D&D General NFTs Are Here To Ruin Dungeons & Dragons

[Vaalingrade]

Ancient Stockholder Who Knows Nothing About the Industry: What is the latest thing online?

Beleaguered Assistant: Well, NFTs, sir, but--

Ancient Stockholder Who Knows Nothing About the Industry: Draft a letter to the board immediately demanding to know how we will implement the Nifties.

(Later the Quarter)

Board Member: So... how will we be adding NFTs to our games.

Developer: I... there's no reason to do that and the proposed implementations like having the same gum across games doesn't actually...

Board Member: The stockholders want it and we are basically shackled and brainboxed to them, so do it.

Developer: Scummy cosmetic items sales? Look, I'm only here to do the 8th iteration of my good game for the chance to do some crap games I have a passion for. I'm not here to try to come up with ideas. We'll do the same thing we did with microtransactions only slower, dumber and more expensive. I mean the players already hate us and indies are starting to eat us alive anyway so nothing matters.

Board Member: Just say the buzzwords, make the numbers go up and let us gain favor with our doddering but wealthy gods.

Developer (heavy sigh) We are exploring NFTs, streaming and... uh...

Board Member: We need three faddy buzzwords.

Developer: (thinking back to 2009)... the... cloud?

Ancient Stockholder Who Knows Nothing About the Industry: ~Moneygasm~

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Board Member: Just say the buzzwords, make the numbers go up and let us gain favor with our doddering but wealthy gods.

Developer (heavy sigh) We are exploring NFTs, streaming and... uh...

Board Member: We need three faddy buzzwords.

“THE CLOUD! STREAMING! NFTs!” cough cough cough

 

[Cordwainer Fish]

“THE CLOUD! STREAMING! NFTs!” cough cough cough

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh NFT blockchain wgah'nagl fhtagn!

 

[Sacrosanct]

For $300, you can create a PC and I'll personally sign a letter of certification that you did indeed roll four 18s for your stats.

 

[Umbran]

At worst it's an imperfectly designed thing that leaves a lot to be desired in terms of efficiency, et al. (I'd agree with that assessment.) Which really means that there's room for improvement (this should generally be expected of most emerging tech).

That's not good enough any more. We are no longer in a position where we can simply accept that there's "much to be desired". It burns too much energy, and returns too little value, to justify its existence. It chews power at a rate that causes notable damage, to funnel money to people who already have money, allowing the damage of that activity to fall on those with less wealth.

Now, just to make that relevant to all us gamers - if a D&D character funneled wealth to themselves, and put the negative repercussions of that action onto others who could not avoid it it, where on the spectrum of Good to Evil would we put that activity, hm? Hint: it ain't good.

The old, "It is just technology, it has no moral implications in and of itself" is a dodge. Technology is irrelevant unless it is applied in the real world. And as soon as it is applied, it has impact on people, and that means it has moral repercussions attached to it. Ergo, the only technology that has no moral implications is the technology that nobody is using.

And no, setting up renewables to run it isn't enough either. Cryptocurrency has the problem that it uses a scheme that has ever increasing energy costs - each transaction increases the cost of the next transaction, without limit - so it will need ever-increasing renewable energy sources. Our renewable sources will never be infinite, and even renewable sources have ecological impact. So, the thing simply isn't sustainable, renewable or not.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Cryptocurrency has the problem that it uses a scheme that has ever increasing energy costs - each transaction increases teh cost of the next transaction, without limit - so it will need ever-increasing renewable energy sources.

I did NOT know that. Damn.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I did NOT know that. Damn.

The other implication of this that the cryptobros do not seem to have thought through, is that, once the computation cost escalates high enough, it is likely that control of the blockchain will come under a single entity (The one with the money to afford the compute and energy costs). At this time the blockchain becomes identical to a centralised database. So much for the transparency of distribution.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

The other implication of this that the cryptobros do not seem to have thought through, is that, once the computation cost escalates high enough, it is likely that control of the blockchain will come under a single entity (The one with the money to afford the compute and energy costs). At this time the blockchain becomes identical to a centralised database. So much for the transparency of distribution.

I think most cryptobros no longer care. The "old generation" cared about transparency and control, but the new generation are just thinking about using cryptocurrency as an "investment". Exchanges are centralizing cryptocurrency anyway, and rather than obey the rule of "not your keys, not your coins" people use them like banks. Of course lots of cryptobros fall into exit scams, which are only relevant if they give up control of their keys. The newer bunch also fall for liquidity scams (pump-and-dump schemes when they believe a new coin's value has increased by 8000% or so) which are obviously preying on greed.

 

[Jer]

I think most cryptobros no longer care. The "old generation" cared about transparency and control, but the new generation are just thinking about using cryptocurrency as an "investment".

Every scam needs sheep to fleece - the original crypto scam needed to have people who really believed in the idea of a decentralized currency with no entity controlling it because they were the original targets for the scam. Get them to invest their actual money (and more importantly compute power) into this thing because without them it all falls apart.

Once it becomes a self-sustaining thing that's when the general mass of speculators swoop in, and those folks are even easier to scam. Most of them are the definition of "more money than sense". At that point the need for the purported "noble goals" of the project can fall by the wayside because you have a different group of marks (also likely a different group of grifters - many of the original scammers would have cashed out at various points. I suspect there are some folks who can't believe this thing is still going.)

 

[Umbran]

I did NOT know that. Damn.

Yeah. This is why Bitcoin is up around $100 to process a transaction.

The other implication of this that the cryptobros do not seem to have thought through, is that, once the computation cost escalates high enough, it is likely that control of the blockchain will come under a single entity (The one with the money to afford the compute and energy costs). At this time the blockchain becomes identical to a centralised database.

Oh, I think they've thought it through. I think that if they can make their millions now, they don't care so much what happens in a few years.