unique objects that only one person can own and enjoy. With the way NFTs work, the blockchain version of one would be an infinitely copyable file that just happens to have a scoreboard somewhere that says that only one person can "own" it in some very specific sense. But everyone else can still enjoy it just as easily.

Unless it's hosted on some WotC server where only the NFT owner can access it. But that also undermines its value, since then you don't really own it any more than someone "owns" a Kindle book: barring breaking DRM, as soon as Amazon decides to shut the Kindle service down, its either gone now, or its days are numbered.

Note I'm comparing digital collectibles with provenance determined by WotC servers to digital collectibles issued on the blockchain, i.e. NFTs. I'm suggesting the latter could prove to be more valuable than the former. I am not comparing digital collectibles to physical collectibles.

>>With the way NFTs work, the blockchain version of one would be an infinitely copyable file that just happens to have a scoreboard somewhere that says that only one person can "own" it in some very specific sense.

There are already NFTs worth tens and in some cases hundreds of thousands of dollars of ETH (see CryptoPunks NFTs) so we know people are willing to pay for something where the image is copyable, but the original can still be authenticated.

In the case of the physical copies, people can easily photocopy them or share their images digitally, yet the verifiable original still retains its value. I don't believe inability to copy the image associated with a physical or digital collectible is what imparts the collectible with value.

People are only willing to "pay" for worthless NFT garbage due to the bigger fool theory. The grifters who created scams like CryptoPunks are already running out of fools.

That's an entirely speculative claim, and doesn't even make sense.

There is no difference in a digital Magic card and a physical one in terms of motivations to pay for one.

The anti-decentralization camp used CO2 emissions as their excuse for their wholesale condemnation of NFTs before. But now that that's gone, there doesn't seem to be anything of substance to support their blanket condemnation of them.

I'm not anti-decentralization. But obviously only a moron would pay for an NFT regardless of the CO2 emissions.

Again, there is no substance behind your claim. There is no difference in a digital Magic card and a physical one in terms of motivations to pay for one.

That you're anti-decentralization is just speculation on my part, as I can't think of any other plausible motivation for you inexplicably singling out NFTs as worthy of derision, and not centralized digital collectibles or physical collectibles.

But WotC doesn't want them to be more valuable, it wants to be able to capture more value from them. These are not equivalent goals.

And this is one of the big things with many of the apps crypto promoters wave around that are about big incumbents adopting crypto: they implicitlt require those incumbents being motivated to create value that people invested in crypto infrastructure (the exact for depending on the particular cryptocurrency model) can capture rather than seeking to capture created value themselves.

Ceteris paribus, WotC can capture more value when the collectibles it issues are more valuable. It can sell them at a higher initial price.

Whether post-issuance value capture is sufficiently increased by controlling the platform to compensate for the lower market value those assets can command can be argued of course, but I intuit it is not.

As it is WotC captures almost no value from secondary market exchanges of its physical collectibles. I don't see why the prospect of creating a valuable secondary market for its digital collectibles, where it is the sole seller in the primary market, wouldn't be a more attractive prospect for it than trying to create a digital walled garden where there would be significant OPEX costs and no assurance of market demand.

> Ceteris paribus, WotC can capture more value when the collectibles it issues are more valuable

Obviously, but equally obviously we aren't talking about a situation where ceteris paribus even approximately holds.

Yes, I think it was clear I wasn't implying that it was, given I went onto address the other factors right afterwards. The ceteris paribus was just an analytical device to control for one factor - initial sale price - and establish what its effect is on WotC's profitability.