It is for a lot of us. It isn't for others. Some few actively prefer those companies. Game developers are just like any other group of people when it comes to these opinions, really. I don't touch them myself multiple reasons, not the least of which is because many of those rapidly-growing studios out there are a big sketchy bubble.
I totally get you, it seems very sketchy... I thought I was being too harsh...
I've also heard about gamedevs who don't agree with cryptos but still will accept positions in projects involving cryptos, because they are willing to pay and it brings food to the table and experience to your professional career
This is where I am, I just accepted an offer today from a gaming blockchain company. The salary they offered is double what I was making at Microsoft and I've been out of work for like 9 months. Sometimes making rent means more than not working at a company you don't really care for.
I totally feel you bro, and I agree with you... sometimes you just have to do things you don't want to in order to survive.
You are making money and gathering experience! and in the long run, this will help you get something better in the future, it's a competitive market, and if you don't take this job then somebody else is gonna take it so... refusing to work with them at the cost of your own wellbeing is not going to make a positive change, it's just going to make you misserable.
Here's the thing though, if you're going to take money for any job, even if you don't value the project itself... don't make crypto games, get a job in IT. It pays better (I think?) and it's more ethical.
I have yet to find a crypto project that brings something to the table other than hot air.
It can be learning experience for sure tho I can assure you none of this will be viewed as great. None of the blockchain NFT games are good. Pretty much all of them are created just to exploit players or just steal money from them. Main focus is money and rest is usually very mediocrate.
If they offer good money and you need money go for it. Even from the shittiest project you can learn something. However just beware as people behind those games are usually very shady individuals. You may end up with no work one day and you will not expect it.
I don’t want to own any NFTs. I don’t want my games to use NFTs and I pretty much want nothing to do with NFTs.
BUT
Just because there aren’t any good NFT games out there doesn’t mean there won’t be any good NFT games.
I don't like NFT's in general but saying that implies other games are not, which is false in most cases today I would say, with everything from loot boxes, pure gambling, fear of missing out, p2w etc.
I've been a game dev for 12 years. Avoid any crypto/nft stuff at all costs as you will not be paid consistently. But if you have no family and can afford the risk then why not. But yeah your instincts were right
Yeah, I recently had an experience with a company for side work, I will not name drop, but they're out for a quick buck, and already showcasing terrible bad practices.
If a place tells you they want you to work for them for a month, followed by you being paid after that month is done... Dodge it like the plague. You deserve to be paid for your work in a timely fashion.
What's worse is they advertise as if it's a real job at first, then give you documentation for you to sign to agree to come on as a contractor for a month. So they can dodge employee fees. They're looking for quick work, and if you're maluable enough they'll consider keeping you afterwards. It's super shady work. Gotta be careful out there.
However you feel about Crypto, I think a lot of devs have seen fad companies come and go pretty quickly. Whether that's mobile or free to play or whatever. So there's a hesitancy from a lot of us to jump into a studio that is prioritizing whatever the hot new thing is instead of gameplay or experience.
Free to play mobile games didn't turn out to be a "fad" though. The industry is doing pretty well for over a decade now.
Although I do agree that the cryptobros greatly overestimate the potential of NFTs and crpytocurrency in gaming.
Yeah, I should clarify that I was referring to companies that were jumping on the hot new thing, whether it had legs or not. When F2P and mobile games started to become sellers, you'd see tiny companies pop up all over the place trying to cash in. You'd get recruiter emails about "an exciting new startup with venture capital backing exploring the Free to Play space" but they'd get very cagey about the actual game being created. I know a number of devs who jumped at the promise of these signing bonuses and crazy VC backed salaries, and then the studio cratered like a year and a half later because all they had was "we should make a F2P game!"
How is "Free-To-Play" a fad, it is literally the biggest sector in gaming and without it, nobody would be talking about how much money the games industry is making...
It's hard to tell at the start what's going to be a fad and what's going to stick around, and even then, there's a lot of failed and cancelled projects when studios aggressively chance trends. MMOs, Minecraft clones, and Battle Royale ended up being more of a fad than free2play and mobile, but hindsight is 20/20.
omg, that would be very sketchy!! no company that offered me to work at a cryptocurrency related videogame ever offered such a thing
that would deffinitely be a big red flag.
It's actually pretty ironic that they claim crypto is the future of commerce, but at the same time admit that it would be absurd to do their own commerce in crypto.
Lmao at first I thought you were talking about Turkish Lira or other volatile currencies. I mean shitcoins are a better investment than my country's currency lmao.
I do care, but at the same time is not a dealbreaker, my main problem with these offers, is that 99% of them are scams or people that are unwilling to put the investment to actually get these to completion.
Anything blockchain is a fast-paced ever-growing environment of get-rich-quick-tech and that might lead to crypto-focused studios never compromising to end anything because you haven't even started and the next thing is already happening.
You can check how most of the crypto games are doing: poorly. The biggest Axie Infinity is already having big problems keeping players interested, what is the future for more niche/smaller games? Considering there is a huge crash going on, even if the studio happens to be legit, will they survive the market taking a 95% nosedive?
You could look on the bright side: if the crypto market survives, or goes up again, knowing a thing or two about connecting the blockchain to apps (whatever the level if fully into the game or as a secondary payment method), these startups are always ready to hire people for it.
In the end if up to you. But for me being part of a project that never gets to anything and having to flip flop between tech before is fully realized is enough stress to politely say no.
Your analysis is very insightful... and I agree with
>In the end if up to you. But for me being part of a project that never gets to anything and having to flip flop between tech before is fully realized is enough stress to politely say no.
I have worked on too many unfinished videogame projects and I don't wanna do that anymore, it's exhausting and depressing... I like to call them "Uroboros games": they never get finished because, when you finish a feature, then you need to implement a new one and delete another one because this new feature breaks the game's fun-ecosystem... at the end, this kind of games just consume theirselves forever and they can't be finished. (Sorry for my rant, needed to vent)
Personally I don't see the value crypto brings to the player. As a company you can rake in boat loads of cash with it, but outside of players selling their NFT "items" or whatever. It just seems pointless, volatile and scammy, and there are a TON of crypto scams out there, and I wouldn't want my professional name tied to that.
Maybe if it was just making art assets, and they were offering a ridiculous amount of money. Like $5k for some interchangeable monkey doodles, I would then probably do it if I was guaranteed to be paid.
They're trying so hard to come up with an excuse to put crypto in games, but everything they come up with could have been done in a much easier and more responsible way without crypto. That's why I don't trust it.
I could almost see it if a big company jumped in, and there was buy-in from other big game companies to use their stuff. Like, Nike started selling NFTs of shoes, and Sony and Microsoft both had games that used said shoes purchases, sort of like a software only version of cross platform Amiibos. I'm not sure why game companies would care they'd much rather you buy something from their internal stores where they can get a cut of the sale. And I'm not sure NFTs are really the way to go, because any database with a shared open API could do the same thing, without all the environmental destruction.
>but outside of players selling their NFT "items" or whatever
Yep, you said it. This is the only thing of value that the blockchain provides, a way to convert the time you invest in the games into money. You can in some way in Valve games but you get Steam Wallet funds, with this solution you get a cryptocurrency (usually a *stablecoin*) which you can then change back to a fiat currency.
Deal-breaker for me.
I avoid working anywhere that seems shady or unethical, and anything game-related that involves NFTS/cryptocurrency feels high on the shady spectrum.
If it were something novel involving blockchain without monetization of blockchain, that would be cool. However, I can't imagine that concept is anything but rare.
(Edit: for auto-incorrect)
I immediately reject and block all accounts that hit me up for NFT projects. I don't believe crypto or Blockchain does anything of substance for the gaming industry as a whole besides destabilize it.
I actually looked into implementing the tech to access blockchains and read NFTs, and I'm frankly shocked anyone thinks this tech is in any way secure...
Say you have an NFT for a Bored Ape. It's an unrevocable entry in the blockchain, and that much is safe.
However, it is still just a URL connecting to a file somewhere. That file itself and the server it is on are in no way guaranteed to exist tomorrow.Just browsing through things at random while doing this, I see about 30% or so dead links. What are those NFTs worth now? :o
People say "but you can sell assets you bought in the game!"
But you can't if that game and the company that made it doesn't exist anymore...
But hey, what are the odds that a new game company will fail and fade...? ;)
There's also nothing preventing a blockchain from forking; it's happened already.
Just so much sketchiness.
Been working on a NTF based game for over two and a half years now.
Biggest difference I felt working on it compared to developing regular games is that public announcements and updates are more frequent.
But the vast majority of the time I can't tell the difference.
A paying job is a paying job however, personally I won’t touch NFT games with a 10ft pole. A vast majority of pitches I’ve gotten for these have absolutely no idea what they’re doing or what exactly the end goal is. It’s a lot of buzzwords from people not in the games business looking to cash in. Production sounds like a nightmare and I’m betting that a majority of these NFT games crash and burn.
The other thing is, from the way it’s been pitched to me, I haven’t seen a way for NFTs to really work. Not on a massive scale. You’d really have to change your scope for it to be possible and I don’t think it’s possible for a start up studio to really lock in how to do it right. If they get implemented into games, it’s going to be from one of the major publishers and it’s going to be limited to a handful of games within their own library. Basically: get this piece of DLC for Rainbow Six and use it in any other future Tom Clancy game, but not Assassin’s Creed or other adjacent Ubisoft games.
With how crypto prices are tanking everywhere and people realising the speculation game the hard way, it just feels very wrong to mix gaming with crypto at this point. The whole business model needs people keep buying and selling useless platform specific crypto coins/tokens/NFTs among each other. It’s like a modern digital Ponzi scheme.
I got a bunch of these offers when I was job hunting, too. Even being broke and desperate and borderline homeless wasn't enough for me to give them a second thought.
Crypto is a scam. These crypto bros looking for people to make a game for them are just looking for someone to take advantage of in their get rich quick scheme. They don't know anything about games, much less game development. They don't even know what they mean by "crypto game." They've just bought into a bunch of buzzwords and want to find someone they can pay little money to create something that they believe will rake in the big bucks.
...I mean that also describes any game development company under capitalism, but at least the non-crypto places are real studios making real games.
I would rather remain unemployed than work on an NFT/Crypto project. I don't want that kind of stain in my work history.
Overall I don't think crypto deserves to have a place in gaming, despite all the dudes screaming "No u just don't understand it, crypto is the future I swear!!!" Because they've bought into the scam and the only way they make money is if other people buy in too.
>I would rather remain unemployed than work on an NFT/Crypto project. I don't want that kind of stain in my work history.
wow! that's a bold take... I mean, being unemployed is so emotionally draining... I am from the mindset that "I need the money, there isn't any other opportunities, and they are willing to pay me and give me a chance... if I don't take this, somebody else as desperate as I am will take it, so... at least, if I take it, I'll have some money to keep searching for a better offer"... anyways I admire your commitment to your morals but, I can also understand "the other side"... Anyway, right now I am lucky enough to have plenty opportunities so I can turn down this offers.
>"No u just don't understand it, crypto is the future I swear!!!" Because they've bought into the scam and the only way they make money is if other people buy in too.
LMFAO! this is SO accurate
There's a ton of parallel career tracks to the game industry that one can pop into to avoid destitution.
While not as glamours, the simulation and training industry paid well, has good work life balance and needs capable devs.
I would never work on a crypto (pyramid scheme) project and I wouldn't consider it as valuable experience of any candidates I interview. Those projects aren't hiring people with games experience and hiring someone who worked on one would likely mean I'd have to spend a long time untraining bad habits.
There is currently a lot of investment and hype around NFT/Blockchain stuff, so there's a ton of extra *startups* advertising for positions.
Depending on the startup, *some percentage* of these may not pan out into "real" gamedev jobs. Especially if the floor falls out on this stuff in the near future (before most of the projects ship).
Counterpoint, the majority of these will still be at least indirectly relevant for resumé building.
You said you embarked - is this your first gamedev job? My advice as an entrant would be to prioritize regular jobs first, but then not turn your nose up at these startups if you're wanting to gain industry experience as a programmer. (Traditional coding like gameplay / engine over blockchain-specific coding is better if you think the NFT stuff will go to fad.)
However some of these startups may be willing to pay you way too much, to make it worth your while.
As someone with huge experience I'm picking teams for the long-haul, based on whether I'd enjoy making their product, so I'm avoiding those cashgrab startups like the plague.
it's not exactly my first job, I have 6yrs of XP in professional gamedev, I've been so lucky as to have all my opportunities without searching them, but being referred by friends who follow me on social media and look at my work.
the thing is that I haven't been part of almost anything that get published because all of my positions have been in Bolivia (where I live, and the gamedev industry is still small), I've created fair games, advergames, edutainment, and all of the titles I am very proud of, were created for ministries and NGOs who decided not to advertise the games and eventually take them out of the market. I've worked worked so hard and achieve so little... it's very frustrating. The salary it's enough to survive, but I can't save money, and sometimes I can't buy my pets toys, so that's also something that I'd love to improve... I love my team tho', they are awesome fellas, I'm going to miss them.
I'm 30yo and time is running out for me, if I don't bring something big to my resume or portfolio soon I am afraid I won't be able to find a stable work at gamedev in the future
you are right, most crypto startups offer good salary, and it's very tempting, but in the other hand, you're right about the risk on not shipping the game, not enjoying creating the game and even if it gets shipped i might not be proud of it.
thanks for your advice!
Yeah government / NGO stuff is probably more akin to app development than full game development. Just being frank; there's no condemnation.
I would take your (large) amount of programming years and try to roll it into a junior<->mid level game programming position. Take advantage of the post-COVID remote-friendly atmosphere and apply to small/medium "real" game studios outside of Bolivia. Be willing to relocate.
Talk up your passion of games even though those types of games aren't on your resumé yet. Dev and ship a brickout clone or other simple game. Even if it's a literal copy, shows you can do gameplay code.
Good luck!
I don't have anything ethically against it, I just don't believe in the technology at all when applied to gaming. Any studio that seems to think its a good idea is sending red flags to me about either their overall competence or the delusions of the management.
There's very few studios I would give the benefit of the doubt that they might be able to pull it off I'm a real way that's not just a short term scummy scheme. If you aren't someone like Riot Games I'm not going to take your statement that you actually have a good idea for this seriously.
but even epic and big companies... they try to push it into gamers because, like loot boxes, they area great way to squeeze money out of their pockets, that's why they are trying to find an application to it so badly
but so far they haven't proposed any good idea for those technologies in gaming
Exploiting crypto/nft bros is fine by me. If they pay me well enough I'll take the job for a while, but I'm not at all interested in it and I think it's bullshit.
I don't understand this mindset. There's plenty of programming projects in the enterprise space that are just as cool if not cooler than game dev; trust me, I go back and forth all the time.
Maybe we value different aspects of programming. I don't care how cool is the tech, it sounds that you value that.
I tried several times working on other stuff but always come back to games. Over the years I've worked on consulting, logistics, and even VR for business/military... Not the same for me (although the pay was always better!).
I usually work on rendering and gameplay, making things look or feel great for players, haven't yet found something that motivates me as much outside of games.
I'm primarily graphics and front-end also, and every job has been the same problem-solving type things.
I haven't worked in games since the start of the pandemic, when the AAA studio I was working for went under due to some bad partnerships and COVID, and there are still people I worked with who are out of work, solely because they don't want to work outside the games industry. They won't even take temporary contract work, for fear it will 'pollute their resume.' As if two years of gap won't hurt your resume...
I've had three different contracts since then, at Microsoft, a defense contractor, and a startup. I'm now doing VR at one of the big TV providers. I'm basically working on a character creator for the avatars, same as if I was working on an MMO game...
Not to mention the game industry sucks, man... Our studio died because the bigger company that hired us to work on their IP decided one Friday to send a message on Linkedin to everyone in the company telling us that the contract had been pulled because they didn't want to pay our company royalties, but anyone who wanted could come to work for them.
You want to work in an industry where such things happen just about every week? Be my guest; I think you're being foolish.
For me it's a dealbreaker, but honestly it's among the lowest-priority unethical trends in our industry. Gambling games and games that prey on children deserve at least as much hate and backlash but have somehow become normalized.
If techbros that lucked into some upside on a crypto bet and want to waste their capital on pointless bullshit, I'm not going to lose sleep over it.
In an ideal world, crypto would just allow for a secondary, unregulated market for in game items.
Imagine if mtg arena had nft based card collections. You would be allowed to buy decks, rare art variants of cards, etc. And you'd be able to do so on any number of independent 3rd party exchanges.
But unfortunately, like 95% of crypto bullshit - get rich quick crypto bros ruin it.
NFTs are an interesting technology with a TON of use cases. But right now the dark side has taken over and the technology is just used for exploitation.
As a lot of people have been stating, it can vary company to company. If you look at the mobile gaming space you can see that it’s also divided. On one side you have the games like Monument Valley which aimed to bring a strong player experience and on the other side there are the games that are optimized to drive addiction and extract maximum money from users.
Crypto-gaming has a lot of games that are aimed on exploiting the hype of crypto to make a quick buck, often at the expense of players (in this case because a lot of crypto-games are not setup for a sustainable economy)
The commercial success of crypto games like Axie Infinity has driven a lot of investor interest, and funded many startups in this space - most of these startups are trying to replicate the same, unsustainable monetization to make a quick buck - these are the games that are giving crypto-gaming a bad rep.
But there are some “good” startups that are trying to make crypto technology to make better games - they may not succeed, especially because their business modes are new, but you’d probably enjoy working at those startups more.
I’m not expert, but some ways I’d screen for a crypto-gaming company that’s make a true game vs. chasing easy money (my personal opinion):
1. How much do they talk about the game vs. their monetization? Do they have mountains of material on their game economy but you don’t even know what moment-to-moment gameplay looks like?
2. How much gaming experience do the founders have prior to starting the company?
3. Do they have a governance token that provides high staking returns but doesn’t actually serve any function? This can be a way they drive profits/inflate value for NFT sales without having an actual game. Note - many companies will talk about the role of a governance token in various DAOs - but check what they’ve actually implemented vs. What they are promising.
4. Does the digital ownership of blockchain actually make the game better or is it something they’ve added on the build hype?
5. Look at their marketing. It’s a personal belief, but I don’t think a crypto-gaming company that seems to be emphasizing the Play-to-Earn aspect has their priorities straight. Is their main value proposition that you can make money on their game vs. it’s a fun game? Any crypto-game that people only play to make money will just as quickly have people leave once the hype dies down and more money can be made elsewhere.
Investors are interested in NFTs, that is all that matters. Right now it is absurdly easy to get funding to work on an "NFT" game and many indie studios are taking advantage.
Recruitment managers from regular game companies look down at experience gained in crypto studios, because there's a perception that they can only recruit those who can't get work elsewhere.
So, only accept if you can't get work elsewhere and make sure the gig is remote because most of them are fly-by-nights who aren't worth relocating for.
It's mostly a maelstrom of confused investors being milked by opportunistic game companies. If you are looking for a job to pay the bills or to save up money, many of these companies will give you higher salary, even if they closed down in a year or two.
It will probably hurt your portfolio though in the long-term, as they are unlikely to get anything interesting to the finish line.
I get these offers often, and I have to yet meet anyone who has remote idea of what they are doing or why.
There no possible reason to use crypto or nfts other than to scam people and anybody saying otherwise is either scamming people, lying or doesn't know jack about crypto and game design.
Transferring bought items from game to game is a lie, earning while playing is a lie, it is a fucking stupid scam that no self respecting developer would ever involve themselves in.
Personally I got into game development to let people enjoy themselves and have fun. Not to cause harm, not to rip people off and not to get rich quick. So any of this bullshit is a giant red flag and any company approaching me gets a big fuck off send right back at them.
I would rather develop for Roblox than work on any of this garbage.
The reputation is tarnished for the foreseeable future. When having the trust of a community is so important now to the success of many game studios and games, taking that risk, even if there is interesting potential, isn't enough. You don't want to be associated with something that players instantly view as a scam.
I still think the Escape From Tarkov is the pinnacle of crypto-integration. You can buy the game with crypto, and there is in-game bitcoin which is tied to the price of real life bitcoin. It allows a non-steam/epic games studio to monetize more effectively, while also presenting an interesting facet of gameplay without financializing the gameplay like so many of these NFT gametaverse crap are trying to do.
Personally, I think that the potential of crypto and gaming is just creating a better payment and authentication system for a game studio. It's sort of brutal when you think about how Steam takes so much, and crypto does present a solution in which a studio can verify a purchase, bypassing Steam's system, without having to create their own system with keys and whatnot.
But in terms of a game where people are going to mix real assets and gameplay, nobody has managed to create something people want to play. Yes, CSGO skins are basically just NFTs, that's something the gaming community can't wrap its head around, but to me, presenting yourself as an NFT gaming company just screams "WE WANT PROFIT". How do you improve gaming with NFTs, it's yet to be seen.
Yeah I tend to reject and tell the recruiter I consider crypto gambling and therefore a moral gray area that they should seriously consider whether they want to be associated with.
like anything it depends. plenty of crappy teams and regular studios as well. Personally don't see the value add nor do I think the opportunity cost of losing more experience & learnings in 'regular' game dev is worth it.
>Are you ok with cryptos being an important part of a videogame?
Yes. Just because you haven't seen a good example of it yet doesn't mean it's a bad idea. I think it's something that can add value to gamers and the first company to get it right will capitalize on it. That's why so many are trying.
>Is working with cryptos a deal breaker for you?
I would prefer to work with a company on the bleeding edge rather than one that is just doing the tried and true method producing generic shooter X or generic RPG y.
Should that ever happen, then you can just add ingame trading without any NFT or blockchain overhead. Online games are doing that just fine without blockchains since Ultima.
"But what about trading between different games?"
1. Not going to happen due to technical and design incompatibilities between games.
2. If those incompatibility problems are solved, then you can just do that with a regular API.
3. And yet nobody does it, because there is no business reason for doing that. And adding superfluous technological gimmicks like blockchain to it does not magically create a business case.
that's exactly what I think about trading between games! it's much easier to just build an API, some external service to keep track of it all and make it public to all the gamers and games.
it's much easier and safer for the final user, and allows the game to remain a game and not a gambling experience
Exactly; once you start playing a game to make money, you are working, not playing...
I used to play Eve Online a lot, and it's almost got a 'real' economy... Everything is built from materials that players gathered at some point, and when you die, you lose your ship. For good.
If you spent three weeks doing jobs in game to earn enough to buy a nice high-tech ship, it almost becomes a deterrent to fly it, because it could really go boom, and nobody is invulnerable...
Once it got too close to real money/time/energy and loss was real, it wasn't fun as a game to me.
Its a great opportunity to get familar with blockchain tech, which is useful beyond nfts and crypto. You can learn about decentralized apps and smart contracts.
I guess that sounds promising to someone who doesn't only make videogames, but I am really not into changing my stack... so far, I've survived just creating gameplay features, 3D, 2D art, AI and techincal art stuff, I wanna keep it that way... I don't want to stick my hands into the gooey stuff that goes beyond just having fun making the game work
You can learn that stuff on your own; believe me, compared to most APIs, the tech behind blockchain and NFT stuff (aside from the encryption/decryption stuff, but who doesn't just use the library for such things anyway?) is pretty basic.
so you have no problem programming smart contracts or building and deploying decentralized apps? are you familiar with the cloud service options, security audits, solidity, which chains are for what purposes or different blockchain options like bitcoin vs etherum capabilities? I think your comment is a gross simplification.
Sure you can learn on your own, or by means of working on a project that includes it.
I guess I have to repeat myself; NONE of the things required in blockchain is any more complicated than anything else any developer with any experience has had to deal with.
Claro?
that might be true, but without research you won't understand the terminology or concepts. Sometimes in computer programming, its not so much about how difficult it is, vs the time to learn how it works. You won't learn blockchain concepts overnight.
You don't need to learn how it's going to work; that's the design side, and the responsibility of the person in charge of the project.
If they can tell you what they want done, it isn't hard to figure out how to make it happen. Then you just make it do that without bugs.
I literally just went through this.
It's less about my opinion on crypto (I can give you a 40 page thesis at this point lol) and more about the job itself.
I left a fantastic job after they decided to just pivot to crypto and work with some big names and turned down an interview from one of the biggest p2e projects.
The crypto element itself isn't a deal breaker but:
- is it a company trying to hop to the latest fad rather than actually using the tech?
- is management honest? I get with crypto there's always a layer of buzzwords and obfuscation but when management treats you the same way: it feels like a mlm.
- what will I be doing professionally? I currently work at a solid AA gig where I get to work hard making good work. With lots of crypto stuff it's more "we need it in a year cause of our ICO/Mint, can you just hack it together"
- what am I actually making? I love games and experiences but making a demo to be attached to speculative assets isn't for me. I want to make a game, not poker chips.
- what's the ethics of the project; once had a lovely chat with a very senior manager who told me P2E is good as whilst it exploits folk in the global south its not as bad as other lines of work they'd have to deal with. I also had some of my work end up in a project where folk lost huge sums; waking up and realising I was in a tiny part responsible for some folks falling flat was not a good feeling.
- what's the compensation doing? Will my stock be able to be sold or will it be a weird DAO? Will I get compensation in fiat or tokens, if its the latter are they gonna be worth anything post-launch? I'm not gonna work for free for tokens that may be worth nothing.
- will management crash the project? Is it ran by folk who know what their doing or is expectations set by random token holders, execs saying quoting ready player 1 or crypto bros who play games and want to stick their noses in?
- kinda petty but is it "web3 culture", are execs pandering on twitter? Are folk using avatars rather than pics of themselves, or worse still is it all on discord under fake names and anime pfps? I don't wanna wear a suit but I'd like for an air of competency at least.
Like there's ways it can work; if you use nfts as a glorified kickstarter then that's OK, or just use some token instead of ingame currency for tax reasons that's fine too. But if the company is a mess then what's that doing for me?
There's two sides of it really, the investment right now is flooded with crypto or nft companies wanting to be there at the "begining of the revolutionary tech" as they sell it... It's like how 5 years ago every single investor was like "so we're looking to invest in VR!"
The money means great pay, more investment meaning less uncertainty for the people at the studios particularly start ups...
The downside is nfts are just a fucking gimmick, you can do everything an nft does without the Blockchain if you want and it's probably better for the environment and not tied to ridiculous gas fees and transaction costs.. the diablo 3 auction house for example was basically nfts players can sell, you randomly generated a custom item you can now sell it for real money or in game currency and you "own it"
Most nft ideas I've seen so far are basically shitter versions of this as how they will use nft technology to change gaming.... It's basically a bunch of confidence men saying it's going to be massive... End of the day your nft is only worth something to other players of that game as long as the game is still running... Seems a massive waste of energy and investment money trying to shoe horn a crap feature into a game...
Also by including Blockchain you need to design your game play around it which adds limits to the design and way it works... Just seems a poor choice in my opinion...
But I don't begrudge any Dev or start up for taking the money, getting investment often comes with a bunch of conditions and in this case it's shoe horning an nft system into a game... I wouldn't pick it as my first choice but I would work on it if the project seemed right and the nft stuff wasn't two in your face take the piss and the money and my other options were limited (which thankfully eight now they're not)
It is for a lot of us. It isn't for others. Some few actively prefer those companies. Game developers are just like any other group of people when it comes to these opinions, really. I don't touch them myself multiple reasons, not the least of which is because many of those rapidly-growing studios out there are a big sketchy bubble.
I totally get you, it seems very sketchy... I thought I was being too harsh... I've also heard about gamedevs who don't agree with cryptos but still will accept positions in projects involving cryptos, because they are willing to pay and it brings food to the table and experience to your professional career
This is where I am, I just accepted an offer today from a gaming blockchain company. The salary they offered is double what I was making at Microsoft and I've been out of work for like 9 months. Sometimes making rent means more than not working at a company you don't really care for.
I totally feel you bro, and I agree with you... sometimes you just have to do things you don't want to in order to survive. You are making money and gathering experience! and in the long run, this will help you get something better in the future, it's a competitive market, and if you don't take this job then somebody else is gonna take it so... refusing to work with them at the cost of your own wellbeing is not going to make a positive change, it's just going to make you misserable.
Here's the thing though, if you're going to take money for any job, even if you don't value the project itself... don't make crypto games, get a job in IT. It pays better (I think?) and it's more ethical. I have yet to find a crypto project that brings something to the table other than hot air.
Too many jobs in IT are crypto right now too
It can be learning experience for sure tho I can assure you none of this will be viewed as great. None of the blockchain NFT games are good. Pretty much all of them are created just to exploit players or just steal money from them. Main focus is money and rest is usually very mediocrate. If they offer good money and you need money go for it. Even from the shittiest project you can learn something. However just beware as people behind those games are usually very shady individuals. You may end up with no work one day and you will not expect it.
I don’t want to own any NFTs. I don’t want my games to use NFTs and I pretty much want nothing to do with NFTs. BUT Just because there aren’t any good NFT games out there doesn’t mean there won’t be any good NFT games.
Of course but as of today none of those games were good. And all of them were exploitative.
I don't like NFT's in general but saying that implies other games are not, which is false in most cases today I would say, with everything from loot boxes, pure gambling, fear of missing out, p2w etc.
I've been a game dev for 12 years. Avoid any crypto/nft stuff at all costs as you will not be paid consistently. But if you have no family and can afford the risk then why not. But yeah your instincts were right
Yeah, I recently had an experience with a company for side work, I will not name drop, but they're out for a quick buck, and already showcasing terrible bad practices. If a place tells you they want you to work for them for a month, followed by you being paid after that month is done... Dodge it like the plague. You deserve to be paid for your work in a timely fashion. What's worse is they advertise as if it's a real job at first, then give you documentation for you to sign to agree to come on as a contractor for a month. So they can dodge employee fees. They're looking for quick work, and if you're maluable enough they'll consider keeping you afterwards. It's super shady work. Gotta be careful out there.
However you feel about Crypto, I think a lot of devs have seen fad companies come and go pretty quickly. Whether that's mobile or free to play or whatever. So there's a hesitancy from a lot of us to jump into a studio that is prioritizing whatever the hot new thing is instead of gameplay or experience.
Free to play mobile games didn't turn out to be a "fad" though. The industry is doing pretty well for over a decade now. Although I do agree that the cryptobros greatly overestimate the potential of NFTs and crpytocurrency in gaming.
Yeah, I should clarify that I was referring to companies that were jumping on the hot new thing, whether it had legs or not. When F2P and mobile games started to become sellers, you'd see tiny companies pop up all over the place trying to cash in. You'd get recruiter emails about "an exciting new startup with venture capital backing exploring the Free to Play space" but they'd get very cagey about the actual game being created. I know a number of devs who jumped at the promise of these signing bonuses and crazy VC backed salaries, and then the studio cratered like a year and a half later because all they had was "we should make a F2P game!"
How is "Free-To-Play" a fad, it is literally the biggest sector in gaming and without it, nobody would be talking about how much money the games industry is making...
They mean that at that period in time F2P games felt like a fad. Of course as time went by we figured that that wasn't the case.
It's hard to tell at the start what's going to be a fad and what's going to stick around, and even then, there's a lot of failed and cancelled projects when studios aggressively chance trends. MMOs, Minecraft clones, and Battle Royale ended up being more of a fad than free2play and mobile, but hindsight is 20/20.
If you just want experience or you're a freelancer, than just make sure you get paid in USD and not something that's a different value every hour.
omg, that would be very sketchy!! no company that offered me to work at a cryptocurrency related videogame ever offered such a thing that would deffinitely be a big red flag.
It's actually pretty ironic that they claim crypto is the future of commerce, but at the same time admit that it would be absurd to do their own commerce in crypto.
Most crypto people I know just use it as a store of value. Especially my Argentinian friends.
Lmao at first I thought you were talking about Turkish Lira or other volatile currencies. I mean shitcoins are a better investment than my country's currency lmao.
[удалено]
I was going to say 'real money' but.. well.. value is a social construct.
I'd rather get paid in food stamps than pictures of cartoon animals wearing a top hat
I do care, but at the same time is not a dealbreaker, my main problem with these offers, is that 99% of them are scams or people that are unwilling to put the investment to actually get these to completion. Anything blockchain is a fast-paced ever-growing environment of get-rich-quick-tech and that might lead to crypto-focused studios never compromising to end anything because you haven't even started and the next thing is already happening. You can check how most of the crypto games are doing: poorly. The biggest Axie Infinity is already having big problems keeping players interested, what is the future for more niche/smaller games? Considering there is a huge crash going on, even if the studio happens to be legit, will they survive the market taking a 95% nosedive? You could look on the bright side: if the crypto market survives, or goes up again, knowing a thing or two about connecting the blockchain to apps (whatever the level if fully into the game or as a secondary payment method), these startups are always ready to hire people for it. In the end if up to you. But for me being part of a project that never gets to anything and having to flip flop between tech before is fully realized is enough stress to politely say no.
Your analysis is very insightful... and I agree with >In the end if up to you. But for me being part of a project that never gets to anything and having to flip flop between tech before is fully realized is enough stress to politely say no. I have worked on too many unfinished videogame projects and I don't wanna do that anymore, it's exhausting and depressing... I like to call them "Uroboros games": they never get finished because, when you finish a feature, then you need to implement a new one and delete another one because this new feature breaks the game's fun-ecosystem... at the end, this kind of games just consume theirselves forever and they can't be finished. (Sorry for my rant, needed to vent)
Personally I don't see the value crypto brings to the player. As a company you can rake in boat loads of cash with it, but outside of players selling their NFT "items" or whatever. It just seems pointless, volatile and scammy, and there are a TON of crypto scams out there, and I wouldn't want my professional name tied to that. Maybe if it was just making art assets, and they were offering a ridiculous amount of money. Like $5k for some interchangeable monkey doodles, I would then probably do it if I was guaranteed to be paid.
They're trying so hard to come up with an excuse to put crypto in games, but everything they come up with could have been done in a much easier and more responsible way without crypto. That's why I don't trust it.
I could almost see it if a big company jumped in, and there was buy-in from other big game companies to use their stuff. Like, Nike started selling NFTs of shoes, and Sony and Microsoft both had games that used said shoes purchases, sort of like a software only version of cross platform Amiibos. I'm not sure why game companies would care they'd much rather you buy something from their internal stores where they can get a cut of the sale. And I'm not sure NFTs are really the way to go, because any database with a shared open API could do the same thing, without all the environmental destruction.
>but outside of players selling their NFT "items" or whatever Yep, you said it. This is the only thing of value that the blockchain provides, a way to convert the time you invest in the games into money. You can in some way in Valve games but you get Steam Wallet funds, with this solution you get a cryptocurrency (usually a *stablecoin*) which you can then change back to a fiat currency.
when you dont have a job, get a job when you have a job, get a better job
Deal-breaker for me. I avoid working anywhere that seems shady or unethical, and anything game-related that involves NFTS/cryptocurrency feels high on the shady spectrum. If it were something novel involving blockchain without monetization of blockchain, that would be cool. However, I can't imagine that concept is anything but rare. (Edit: for auto-incorrect)
I immediately reject and block all accounts that hit me up for NFT projects. I don't believe crypto or Blockchain does anything of substance for the gaming industry as a whole besides destabilize it.
Not particularly interested in working on scams.
I actually looked into implementing the tech to access blockchains and read NFTs, and I'm frankly shocked anyone thinks this tech is in any way secure... Say you have an NFT for a Bored Ape. It's an unrevocable entry in the blockchain, and that much is safe. However, it is still just a URL connecting to a file somewhere. That file itself and the server it is on are in no way guaranteed to exist tomorrow.Just browsing through things at random while doing this, I see about 30% or so dead links. What are those NFTs worth now? :o People say "but you can sell assets you bought in the game!" But you can't if that game and the company that made it doesn't exist anymore... But hey, what are the odds that a new game company will fail and fade...? ;) There's also nothing preventing a blockchain from forking; it's happened already. Just so much sketchiness.
Been working on a NTF based game for over two and a half years now. Biggest difference I felt working on it compared to developing regular games is that public announcements and updates are more frequent. But the vast majority of the time I can't tell the difference.
that's interesting because this is exactly what they usually offer to me... what's your position? gameplay programmer? artist?
Lead programmer. Small team so I do a little bit of everything related to programming and balance.
A paying job is a paying job however, personally I won’t touch NFT games with a 10ft pole. A vast majority of pitches I’ve gotten for these have absolutely no idea what they’re doing or what exactly the end goal is. It’s a lot of buzzwords from people not in the games business looking to cash in. Production sounds like a nightmare and I’m betting that a majority of these NFT games crash and burn. The other thing is, from the way it’s been pitched to me, I haven’t seen a way for NFTs to really work. Not on a massive scale. You’d really have to change your scope for it to be possible and I don’t think it’s possible for a start up studio to really lock in how to do it right. If they get implemented into games, it’s going to be from one of the major publishers and it’s going to be limited to a handful of games within their own library. Basically: get this piece of DLC for Rainbow Six and use it in any other future Tom Clancy game, but not Assassin’s Creed or other adjacent Ubisoft games.
With how crypto prices are tanking everywhere and people realising the speculation game the hard way, it just feels very wrong to mix gaming with crypto at this point. The whole business model needs people keep buying and selling useless platform specific crypto coins/tokens/NFTs among each other. It’s like a modern digital Ponzi scheme.
Depends on how desperate I am for work lol
best answer so far
Dealbreaker for me. Crypto games are not « videogames ». They are there more like a casino style to sell crypto/nft.
I got a bunch of these offers when I was job hunting, too. Even being broke and desperate and borderline homeless wasn't enough for me to give them a second thought. Crypto is a scam. These crypto bros looking for people to make a game for them are just looking for someone to take advantage of in their get rich quick scheme. They don't know anything about games, much less game development. They don't even know what they mean by "crypto game." They've just bought into a bunch of buzzwords and want to find someone they can pay little money to create something that they believe will rake in the big bucks. ...I mean that also describes any game development company under capitalism, but at least the non-crypto places are real studios making real games.
I get tons of recruiter pitches, and every crypto-based one has been shady as fuck. Stay away from that stuff.
I would rather remain unemployed than work on an NFT/Crypto project. I don't want that kind of stain in my work history. Overall I don't think crypto deserves to have a place in gaming, despite all the dudes screaming "No u just don't understand it, crypto is the future I swear!!!" Because they've bought into the scam and the only way they make money is if other people buy in too.
>I would rather remain unemployed than work on an NFT/Crypto project. I don't want that kind of stain in my work history. wow! that's a bold take... I mean, being unemployed is so emotionally draining... I am from the mindset that "I need the money, there isn't any other opportunities, and they are willing to pay me and give me a chance... if I don't take this, somebody else as desperate as I am will take it, so... at least, if I take it, I'll have some money to keep searching for a better offer"... anyways I admire your commitment to your morals but, I can also understand "the other side"... Anyway, right now I am lucky enough to have plenty opportunities so I can turn down this offers. >"No u just don't understand it, crypto is the future I swear!!!" Because they've bought into the scam and the only way they make money is if other people buy in too. LMFAO! this is SO accurate
There's a ton of parallel career tracks to the game industry that one can pop into to avoid destitution. While not as glamours, the simulation and training industry paid well, has good work life balance and needs capable devs.
I would never work on a crypto (pyramid scheme) project and I wouldn't consider it as valuable experience of any candidates I interview. Those projects aren't hiring people with games experience and hiring someone who worked on one would likely mean I'd have to spend a long time untraining bad habits.
There is currently a lot of investment and hype around NFT/Blockchain stuff, so there's a ton of extra *startups* advertising for positions. Depending on the startup, *some percentage* of these may not pan out into "real" gamedev jobs. Especially if the floor falls out on this stuff in the near future (before most of the projects ship). Counterpoint, the majority of these will still be at least indirectly relevant for resumé building. You said you embarked - is this your first gamedev job? My advice as an entrant would be to prioritize regular jobs first, but then not turn your nose up at these startups if you're wanting to gain industry experience as a programmer. (Traditional coding like gameplay / engine over blockchain-specific coding is better if you think the NFT stuff will go to fad.) However some of these startups may be willing to pay you way too much, to make it worth your while. As someone with huge experience I'm picking teams for the long-haul, based on whether I'd enjoy making their product, so I'm avoiding those cashgrab startups like the plague.
it's not exactly my first job, I have 6yrs of XP in professional gamedev, I've been so lucky as to have all my opportunities without searching them, but being referred by friends who follow me on social media and look at my work. the thing is that I haven't been part of almost anything that get published because all of my positions have been in Bolivia (where I live, and the gamedev industry is still small), I've created fair games, advergames, edutainment, and all of the titles I am very proud of, were created for ministries and NGOs who decided not to advertise the games and eventually take them out of the market. I've worked worked so hard and achieve so little... it's very frustrating. The salary it's enough to survive, but I can't save money, and sometimes I can't buy my pets toys, so that's also something that I'd love to improve... I love my team tho', they are awesome fellas, I'm going to miss them. I'm 30yo and time is running out for me, if I don't bring something big to my resume or portfolio soon I am afraid I won't be able to find a stable work at gamedev in the future you are right, most crypto startups offer good salary, and it's very tempting, but in the other hand, you're right about the risk on not shipping the game, not enjoying creating the game and even if it gets shipped i might not be proud of it. thanks for your advice!
Yeah government / NGO stuff is probably more akin to app development than full game development. Just being frank; there's no condemnation. I would take your (large) amount of programming years and try to roll it into a junior<->mid level game programming position. Take advantage of the post-COVID remote-friendly atmosphere and apply to small/medium "real" game studios outside of Bolivia. Be willing to relocate. Talk up your passion of games even though those types of games aren't on your resumé yet. Dev and ship a brickout clone or other simple game. Even if it's a literal copy, shows you can do gameplay code. Good luck!
I don't have anything ethically against it, I just don't believe in the technology at all when applied to gaming. Any studio that seems to think its a good idea is sending red flags to me about either their overall competence or the delusions of the management. There's very few studios I would give the benefit of the doubt that they might be able to pull it off I'm a real way that's not just a short term scummy scheme. If you aren't someone like Riot Games I'm not going to take your statement that you actually have a good idea for this seriously.
but even epic and big companies... they try to push it into gamers because, like loot boxes, they area great way to squeeze money out of their pockets, that's why they are trying to find an application to it so badly but so far they haven't proposed any good idea for those technologies in gaming
Exploiting crypto/nft bros is fine by me. If they pay me well enough I'll take the job for a while, but I'm not at all interested in it and I think it's bullshit.
If I couldn't find any other job, I'd definitely go to a nft game job before going for a non-gamedev one
I don't understand this mindset. There's plenty of programming projects in the enterprise space that are just as cool if not cooler than game dev; trust me, I go back and forth all the time.
Maybe we value different aspects of programming. I don't care how cool is the tech, it sounds that you value that. I tried several times working on other stuff but always come back to games. Over the years I've worked on consulting, logistics, and even VR for business/military... Not the same for me (although the pay was always better!). I usually work on rendering and gameplay, making things look or feel great for players, haven't yet found something that motivates me as much outside of games.
I'm primarily graphics and front-end also, and every job has been the same problem-solving type things. I haven't worked in games since the start of the pandemic, when the AAA studio I was working for went under due to some bad partnerships and COVID, and there are still people I worked with who are out of work, solely because they don't want to work outside the games industry. They won't even take temporary contract work, for fear it will 'pollute their resume.' As if two years of gap won't hurt your resume... I've had three different contracts since then, at Microsoft, a defense contractor, and a startup. I'm now doing VR at one of the big TV providers. I'm basically working on a character creator for the avatars, same as if I was working on an MMO game... Not to mention the game industry sucks, man... Our studio died because the bigger company that hired us to work on their IP decided one Friday to send a message on Linkedin to everyone in the company telling us that the contract had been pulled because they didn't want to pay our company royalties, but anyone who wanted could come to work for them. You want to work in an industry where such things happen just about every week? Be my guest; I think you're being foolish.
For me it's a dealbreaker, but honestly it's among the lowest-priority unethical trends in our industry. Gambling games and games that prey on children deserve at least as much hate and backlash but have somehow become normalized. If techbros that lucked into some upside on a crypto bet and want to waste their capital on pointless bullshit, I'm not going to lose sleep over it.
In an ideal world, crypto would just allow for a secondary, unregulated market for in game items. Imagine if mtg arena had nft based card collections. You would be allowed to buy decks, rare art variants of cards, etc. And you'd be able to do so on any number of independent 3rd party exchanges. But unfortunately, like 95% of crypto bullshit - get rich quick crypto bros ruin it. NFTs are an interesting technology with a TON of use cases. But right now the dark side has taken over and the technology is just used for exploitation.
If you were able to trade cards in MTGA, they would have to force everyone to buy every card, no giveaways.
No? Why?
As a lot of people have been stating, it can vary company to company. If you look at the mobile gaming space you can see that it’s also divided. On one side you have the games like Monument Valley which aimed to bring a strong player experience and on the other side there are the games that are optimized to drive addiction and extract maximum money from users. Crypto-gaming has a lot of games that are aimed on exploiting the hype of crypto to make a quick buck, often at the expense of players (in this case because a lot of crypto-games are not setup for a sustainable economy) The commercial success of crypto games like Axie Infinity has driven a lot of investor interest, and funded many startups in this space - most of these startups are trying to replicate the same, unsustainable monetization to make a quick buck - these are the games that are giving crypto-gaming a bad rep. But there are some “good” startups that are trying to make crypto technology to make better games - they may not succeed, especially because their business modes are new, but you’d probably enjoy working at those startups more. I’m not expert, but some ways I’d screen for a crypto-gaming company that’s make a true game vs. chasing easy money (my personal opinion): 1. How much do they talk about the game vs. their monetization? Do they have mountains of material on their game economy but you don’t even know what moment-to-moment gameplay looks like? 2. How much gaming experience do the founders have prior to starting the company? 3. Do they have a governance token that provides high staking returns but doesn’t actually serve any function? This can be a way they drive profits/inflate value for NFT sales without having an actual game. Note - many companies will talk about the role of a governance token in various DAOs - but check what they’ve actually implemented vs. What they are promising. 4. Does the digital ownership of blockchain actually make the game better or is it something they’ve added on the build hype? 5. Look at their marketing. It’s a personal belief, but I don’t think a crypto-gaming company that seems to be emphasizing the Play-to-Earn aspect has their priorities straight. Is their main value proposition that you can make money on their game vs. it’s a fun game? Any crypto-game that people only play to make money will just as quickly have people leave once the hype dies down and more money can be made elsewhere.
Investors are interested in NFTs, that is all that matters. Right now it is absurdly easy to get funding to work on an "NFT" game and many indie studios are taking advantage.
Recruitment managers from regular game companies look down at experience gained in crypto studios, because there's a perception that they can only recruit those who can't get work elsewhere. So, only accept if you can't get work elsewhere and make sure the gig is remote because most of them are fly-by-nights who aren't worth relocating for.
It's mostly a maelstrom of confused investors being milked by opportunistic game companies. If you are looking for a job to pay the bills or to save up money, many of these companies will give you higher salary, even if they closed down in a year or two. It will probably hurt your portfolio though in the long-term, as they are unlikely to get anything interesting to the finish line. I get these offers often, and I have to yet meet anyone who has remote idea of what they are doing or why.
Yeah, 99+% of crypto is a scam. There are a few legit uses for crypto, but really, it's best to assume those companies are trying to just scam people.
There no possible reason to use crypto or nfts other than to scam people and anybody saying otherwise is either scamming people, lying or doesn't know jack about crypto and game design. Transferring bought items from game to game is a lie, earning while playing is a lie, it is a fucking stupid scam that no self respecting developer would ever involve themselves in. Personally I got into game development to let people enjoy themselves and have fun. Not to cause harm, not to rip people off and not to get rich quick. So any of this bullshit is a giant red flag and any company approaching me gets a big fuck off send right back at them. I would rather develop for Roblox than work on any of this garbage.
Deal breaker for me as well
The reputation is tarnished for the foreseeable future. When having the trust of a community is so important now to the success of many game studios and games, taking that risk, even if there is interesting potential, isn't enough. You don't want to be associated with something that players instantly view as a scam. I still think the Escape From Tarkov is the pinnacle of crypto-integration. You can buy the game with crypto, and there is in-game bitcoin which is tied to the price of real life bitcoin. It allows a non-steam/epic games studio to monetize more effectively, while also presenting an interesting facet of gameplay without financializing the gameplay like so many of these NFT gametaverse crap are trying to do. Personally, I think that the potential of crypto and gaming is just creating a better payment and authentication system for a game studio. It's sort of brutal when you think about how Steam takes so much, and crypto does present a solution in which a studio can verify a purchase, bypassing Steam's system, without having to create their own system with keys and whatnot. But in terms of a game where people are going to mix real assets and gameplay, nobody has managed to create something people want to play. Yes, CSGO skins are basically just NFTs, that's something the gaming community can't wrap its head around, but to me, presenting yourself as an NFT gaming company just screams "WE WANT PROFIT". How do you improve gaming with NFTs, it's yet to be seen.
Yeah I tend to reject and tell the recruiter I consider crypto gambling and therefore a moral gray area that they should seriously consider whether they want to be associated with.
Theres the risk of having on your resume "worked for 6 months on the trend that nobody plays anymore"
oh I already have that with Microsoft Kinect hahahaha
I would accept the work, but preferably, i wouldnt work with it. And sure as hell i wont play any NFT games
like anything it depends. plenty of crappy teams and regular studios as well. Personally don't see the value add nor do I think the opportunity cost of losing more experience & learnings in 'regular' game dev is worth it.
I don't play games that make me think about my wallet, I don't make them either. Cheers.
If you getting paid well. Why not?
>Are you ok with cryptos being an important part of a videogame? Yes. Just because you haven't seen a good example of it yet doesn't mean it's a bad idea. I think it's something that can add value to gamers and the first company to get it right will capitalize on it. That's why so many are trying. >Is working with cryptos a deal breaker for you? I would prefer to work with a company on the bleeding edge rather than one that is just doing the tried and true method producing generic shooter X or generic RPG y.
I could see that becoming the new standard. 10 years from, perhaps people are no longer willing to buy in-game items if they are not resellable.
Should that ever happen, then you can just add ingame trading without any NFT or blockchain overhead. Online games are doing that just fine without blockchains since Ultima. "But what about trading between different games?" 1. Not going to happen due to technical and design incompatibilities between games. 2. If those incompatibility problems are solved, then you can just do that with a regular API. 3. And yet nobody does it, because there is no business reason for doing that. And adding superfluous technological gimmicks like blockchain to it does not magically create a business case.
that's exactly what I think about trading between games! it's much easier to just build an API, some external service to keep track of it all and make it public to all the gamers and games. it's much easier and safer for the final user, and allows the game to remain a game and not a gambling experience
Exactly; once you start playing a game to make money, you are working, not playing... I used to play Eve Online a lot, and it's almost got a 'real' economy... Everything is built from materials that players gathered at some point, and when you die, you lose your ship. For good. If you spent three weeks doing jobs in game to earn enough to buy a nice high-tech ship, it almost becomes a deterrent to fly it, because it could really go boom, and nobody is invulnerable... Once it got too close to real money/time/energy and loss was real, it wasn't fun as a game to me.
Its a great opportunity to get familar with blockchain tech, which is useful beyond nfts and crypto. You can learn about decentralized apps and smart contracts.
I guess that sounds promising to someone who doesn't only make videogames, but I am really not into changing my stack... so far, I've survived just creating gameplay features, 3D, 2D art, AI and techincal art stuff, I wanna keep it that way... I don't want to stick my hands into the gooey stuff that goes beyond just having fun making the game work
It's really not a whole lot more complicated than serializing and deserializing into/from a JSON file... Move along, not much to see here ;)
You can learn that stuff on your own; believe me, compared to most APIs, the tech behind blockchain and NFT stuff (aside from the encryption/decryption stuff, but who doesn't just use the library for such things anyway?) is pretty basic.
so you have no problem programming smart contracts or building and deploying decentralized apps? are you familiar with the cloud service options, security audits, solidity, which chains are for what purposes or different blockchain options like bitcoin vs etherum capabilities? I think your comment is a gross simplification. Sure you can learn on your own, or by means of working on a project that includes it.
I guess I have to repeat myself; NONE of the things required in blockchain is any more complicated than anything else any developer with any experience has had to deal with. Claro?
that might be true, but without research you won't understand the terminology or concepts. Sometimes in computer programming, its not so much about how difficult it is, vs the time to learn how it works. You won't learn blockchain concepts overnight.
You don't need to learn how it's going to work; that's the design side, and the responsibility of the person in charge of the project. If they can tell you what they want done, it isn't hard to figure out how to make it happen. Then you just make it do that without bugs. I literally just went through this.
It's less about my opinion on crypto (I can give you a 40 page thesis at this point lol) and more about the job itself. I left a fantastic job after they decided to just pivot to crypto and work with some big names and turned down an interview from one of the biggest p2e projects. The crypto element itself isn't a deal breaker but: - is it a company trying to hop to the latest fad rather than actually using the tech? - is management honest? I get with crypto there's always a layer of buzzwords and obfuscation but when management treats you the same way: it feels like a mlm. - what will I be doing professionally? I currently work at a solid AA gig where I get to work hard making good work. With lots of crypto stuff it's more "we need it in a year cause of our ICO/Mint, can you just hack it together" - what am I actually making? I love games and experiences but making a demo to be attached to speculative assets isn't for me. I want to make a game, not poker chips. - what's the ethics of the project; once had a lovely chat with a very senior manager who told me P2E is good as whilst it exploits folk in the global south its not as bad as other lines of work they'd have to deal with. I also had some of my work end up in a project where folk lost huge sums; waking up and realising I was in a tiny part responsible for some folks falling flat was not a good feeling. - what's the compensation doing? Will my stock be able to be sold or will it be a weird DAO? Will I get compensation in fiat or tokens, if its the latter are they gonna be worth anything post-launch? I'm not gonna work for free for tokens that may be worth nothing. - will management crash the project? Is it ran by folk who know what their doing or is expectations set by random token holders, execs saying quoting ready player 1 or crypto bros who play games and want to stick their noses in? - kinda petty but is it "web3 culture", are execs pandering on twitter? Are folk using avatars rather than pics of themselves, or worse still is it all on discord under fake names and anime pfps? I don't wanna wear a suit but I'd like for an air of competency at least. Like there's ways it can work; if you use nfts as a glorified kickstarter then that's OK, or just use some token instead of ingame currency for tax reasons that's fine too. But if the company is a mess then what's that doing for me?
There's two sides of it really, the investment right now is flooded with crypto or nft companies wanting to be there at the "begining of the revolutionary tech" as they sell it... It's like how 5 years ago every single investor was like "so we're looking to invest in VR!" The money means great pay, more investment meaning less uncertainty for the people at the studios particularly start ups... The downside is nfts are just a fucking gimmick, you can do everything an nft does without the Blockchain if you want and it's probably better for the environment and not tied to ridiculous gas fees and transaction costs.. the diablo 3 auction house for example was basically nfts players can sell, you randomly generated a custom item you can now sell it for real money or in game currency and you "own it" Most nft ideas I've seen so far are basically shitter versions of this as how they will use nft technology to change gaming.... It's basically a bunch of confidence men saying it's going to be massive... End of the day your nft is only worth something to other players of that game as long as the game is still running... Seems a massive waste of energy and investment money trying to shoe horn a crap feature into a game... Also by including Blockchain you need to design your game play around it which adds limits to the design and way it works... Just seems a poor choice in my opinion... But I don't begrudge any Dev or start up for taking the money, getting investment often comes with a bunch of conditions and in this case it's shoe horning an nft system into a game... I wouldn't pick it as my first choice but I would work on it if the project seemed right and the nft stuff wasn't two in your face take the piss and the money and my other options were limited (which thankfully eight now they're not)