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NFTs and gaming

  • 17-12-2021 10:46am
    #1
    Administrators Posts: 413 Admin ✭✭✭✭✭


    This discussion was created from comments split from: Game News 2.0.


«13456

Comments

  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Computer Games Moderators, Entertainment Moderators Posts: 30,020 CMod ✭✭✭✭johnny_ultimate


    LOL at the absolute nonsense that is this statement.

    Amazing to see companies willingly torching their reputation chasing the blockchain cultists. Kickstarter have doubled down as well despite extraordinarily negative feedback.

    EDIT: Hahaha they deleted it already. This is the statement, from GSC Gameworld about the crappy STALKER NFTs.





  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 8,103 ✭✭✭Mr Crispy


    It's sad. They could offer all those perks to "backers" without the need for blockchain. Besides, I thought one of the supposed benefits of NFTs was that they could be traded/sold later, but who's going to want to buy a digital certificate when it's not even their face/name in the game? Madness.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 12,287 ✭✭✭✭Jordan 199




  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,677 ✭✭✭JimBurnley


    Nice to see I'm not the only one wondering that :-)



  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Computer Games Moderators, Entertainment Moderators Posts: 30,020 CMod ✭✭✭✭johnny_ultimate


    Non fungible token. Basically crypto art and assets, where an asset (say a JPG or in-game item) is given a digital signature on the blockchain saying it belongs to a certain person. That can then be sold on to somebody else, often at an inflated price (albeit it’s all very unstable given the wildly fluctuating nature of cryptocurrency).

    It’s incredibly environmentally unfriendly due to the mining resources required and in many cases is being used as glorified money laundering / pyramid scheme stuff. Most generously, it’s creating digital artificial rarity - but is ultimately a solution desperately in search of a problem. A couple of game companies like Ubisoft and GSC Gameworld are trying to get in the NFT game and being met with - quite rightly - visceral backlash, because they’re clearly just trying to please investors rather than creating something that in any way, shape or form helps the games they’re putting them into.



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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,677 ✭✭✭JimBurnley


    So digital cosmetic junk, which f#cks up the environment, that can then be traded on to f#ck up the environment some more, with possible fraud type uses also. That about the size of it?



  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Computer Games Moderators Posts: 52,410 CMod ✭✭✭✭Retr0gamer


    Yup. But you also forgot money laundering.



  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Computer Games Moderators, Entertainment Moderators Posts: 30,020 CMod ✭✭✭✭johnny_ultimate




  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 11,035 ✭✭✭✭J Mysterio


    What



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 8,085 ✭✭✭Grumpypants


    No. It's Digital art. It can be anything. It could be a painting or it could be a song. Anything that can be created in a digital world.


    There is a difference between the original artwork and the copies.


    If I own the rights to an original Coldplay song. And you bought it on Apple iTunes. We both essentially have the same song and they will sound the same when we listen to it, but mine is more valuable. I can license that to movies, games, or other recording artists to cover.


    That is something of value, and it makes my copy worth basically whatever someone is whiling to pay me if I sell it on the open market.


    The problem with digital art is you could buy it, I could right click and press save and we both end up with the same thing. There is no way to tell which is the original.


    Now if you are a huge band with loads of resources and lawyers you could chase it in the courts. But 99% of artists are not making huge money. There is a huge issue with artists getting ripped off, not just losing money but in some cases actually losing access to the rights to their art.


    An NFT is a simple way to sign that original piece of art to say you own it. It's very easy, it's very secure, and it's badly needed.


    The vast majority of NFTs are ERC20 tokens, created on layer 2 protocols that run on top of Etherium. And are proof of stake not proof of work. Proof of stake power usage can be as much as 1% of a proof of work model.

    Etherium is moving to a proof of stake in the coming months so the whole power consumption line will not be an issue for long.


    But it is odd to see people who watch Netflix, stream Spotify, download and play online games ( who are all using massive power hungry data centers) complain about the environmental impact of NFTs.



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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 34,735 ✭✭✭✭Penn


    Sure, when it comes to digital ownership to protect copyright and monetisation of digital media you've created, I can see some value in it (not much, but some, and especially not where existing copyright legal protections apply).

    When it comes to "You can have a number printed on the side of a beanie your character in a multiplayer game wears that means only you own that", then it's just pure nonsense. Same goes for people "buying" unique images to use as avatars for social media platforms or anything of that ilk. You're not buying anything of value other than the right to say "I own that" even though nobody gives a good goddamn f*ck.

    The best response to NFTs I saw was someone who saved a few hundred of people's NFT images by right-clicking them, then made a collage of them all which looked like a giant picture of someone right-clicking a mouse.



  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Computer Games Moderators, Entertainment Moderators Posts: 30,020 CMod ✭✭✭✭johnny_ultimate


    NFTs are exponentially more power-hungry than any other form of modern media distribution. We’ll wait til Etherium actually makes their long promised, oft delayed change to proof of stake - for now, it’s an environmental catastrophe on a mass scale. And yes, data centres are bad too - but again traditional internet protocols are exponentially more efficient than current blockchain technology.

    Even putting aside the environmental concern, there’s nothing badly needed about NFTs. There’s probably a small amount of digital artists and collectors who would benefit from it. But for the most part it wraps up art in horrifying layers of post-capitalist speculation and financial chaos. It creates so many problems - from scams to crypto bubbles. It’s a hyper-libertarian take on art ownership that encompasses all kinds of nasty ****, from money laundering to straight up Ponzi schemes. And yes, the traditional art market is heinous in so many ways too. We’re now just creating a grim digital version of it. For the vast majority of people invested in NFTs, it’s not about a pure belief in its capacity to support digital artists - it’s about trying to make as much money as possible by being an early investor in a new technology. Its advocates use the language of dismantling problematic existing systems (and in a limited set of circumstances with cryptocurrency there’s some legitimacy to the argument), but in reality it’s just creating problematic new systems instead of actually addressing the many class and structural problems of modern society.

    I have yet to see a single example of how any of this will benefit video games as a medium or art form, beyond making a quick buck for companies willing to cash in on the crypto cultists.

    And you can still right click and save a cryptobro’s hilariously ugly and garish procedural monkey avatar :)



  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Entertainment Moderators Posts: 36,711 CMod ✭✭✭✭pixelburp


    At least Netflix, Spotify et al serve a quantifiable purpose and "need" for modern living; no more than old school broadcasting caused surges in the national grid when kettles were turned on nationwide during ad-breaks. It's just a cost of the standard of living we have.

    NFTs are pointless grifts adding no demonstrable benefit except those coining it from the gullible. Just brainfarts of crypto-bros lost in their own hype, answering questions nobody asked while crucifying the environment as they go. My wife is an illustrator, and of her limited vantage, and the art community she swims, neither have either need or enthusiasm for NFTs as some protector of their rights. They're usually happy if they just get paid 🙂



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 8,085 ✭✭✭Grumpypants


    You can right-click and save an Avatar. You can also take a photo of the Mona Lisa and hang it in your house and laugh at da Vinci for being a stupid painterbro.


    The art world is a weird one built on hype. But art is subjective. If someone wants to buy a painting that is a red blob they can. If they want to pay €2 or €2million for it who am i to stop them.

    I'm not arguing that NFTs in gaming is a good or bad idea. But I see no reason why it shouldn't be a thing.

    I think funding via NFTs is short-sighted at the moment. The short term ability to pay for the spiralling development costs and stay independent is going to lead to long term legal battles down the line.

    What happens when you want to shut down your online only game and everyone that owns that NFT is no longer able to access it, will you have to give them a way to access it forever. What happens if they "own it" and no longer want it in your game? Can they force you to pull it? What if there is a bug and it doesn't render properly. Will you have to maintain it for years to come?

    It will get messy.


    There is a tiny section of the NFT market that is in a silly bubble. Much like the .com and the video game bubbles in the past they will pop but the underlying technology will stay the course.


    Crypto on the other hand offers a lifeline for so many of the worlds poor that have historically been kept out of the financial system. People that live a comfortable existence in countries with stable economies forget that most of the world doesn't have access to a bank account. Countries are held hostage to the dollar. Economies are destroyed to make the wealthy elite a few extra billion.



  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Computer Games Moderators, Entertainment Moderators Posts: 30,020 CMod ✭✭✭✭johnny_ultimate


    A copied JPG or MP3 is functionally identical to the the original. A digital or even physical copy of the Mona Lisa isn’t. That is the fundamental flaw at the heart of the NFT: physical and digital art are fundamentally different things.

    As for the final paragraph, that’s the utopian ideal that has so far not been borne out by crypto. In fact, quite the opposite has come to pass: the creation of a *new* elite, with the wealth disproportionately distributed to a tiny amount of people and the emergence of new financial speculation markets. I do think cryptocurrency has some benefit in providing a more secure platform for, say, rights activists in authoritarian states who need to operate outside the traditional financial channels. That’s a minority use case so far. And NFTs are more worthless again.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 8,085 ✭✭✭Grumpypants


    That is literally the reason NFTs exist.

    You can get an expert to look at a copy of the mona Lisa and say it is fake. You can't do that with most digital art because it can be copied exactly 1 to 1.

    So how else do you show that it is the original?



  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Computer Games Moderators, Entertainment Moderators Posts: 30,020 CMod ✭✭✭✭johnny_ultimate


    Digital media can be infinitely replicated by its very nature. The concept of the ‘original’ file becomes meaningless. Adding a digital blockchain signature that affords no legal rights does not change that. It’s manufacturing an awkward non-solution that’s inherently contradictory to the nature of the medium, grounded in a deeply, regressively capitalist view of art and technology.

    Besides, the whole central problem with blockchain is that it insists on placing ‘ownership’ - and, by extent, financial worth - on the file. That is fundamentally and dramatically at odds with the utopian ideal of a free, democratic internet that blockchain advocates purport to support. It’s all about trading and money - a very particular, narrow-minded and unequal perspective of artistic and technological freedom.

    This is an excellent analysis that gets at the fundamental contradictions of Web3 in a way I cannot at: https://tante.cc/2021/12/17/the-third-web/



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 34,735 ✭✭✭✭Penn


    Why do you need to prove which is the original? With physical media, sure, but not with digital. Artists should ensure they hold copyright over the art/song so that it can't be used or profited on without their permission, but the concept of ownership over a digital file in a public space is ridiculous.

    NFTs have created the concept of ownership of digital files, in order to justify the existence of NFTs. You're not buying a product, you're buying a receipt. Even if you can prove a digital file is the original, why does that matter? Again, physical media, sure. But a digital file? So what? If I can rightclick the image and save it, I have an exact copy. That doesn't work with physical items, they're completely incomparable.

    Again, NFTs have created the concept of ownership of digital files in order to justify NFTs.



  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Computer Games Moderators Posts: 52,410 CMod ✭✭✭✭Retr0gamer


    I really don't see what NFTs do that can't already replicated with a piece of paper and current copyright law. It really is a technology looking for a solution.



  • Moderators, Computer Games Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators Posts: 10,529 Mod ✭✭✭✭CatInABox


    Your example of buying the rights to a song versus just buying that song via Itunes/Spotify is an interesting one, because buying an NFT does not confer any rights to you. You've got exactly the same rights to use it as someone that right clicked it, i.e. none, apart from the right to tell people that you "own" it. You can't license it commercially, you can't put it in an advert, etc.



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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 34,735 ✭✭✭✭Penn


    Something is only worth as much as someone else is willing to pay for it. The people who created the concept of NFTs and are propogating them have created the hype/value of NFTs. People are buying the concept/privilege/rights of owning something, as opposed to actually owning something.

    Let's not also forget how exploitative things like this can be, especially in gaming. The whole CS:GO Lotto thing comes to mind in particular. Games introducing NFTs, to me, could see an introduction of similar means of exploitation. Lootboxes on steroids.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 8,085 ✭✭✭Grumpypants


    Wikipedia just sold there first edit as an NFT. It went to auction at Christy's and they got 750k. That money will be used to keep Wikipedia going.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 8,085 ✭✭✭Grumpypants


    It depends on what is in the contract. Some NFTs will bring with it full copyright and publishing permissions others will simple be a proof of ownership but without the ability to sell or even display it and the artist would hold the publishing rights.


    When you make the NFT you set the terms. Then someone that wants to buy it on those terms can. Simply and without a hitch ge cost of getting copyright lawyers involved.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 8,000 ✭✭✭Stone Deaf 4evr




  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Computer Games Moderators, Entertainment Moderators Posts: 30,020 CMod ✭✭✭✭johnny_ultimate


    It won’t go to Wikipedia though. It’s going to a social network thing Jimmy Wales set up called WT.Social.

    “The Wikimedia Foundation confirmed in an email to Slate that its board of directors requested that Wales not earmark the funds for the foundation to make clear that this was Wales’ personal venture and not a Wikipedia-endorsed fundraising initiative.”

    It also caused a huge debate in the Wiki community itself, mainly over the argument that an NFT is a fundamental betrayal of Wikipedia’s core ethos.

    https://slate.com/technology/2021/12/jimmy-wales-birth-of-wikipedia-nft-auction.html



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 14,698 ✭✭✭✭BlitzKrieg


    I know the environmental aspect gets brought up a lot and I understand thats a big issue.


    But putting it aside. Is this just not the same sort of c*nts that ruined comics in the 90's with over speculating their value and in the end forced us to endure a whole bunch of rubbish because the industry thought every shiny comic issue could be worth millions in the future?


    You can talk about the potential of NFTS for ensuring that someone can claim ownership over something but

    1. Currently thats not happening as anyone can put an image through to the blockchain and put it up to sale. There is no end of the stories of artists having their work turned into nfts and sold off without their permission (including some ghoulish sorts who did it to the work of an artist who passed away)
    2. The Non fungible aspect of it hasnt stood any real sort of test legally or practically. I mean the human error aspect of it is already shot full of holes with social hacking proving more then capable of stealing them out from under most of the nftbro's noses. And there's as far as I've been aware no legal challenge to claim ownership of something via NFT. We'll have to wait til some tv show or something sticks one of those horrible apes in the background and gets sued.

    Frankly it just feels like the same sh*tty speculation bullsh*t we get everywhere else just trying to hip with the kids.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 8,103 ✭✭✭Mr Crispy




  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Computer Games Moderators Posts: 52,410 CMod ✭✭✭✭Retr0gamer




  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,122 ✭✭✭BeerWolf


    A pox on NFTs and all things cryptocurrencies.



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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 8,103 ✭✭✭Mr Crispy




  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 34,735 ✭✭✭✭Penn


    No wonder he was missing from the episode of Play Watch Listen where they talk about how pointless and rubbish NFTs are in games




  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Computer Games Moderators, Entertainment Moderators Posts: 30,020 CMod ✭✭✭✭johnny_ultimate


    One of the worst cases of a self-cancellation I've seen.

    It'd be tragic if it wasn't so stupid.



  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Computer Games Moderators Posts: 52,410 CMod ✭✭✭✭Retr0gamer


    If you read the companies spiel it's very obvious they are jumping on NFT and haven't a clue what they are doing and no plan going forward other than to get shareholder funding and then probably **** off with the investor money. And then there's the 'promise' to move to a more environmentally friendly model which every NFT criminal organisation promises while knowingly not being able to deliver on it.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 34,735 ✭✭✭✭Penn


    From looking at the tweets of Troy Baker and the company he's partnering with, it seems like they'll use AI to take voice actors work so you can essentially make your character say anything in the voice actor's voice, and the voice actor then gets royalties from the NFT too.

    So Troy Baker, who pretty much voices everyone anyway, can sell his voices/performances out to companies who then don't need to hire actual voice actors. In particular, if they can't afford Troy Baker's actual VO fee, they can just get an AI NFT of him which he gets royalties of, instead of hiring a lesser-known VO performer.

    For a man who prides his performance and acting so much, he's obviously never heard an AI try to replicate actual dialogue/speech.

    Edit: Holy sh*t, this is from the company's website....

    The Lore

    On Ethyear 0, the Sun, which has supported and nurtured life on Earth for millennia, imploded and scorched the entirety of Milky Way with its fiery touches. Luckily, we had built colonies in other galaxies before our homeland was burnt to crisp.

    Eons passed, and homo survivalis, or "Terrans", as we had come to be known, had lost the ability to not only speak, but produce any form of nonverbal noise from our windpipe. Laughter was gone in our lives. We had to guess how frustrated or sad someone was from their facial expression only. This was all due to the fact that we had become overly reliant on vision, consuming only images, gifs, and texts.

    Abundance of visual display, from personal electronics to embedded screens in our eyes, led us to mistakenly construe audio an inefficient way of conveying and gathering information, which ultimately led to our vocal cords deteriorating completely over centuries. The same fate occurred in all races of humans across different universes.

    Then on Ethyear 8,888 a group of 100 ethereal beings by the name of Alpha Centum, or "Centums", started appearing in various places.

    They were omnipotent cosmic energies, spiritual beings that flowed from one galaxy to another beyond temporal or spatial limitations. They each possessed one authentic voice that demanded such respect and awe, as the world had long forgotten what “a real voice” was.

    The Centums summoned 1,000 Cosmic Architects, or "Architects", to obey their beckonings: they were charged with creating new, and revitalizing old, planets, and to manage which Terrans were deserving of a voice of their own.

    In return, Architects were awarded voices generated from mixing two pure Centum voices, while Terrans were given voices that were bred randomly from a multitude of voices. No one knew why Centums were here - but everyone knew that this was our only chance at recovering what made us, and our ancestors, truly human.

    I can only pray and hope that it was an AI who wrote that garbage and not an actual human being...



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 8,103 ✭✭✭Mr Crispy


    I bet Netflix still wanna adapt it though.



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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,549 ✭✭✭recyclops


    Good god that is some woeful spiel, rich people are so terrified at missing on the next big thing they are throwing mud all over the place hoping something sticks. Loads of people will lap this up as well its bonkers.



  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Computer Games Moderators Posts: 52,410 CMod ✭✭✭✭Retr0gamer


    I mean it annoys me but I get how people of twitter can be so ignorant of game development that they think you can just transplant assets in different games and engines.

    When your whole company is based off of that ignorance then that's some next level grifting.



  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Computer Games Moderators, Entertainment Moderators Posts: 30,020 CMod ✭✭✭✭johnny_ultimate


    A lot of the NFT racket only really makes sense from the perspective of its advocates believing truly they will make all the money because ‘new technology’ and then having to make up reasons for why the technology is actually needed / useful after the fact.

    The thing that gives me solace is that the wider online community consistently and definitively calls NFTs out as the shameless, useless grift that they are.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 34,735 ✭✭✭✭Penn


    NFTs in gaming are like the world's dumbest version of Pass The Parcel. Whoever is left holding the NFT when the servers are shut off, loses.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 34,735 ✭✭✭✭Penn



    Saw a tweet that they just recorded a new episode of Play Watch Listen with Troy discussing the tweets and the whole thing, so should be up tomorrow. Should be interesting.



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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 8,103 ✭✭✭Mr Crispy


    This is a long read that I'm saving for later, but some of you might be interested in this interview with Yanis Varoufakis, the former Greek finance minister who also worked for Valve at one point on their in-game digital economies.




  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Computer Games Moderators, Entertainment Moderators Posts: 30,020 CMod ✭✭✭✭johnny_ultimate


    Dan Olson’s new feature-length (!) video on NFTs and cryptos is superb: a clear, concise explainer of complex concepts and an absolutely stellar critique of the rot at the centre of the whole fad. Really gets at the lies or naivety behind the purported idealism of many crypto bros, and why ultimately it’s all just a financial death spiral.

    A great bit of video journalism / essaying that is well worth carving out the time for, although you might want to take it in chunks :)


    Post edited by johnny_ultimate on


  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Computer Games Moderators Posts: 52,410 CMod ✭✭✭✭Retr0gamer


    I just finished watching it. It's fantastic.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 8,103 ✭✭✭Mr Crispy




  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 8,085 ✭✭✭Grumpypants


    After 20 years of the internet, this was written. Bitcoin has been around for 12. The technology has evolved a great deal since its inception and it will continue to evolve.


    Hype alert: Why cyberspace isn’t, and will never be, nirvana. (Newsweek, 1995)

    After two decades online, I’m perplexed. It’s not that I haven’t had a gas of a good time on the Internet. I’ve met great people and even caught a hacker or two.But today, I’m uneasy about this most trendy and oversold community – the internet.

    Visionaries see a future of telecommuting workers, interactive libraries and multimedia classrooms. They speak of electronic town meetings and virtual communities. Commerce and business will shift from offices and malls to networks and modems. And the freedom of digital networks will make government more democratic.

    Baloney. Do our computer pundits lack all common sense? The truth is no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.

    Consider today’s online world. The Usenet, a worldwide bulletin board, allows anyone to post messages across the nation. Your word gets out, leapfrogging editors and publishers.

    Every voice can be heard cheaply and instantly. The result? Every voice is heard. The cacophony more closely resembles citizens band radio, complete with handles, harassment, and anonymous threats. When most everyone shouts, few listen.

    How about electronic publishing? Try reading a book on disc. At best, it’s an unpleasant chore: the myopic glow of a clunky computer replaces the friendly pages of a book.

    And you can’t tote that laptop to the beach. Yet Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we’ll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Internet. Uh, sure.

    What the Internet hucksters won’t tell you is that the Internet is one big ocean of unedited data, without any pretense of completeness. Lacking editors, reviewers or critics, the Internet has become a wasteland of unfiltered data. You don’t know what to ignore and what’s worth reading.

    Logged onto the World Wide Web, I hunt for the date of the Battle of Trafalgar. Hundreds of files show up, and it takes 15 minutes to unravel them–one’s a biography written by an eighth grader, the second is a computer game that doesn’t work and the third is an image of a London monument.

    None answers my question, and my search is periodically interrupted by messages like, “Too many connections, try again later.”

    Won’t the Internet be useful in governing? Internet addicts clamor for government reports. But when Andy Spano ran for county executive in Westchester County, N.Y., he put every press release and position paper onto a bulletin board. In that affluent county, with plenty of computer companies, how many voters logged in? Fewer than 30. Not a good omen.

    Then there are those pushing computers into schools. We’re told that multimedia will make schoolwork easy and fun. Students will happily learn from animated characters while taught by expertly tailored software.

    Who needs teachers when you’ve got computer-aided education? Bah.

    These expensive toys are difficult to use in classrooms and require extensive teacher training. Sure, kids love video games–but think of your own experience: can you recall even one educational filmstrip of decades past? I’ll bet you remember the two or three great teachers who made a difference in your life.

    Then there’s cyberbusiness. We’re promised instant catalog shopping–just point and click for great deals. We’ll order airline tickets over the network, make restaurant reservations and negotiate sales contracts. Stores will become obsolete.

    So how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month?

    Even if there were a trustworthy way to send money over the Internet–which there isn’t–the network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople.

    What’s missing from this electronic wonderland? Human contact. Discount the fawning techno-burble about virtual communities. Computers and networks isolate us from one another. A network chat line is a limp substitute for meeting friends over coffee.

    No interactive multimedia display comes close to the excitement of a live concert. And who’d prefer cybersex to the real thing?

    While the Internet beckons brightly, seductively flashing an icon of knowledge-as-power, this nonplace lures us to surrender our time on earth. A poor substitute it is, this virtual reality where frustration is legion and where–in the holy names of Education and Progress–important aspects of human interactions are relentlessly devalued.

    STOLL is the author of “Silicon Snake Oil–Second Thoughts on the Information Highway” to be published by Doubleday in April.

    Post edited by Grumpypants on


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 34,735 ✭✭✭✭Penn


    Troy Baker cancels plans to sell his voice as an NFT

    Not sure if he's backing out just because of the backlash he received, or if it's because Voiceverse started posting audio clips of their work and he realised he didn't want his voice to be associated with that sh*te.




  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Computer Games Moderators, Entertainment Moderators Posts: 30,020 CMod ✭✭✭✭johnny_ultimate


    Team 17 has become the latest company forced to backtrack and cancel a moronic NFT plan after being stupid enough to announce one.

    I bring this up solely because a number of developers who worked with them released some gloriously blunt statements in response to the initial announcement. Fair play to all of them for speaking out.

    The Aggro Crab statement in particular should be a template for any developers responding to this sort of horseshit.




  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 34,735 ✭✭✭✭Penn


    Team 17 announced yesterday they're getting into NFTs.

    Team 17 announced today they're now not getting into NFTs.

    Games companies, save yourself the hassle of announcing you're no longer going to get into NFTs by simply just not trying to get into them in the first place!



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 34,735 ✭✭✭✭Penn




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