Why Play-To-Earn NFT Games are NOT THE FUTURE! | with Callum Upton

[@Soapy-chan_old]

I think that people who advocate for play-to-earn games and all those other projects only tell you that it's the future or super duper awesome because they need you to join so they can make money while you will left behind

[@AbsoluteSkycaptain]

A tale as old as time.

[@Soapy-chan_old]

@inovade lol yeah

[@Hauntaku]

@inovade Wolves in sheep's clothing are trying to get a herd together to trick sheep into being eaten alive

[@froggyringu]

They need somebody at the bottom of the pyramid that they are building.

[@Soapy-chan_old]

@@froggyringu Yeah absolutely

[@DYWYPI]

Josh should look into something called the "overjustification effect", which is a psychological phenomenon in which being rewarded for performing a task you enjoy instrinsically actually decreases your ability to enjoy that task in the future. A researcher called Mark Lepper in 1973 told children they'd be paid for making drawings over a period of time, and after that period ended, found that they had lost their interest in art and producing drawings, while the control group who were not rewarded had not.

[@memitim171]

People often say to me "Oh, you are good with PCs, how come you don't work in the industry?" and my answer is always "Because I love the PC" It sounds counter-intuitive, but it actually makes perfect sense.

[@Nirual86]

Imho the problem is less about simply being rewarded for it, but in the sort of pressure that puts you under. Its no longer about something you do whenever you feel like doing it because its fun, its expected from you to keep doing it at a certain rate now. This is even something that happens with the daily reward systems in so many of these games, nevermind the gear threadmill in WoW and likewise games. Systems that have kept me "playing" more games than I'd like to admit long after I stopped really enjoying them, just sorta half-passively keeping up the daily chores waiting for new morsels of new content, when I should've just taken a break and come back refreshed with a bunch of new stuff to engage with.

[@destroyerinazuma96]

There was a similar experiment where ppl were paid money to push a button repeatedly for several minutes (if not half an hour). Those paid 10ish bucks said it was irritating but hey it was for science and they got something out of it (beyond the 10$), while the people paid 100 (or was it 150$) said screw that experiment I wish I didn't do it, waste of time, I'd rather would've gone to a park or done something else, even with less to no pay.

[@CraftyF0X]

If I would want to criticise the field of psychology I'd probably say that: Even though most of the expert points out and agree on that all individual being unique at least to an extent, they frequently try to paint a representative picture of a general population based on a few experiment. I also doubt the feasabilty of controling all the possible variables in their experiments. Almost any result they come up can be debated by using examples or counter examples or just questioning the variables they took into account. That is being said many of the effects you guys mentioned here are something that I empirically observed on myself or on my enviroment thus I can confirm them to be true to various extends. I guess we should just be a little more careful with drawing conclusions based on pushing buttons and getting payed for it. (a truckload of variables comes to mind when it is applied generally: what was the color and the temperature of the button ? did the button do something, and what was that ? did they think it does something, and what they thought ? what was their age, education level, occupation, culture other social background ? they knew that is a once done, once payed, experiement so its already different from a daily job, were they in a confortable place or in discomfort ? were they volunteers ? what was their earlier exposure to experiemental psychology before ? (do they have an idea what is the experiment about ?) and so on and so one. Again, even If I agree with their conclusions I just don't see how they can definitively prove that they controlled all these variables and their results prove something "generally true" about the avg ppl.

[@destroyerinazuma96]

@@CraftyF0X Healthy Gamer (Indian-American therapist) criticized western psychology for the reasons you mentioned. It's eastern psychology that happens to put the individual first and have a very individualised approach.

[@Hemestal]

As an economist, these topics are always entertaining to delve into. What's sad is that it's my hobby that is being targeted by speculators and shysters that have the gall to call you uneducated for not being able to understand the "nuance" behind the schemes they peddle. It's amazing to watch those individuals go in circles trying to explain how NFTS and P2E are not raw, unadulterated speculation of nothing.

[@lightworker2956]

Yeah, that seems to be the trend nowadays: create something out of nothing (Bitcoin, crypto, NFTs, Earth 2, "play to earn tokens") and then sell it. Call stupid anyone who says that those things have an inherent value of 0, other than "greater fool theory." Make sure to play up FOMO: "what if this is the next Bitcoin?"

[@whenpigsfly8178]

At least someone like Asmongold is very happy to point out the would-be-Emperors with no clothes and just blanket dismiss the NFT bullcrap.

[@Milanin8]

I love comparing NFTs to the Steam Community Market. Just you get even less use out of them.

[@KaiserMattTygore927]

For people that claim to be so "smart" they somehow lost the concept of "fun" and "entertainment"

[@demonvictim]

Imagine the shock of retro games and card player that this was a sledgehammer to.

[@atraxian5881]

Play to earn work is also detrimental to the overall economy of a country. In a regular job most of the time you produce goods or offer a service. Imagine what would happen to a country with an already rickety economy if all farmers or plumbers stopped working and just sold RuneScape gold.

[@IgnoreMeImWrong]

Except no-one would do that because you're a moron.

[@chromasus9983]

Absolutely true. You can't sustain a society on purely digital resources and digital work.

[@TheAzureGhost]

Makes me thing of a debate we have here in germany for some time now. There is a (not small) group of people wanting a so called "Bedingungsloses Grundeinkommen" or BGE, meaning the state should pay every citizen 1500 (currently the number most name but it fluctates how much they want) every month, financed through taxes (on the rich) just for beeing a german citizen. it's supposed to lift the pressure on people to have to get in jobs they don't want to just to survive and free up people to earn money the way they want. On the question who would do the unwanted jobs then they say the companys have to pay better and give better working conditions so people want to do the jobs to earn extra. Oh and short term studies "proved" that people still would want to work even with that free state money so there wouldn't be an issue with people not working anymore. Question : Who can pay for the plumber/farmer or other essentials if they raise those wages and recruit so many more people to those jobs that the workload on the individual goes down enough that the lazy people want to do the job?

[@chaosgyro]

@@TheAzureGhost Giving people more money just raises costs, inflates the currency, and ensures that 1500 will no longer be enough anyway. The only thing a Guaranteed Basic Income actually guarantees is that eventually no one will be able to survive without the government except the officials themselves and their billionaire friends.

[@IgnoreMeImWrong]

@@TheAzureGhost It's called Universal Basic Income or UBI, it's a Socialist thing. You're doing Hitler, again. *LMFAO*

[@jonathanj8303]

Even if you ignore the dubious ethics, P2E has one fundamental problem, it essentially produces NOTHING. No content any meaningful number of people will pay to watch, no physical resources, just some warm servers and a power bill. You play the game, and anything you create/win comes from the funds other people put in. Unless people keep buying in, there's nothing to pay out. Farming gold only works if there's a market of wealthier but time-poor players who'll buy your achievements to save themselves playing time. And that's an inherently limited market, because those people have to have real world disposable income they want to spend supporting the farmers. If the whole of Venezuela really did start farming Runescape gold, the cash value of that gold will fall as they all compete harder and harder to sell it to the same limited pool of 1st world Pay-2-Advance-Faster players.

[@IgnoreMeImWrong]

Buzzfeed produces nothing but they get wages.

[@YoungMorningkeeper]

sounds like a pyramid scheme 😅

[@malicekerendu3574]

It's just worse e-sports

[@jonathanj8303]

@@YoungMorningkeeper yes, but with extra steps and decentralised.

[@jonathanj8303]

@@IgnoreMeImWrong buzzfeed makes content people will watch - even if the viewers don't pay directly, there are enough if them and they're keen enough to be willing to sit through associated ads, so there's ad revenue. The same goes for any youtube channel that doesn't have a paid membership scheme, patreon etc. But no one is paying to watch soneone else's axie infinity battles. At least, not enough viewers to support a $600m in game economy.

[@raullara9015]

its kinda weirder when you realize mmos are already play-to-earn if you can just... sell your account for real money. There is no need to design it around NFTs or rarity while you can just design a 'parallel-to-reality' in-game economy that is also 'time-spent' based (most are, automatically)

[@Obiwancolenobi]

Selling your account is explicitly banned in MMORPGs, not exactly 'legit'.

[@liam3104]

or just farm gold or currency in game and sell it

[@kuezar]

@@Obiwancolenobi Bought a dozen of accounts in a few MMOs in total. Got banned ONCE and the only reason was, the original owner openly advertized the fact that he was selling it.

[@Quicksilvir]

@@Obiwancolenobi Selling gold for cash was also illegal until Jagex and Blizzard were the ones selling it to you. Not that your statement isnt true but they could allow it and take a cut if they wanted.

[@magamisic5924]

It really isn't at all

[@CherriNight]

As a low-level game dev: The convo around making games as an art vs making them as a science has a LOT to do with the accessibility of art in our society. I do modelling and animation. My husband is a game designer. We have many close friends that cover aspects like UI and audio. We would all LOVE to develop a game that we are passionate about and have had many a convo about the ideas we have and dreams for the future. The problem is it takes so much time and effort to make a game, and by extension money. A double whammy problem is that we aren't allowed to work on a game on our personal time. This is fairly standard across the industry as an "anti-compete" clause. If we were to spend our weekends making a game and then released it, while still being employed with the game studios we are at now, we open ourselves up to litigation from these companies. It comes down to the fundamental problem that we work to live. We can't quit our jobs to make a game. And from experience, the industry is full of developers like that, constrained by their ability to make a living. We can't all be concerned ape.

[@MikkoMurmeli]

If I ever realized my dream of becoming a successful organic foods grower, I'd love to take a bunch of people like you in. You really shouldn't count on that, but just saying....

[@CherriNight]

@@MikkoMurmeli bahahaha. I appreciate the thought! Honestly the world needs more rich people willing to pay artists a living wage just to create lmao.

[@nanopix5305]

If there are so many developers feeling like that, then wouldnt there be a bunch of companies started by such developers that fix those problems?

[@CherriNight]

@@nanopix5305 You still need money to start a company. If you don't have that money, you need investment, which makes you beholden to those investors, which brings us back to square one with the idea of making games as a science to make money.

[@rynngrey3722]

Wait- isn't that anti-competitive clause illegal? Could you release the game after moving on from a company under a pseudo-name? That's messed up that companies with much, much bigger sway can impede individual artists like that.

[@shieldphaser]

People tend to forget that the natural counterpart to play-to-earn is pay-to-play. Companies make a "play-to-earn" game and act as though it's all "oh, everyone'll just make money playing the game" but that's just not in touch with reality. For everyone who plays the game in order to earn money, someone else must be losing money for the math to work out. If the game is not fun, why would hypothetical players be interested in putting money into it to play it instead of just playing something that is fun? On the other hand, if the game is fun, why does the main playerbase need the incentive of money in order to play it? The logic just doesn't hold up.

[@vylbird8014]

It reminds me of the situation on pay-to-win games. All those 'tribe war' things where players compete in a slow-real-time game to conquer villages or whatever, but the end game ends up dominated by people who can sink in real money to buy a premium in-game currency that makes all their buildings better and fighters stronger. What is the role of all the non-paying players? Partly to look at adverts. But also, to lose: Because they are the entertainment. There's no fun in being the whale if you don't have an ocean full of shrimp to crush and consume.

[@pinkdelicious655]

Theoretically the company could make money while the players do too. Perhaps a battle royale of sorts constantly streamed

[@alexalbuquerquerodriguesal108]

@@pinkdelicious655 You just need to have transactions between players and company as an overlord of sorts and recover a tax over transactions, It respects what the fella up there said and company makes money in a stable fashion.

[@DanielDroegeShow]

They are not losing money if they are spending it. Instead of paying for an unlimited digital item a dev can create out of thin air, you are paying for an item another player earned through their conquests that is in a limited amount. You keep farming you 1,000 daggers a day and I will feel much better when my single dagger drops.

[@Kafka-Youtube]

@@vylbird8014 Absolutely, I remember playing S4 League which is a anime style shooter, like Gunz and the game is an absolute pay to win horror show, and you could be in a clan and make clan wars, which basically where matches of 6v6(or 5v5 don't remember now) between your clan and other clan, and remember that when you played against a clan with all members covered head to toe in premium items, weapons included, noticing like skill didn't matter anymore. So we would just quit the match and go find another one or create the room ourselves with the condition of only using non-premium items earned in-game.

[@defaulted9485]

There were already play to earn, but it always ruins the game and the devs prefer to avoid lawsuits by banning account sharing and Real Life unauthorized transactions. e.g. : - Dota and CSGO Skin Economy and MMR Farm - Mobile Gacha Games rerolling - MMO Coin Botting (back then it was Adventure Quest Worlds for me) - Unused Account Trade (me personally it was Wangan Midnight Maximume Tune 3DX+) Also, the part where it's more stable than the actual Crypto part really hits hard.

[@carinadominguez22]

Yeah, true. This doesn't seem like an evolution of those items/mechanics. This seems like the weird concept of NFTs(which is ownership) taken to it's logical extreme; which is just a blatant scam.

[@devforfun5618]

@@carinadominguez22 the evolution here is that the pandemic ruined the economy of many countries with access to good internet, so now the people desperate to gain money have the time and access to games were you can sell stuff, when you have no job play to earn is interesting

[@carinadominguez22]

@@devforfun5618 No, that's just a side effect of poorly run countries/economies.

[@Dahorn]

Yes it is already happening and it's bad, but pay to earn makes it legal and the devs just make RMT part of the game, it's stupid

[@jakemurray4346]

You're talking about boosting services, lootbox skins, and selling accounts. That's not play to earn. You also can't be a booster unless you're in the top 0.1% of players so you actually have the skill to boost, and it doesn't make you much individually. It makes whoever organizes it a lot of money, and boosters get pittance per game. Lootbox skins in CSGO it averages out like maybe 5c per lootbox earned, unless you are legit scamming people in steam trade. Account selling has literally always existed, but it's just not worth selling something that takes 10k hours to earn for like a hundred bucks. I don't know about the rest, but none of this so far is play to earn. Some people have found ways to get mass setups of virtual machines all running scripts that farms it all for them, and they make money that way, but it's certainly not easy or cheap to set up. Everyone else can't make jack shit unless they basically are Venezuelan.

[@JoshStrifeSays]

Great discussion in the comments! Awesome to see people bringing up their POV's. Hopefully these longer discussion clips will keep facilitating a neutral environment to share thoughts of the topics in these videos. -Visa

[@alexanderxyz6146]

That sounds absolutely fantastic. I think your attitude brings in that vibe, gives a good image, and of course people who enjoy that (you) will be here rather than ones not interested in that. (Also check out my answer to the video by the way, starting with "so true." _(the timer is at the start of the comment, i just don't wanna short cut it)_ In the comment I adress a rather personal thing. But I really know alot of other casuals being with me there, they are simply not that vocal or in forums as much, and not as invested and just more ingame, you know. But the devs are certainly aware of them, and even adressed them in some news at some point last month. (details in the other comment) So just my 2 cents to _one_ point in the video. A so called brain fart or enlightment, you name it.)

[@MrNorker77]

Really enjoy these kinds of videos. Love how Josh and Callum bounce off each other, even if no elven childeren's birthday party gets ruined.

[@lilbladeknight]

Sounds like selling LoL accounts

[@GLA69]

You need to post this in the main channel, I think that it would be great to see this there, I don't know what Josh thinks about that but that is what I believe

[@mekman4]

I get the MinMaxing of life, but nothing is going to change my mind about spectacle! What about the spectacle in our imagination? Dull can be as distilled and as scientific as much as vibrancy. This is just an argument about Coke vs Pepsi. Both are awful. Great Stuff!

[@GrandMagusDK]

I think the reason why playing games to earn money is so appealing is because for many people the alternative is a job they hate doing. We are in a stage now that work conditions go down or stagnate low while wages get lower and costs get higher and higher. I think many people feel like they have to min-max their live just keep above water, even in their limited spare time.

[@bloodbarage]

100%. In California you can’t walk down the street without seeing a help wanted sign.

@@bloodbarage would love to wash dishes in California

[@themendorean]

Buckle up boys we're going back to the 1900' !

[@zeening]

yup and that's why we really need to start going out and and taking out the CEOs of these companies, they CANNOT be allowed to just keep taking dumps on society and all the customers that literally put them in the position they are in. i'm sooo over it, idc if it's wrong people REALLY need to start doing something about this or it's going to keep happening more and more and more and the standard of living will continue to go down and the cost of living will continue to go up.

[@bernhardlabus8511]

Its a fantasy they simply didn't think through. Playing a MMO for money sounds great. Until you realize you would need to min-max. And obviously the rarest/ most valuable stuff would be what other people dont do as much. Which is either because it is awefully boring to do or hard. Which means while you may be doing your favorite thing, you are forced to do a non-fun part of it. It only sounds fun until you actually think it through.

[@erichkitzmueller]

The problematic part of P2E is when the money no longer comes from players actually enjoying the game, buying in-game resources to shortcut the grind, but instead all players are there to earn (because the game by itself is not enjoyable) and new players bring the funds as an "initial investment" that is used to pay out the earlier players. This is very similar to a ponzi scheme and the eventual result will be the same.

[@MontegomeryLoL]

The part about feeling like you're missing out on money really rings true for me as a software engineer who has been a contractor a few times. It always feels like you're missing out on money when you need vacation or sick time.

[@creativedesignation7880]

See it this way: you miss out on life, if you don't take that vacation. I know the feeling, the fomo is real, especially for earning money, but at the end of your life you will not go out with a smile, because you are thinking of your bank account balance.

[@16xthedetail76]

@@creativedesignation7880 Where do you guys live? In australia we get paid vacation leave up to 1 month and if you work in retail, you get paid average commission as well.

[@Roboshi2007]

@@16xthedetail76 yeah we have it in the UK too, america is really not kind to it's workers simply because they're run by the corporations now

[@MalekitGJ]

@@16xthedetail76 when you're your own boss the fomo becomes real and don't give yourself vacations.

[@MalekitGJ]

@@Roboshi2007 read above

[@linguotgr]

I feel like there is a question not enough people ask when these "Play to Earn" games are pitched. The developers are going to get paid somehow. If players are getting paid to play it, then how are the developers getting paid? The answer so far always seems to be a buy-in to get started, or a payout that is strictly an in-game currency/item that can be sold for real money. If you have to pay to start up, then the average player has to put in more money than they would extract. If that werent true, the dev would not get paid. And if the payout is purely in NFTs that get traded between players, someone, i.e. players, has to be injecting money in to that system for those NFTs to have value. Its a zero-sum game and developers are always going to extract their wealth, if for no other reason to pay employees and pay for game upkeep. That means that on average, players have to be losing money on these NFT trades to continue to play the game. There is just no other way around it, its simple math. "Play to Earn" will cost most people playing the game money. The entire system can only work if most people are okay with losing money, which cant exist in a game whose whole purpose is a theoretical stable paycheck. A game like Runescape can exist (though i would argue its worse for it) when most people are ok playing for fun, some people are ok paying for more gold, and a third group exists to play the game as a job. An NFT Play-To-Earn game just cant exist long term, while delivering on its promise.

[@Pizzastealingninja]

The only thing I could really see, is designing a game where players complete minigames that are an abstraction of a robot performing a real world productive task, like a robot in an amazon warehouse picking packages. Basically, make a game out of completing more complex captcha challenges on behalf of robots doing real world work.

[@asasmeniskaidejau139]

I always imagine NFT's as a replacement for skins. people are already "losing money" on them. I don't think lol players would get mad if they could start trading their old skins. The developers can earn a stable stream of income through fee's for every transaction. I don't think your argument works because the free to play model already depends on whales spending money. I don't see why anything about that would change if now some of the whales money is returned to other players.

[@justinfritz4817]

market taxes

[@Nirual86]

@@asasmeniskaidejau139 but you don't actually need NFTs for that either. The only theoretical benefit would be a "metaverse" type system where you can use your NFT'd skin in other games through some magical system.

[@Nerobyrne]

damn this sounds just like an MLM ^^

[@darkgaara787]

I love what you guys do but I want to clarify something: Almost no one (if any one) earns minimum wage in Venezuela. It's just impossible to live off that. Mind you, the actual average income is more like 100$ monthly, which is awful, but it is not 10$

[@NaudVanDalen]

The poorer a country becomes, the less reasons there are for people there to work a real job and the more reasons there are to just grind gold in some game like Runescape or World of Warcraft or play Axie Infinity and hope it doesn't get hacked again.

[@algammond]

Optimizing your analytics is like optimizing the fun out of videogames

[@excalibur493]

What's unfortunate is that I love learning how games work, but it also becomes less fun because the magic is now gone.

[@ThatguycalledJoe]

Callum only briefly touched on it, but the question of "Where's your payout coming from?" is the most important question that none of these "play-to-earn" games seem to be interested in answering. From what I've noticed having only a very surface level understanding of the situation on the grounds that I haven't fooled with any of these games because I have not been convinced of why the Crypto/NFT aspect is necessary for them to function, that all these games seem to want to sell themselves with "you can play this game and get paid for doing it", but I've never heard of any of these games provide an answer to the question of "Okay, but I don't care about that so what else do you have?". If the answer is "Nothing.", then failure is inevitable. I am curious to see how an MMO would turn out if it had two fundamental differences from the norm. One being that there is no in-game currency that isn't directly tied in value to out-of-game cash (bearing the implicating that there are no NPC vendors to sell to), and the other is that there is no traditional cash shop with all items needing to be generated by the playerbase in order to then be sold. The quirk in that sentiment is that if you take it that broadly, it already exists and it's called Second Life, so the challenge in this case would be reinterpreting that base to work for a game where the products that are sold between players is generated through activity in the game rather than requiring external skills like 3D modeling to get into a position where profit is possible. But NFTs are trendy, I guess, so you gotta have NFTs.

[@carlosdasilva2409]

As a Venezuelan, I certify that RuneScape helped a lot of people here and it's still helping some to make a "decent" buck

[@lasselen9448]

Gacha games already have this "play to earn" feeling. The game gives explicit monetary value to an in-game currency that has micro-transactions has the main source, but can also be earned by playing specific content every day. Players are thus pushed to never miss their daily quests or whatever, because doing so would mean missing out on indirect cash. As a result, a game that should be fun becomes a chore, a job one keeps doing so they have enough "money" to gamble for the next cool character that gets released. Assuming they do get the character, the game will be a game again for a few days, until the novelty wears off and it's back to being a boring job. I can only imagine how much worse it is when you can get the "money" out of the game. As for videogames focusing on rentability nowadays, there's a somewhat rational explanation aside of corporate greed. Big companies feel that, in order to be taken seriously by the customers, they have to spit out massive AAA MOORPGFPS social-focused Game As A Service titles once a year per studio. Of course, this stuff is so big they need hundreds of devs backed by expensive communication and advertising because every other big name is doing the exact same thing and they have to stand out somehow, right? And how are they going to fund that if they don't squeeze out every last drop off cash from the players using psychology and economics sciences? Yes, the premise is fundamentally wrong (just look at how successful smaller, artful games have been in the past and keep being nowadays), but the logic isn't off past this point. Especially considering this law about always serving the shareholder first: once they've started to ramp up, it's a vicious circle; they're not legally allowed to back down and say "Alright, we'll stop targeting millions of players and make smaller, better games for tens of thousands instead". I believe most of these games start out with a passionate team and get perverted by the committee later on, when the question of funding comes up.

[@gilolaes4725]

Jobs have tried to make themselves seem more like games for decades now. The term gameification exists for a reason. Play to Earn is just the inverse: Trying to make games as rewarding as a job. The difference is that the job needed to get done whether or not you gameified it. If your game isn't fun, then there's no point in playing it over taking a job unless there are no better options, so you're going to be left with a bunch of people treating the game as work, with a community that dies the moment the game stops being profitable for them.

[@dale7326]

The thing that you can make a loop for it. As long as the loop is running, business as usual. This is indeed an inverse of that

[@kaijuultimax9407]

And let's not forget that we only gameify work because work sucks. So trying to 'jobify' video games will always make them suck because you're turning entertainment into work, which sucks.

[@MenwithHill]

The question is always "where does the money come from". Cause if players are earning, and the companies aren't going full Moviepass, it means there's a hell of a lot of suckers fueling this machine.

[@DoingFavors]

I watched a guy in the lost ark forums argue and argue with everyone about VPN's being blocked saying that if you don't use a VPN you're an absolute fool and you will lose everything and be hacked and people will ruin your life... All I do on my PC is game and watch youtube videos..No credit cards, no nothing. He was so brainwashed by youtuber advertisements and ads that you can't live without a VPN that he argued for hours with everyone that their blocking of VPN clients was going to open him up to malicious attacks. Yes...and G-fuel makes you a "Better gamer" don't forget your complimentary gamer chair on the way out.. People will believe anything an advertisement tells them these days, if their favorite content creator tells them it's true they believe it without hesitation and will even fight against reason and proof to prove the point they're trying to make. NFT scams are no different.

[@gilolaes4725]

@@DoingFavors I get your point, but what is the rationale behind having VPNs banned on the Lost Ark forums? Many people like having a VPN active for the extra security and privacy, and I'm not sure what the hosts of the forum gain by banning them.

[@noxelohim]

You're not bad at it Josh, you're avoiding elements that cause uploading to change from being something fun to being work. Sure you can check analytics and all that and maybe catch a trend for some extra money. But then you're not doing what you feel like, you're not uploading some rare gem because you were impressed by it even though almost nobody has heard of it. At that point you're chasing money and it's a job. And doing that will drain the enthusiasm and passion for what you're doing. Love what you do and you'll never work a day in your life. Despise what you do and you'll never have a day off

[@lokasocba]

This was such a great conversation. It actually made me pay it more attention that I usually put in this kind of videos and seriously think about the topics they are discussing.

[@AzriusN]

It was a mistake to have this on in the background while I worked. It's too engaging for me to only give it part of my attention.

[@alewis514]

Look, if there is a play to earn scheme that's actually succesfull it will be swarmed by organized groups of people that just want to squeeze as much juice out of it as possible. You cannot compete with professionals. They will optimize everything that can be optimized and your 'play to earn' method will be making a small fraction of what their optimized meta method will be making. And because of their high efficiency the token value will drop, you will need to farm much more to gain the same profit as before. This will force you to do the same optimized 'meta' method of farming (forfeiting any fun you might had before).

[@pathofexile.]

well said.

[@Dkgow]

As Josh said in a pervious vod, "If you want to kill your love for a game, become efficient at it."

[@EzraBradford]

The other avenue on “play to earn,” besides getting _players_ to pay in, is to make the gameplay accomplish something someone _else_ will pay for. Protein folding, or logistics optimization, or something - if you can verify the player output, and sell it as a business-to-business service, then _that_ can be your revenue stream and you can pay the players from it. Ideal problems for this would be ones that are “NP-hard” - i.e. easy for computers to _verify_, but hard for them to solve. That way you don't need client evaluations of player performance - you can validate the solutions yourself and pay players accordingly, passing on the verified solutions to the client.

[@neoqwerty]

I think there's a free "game" that does the protein folding thing. And there's one I keep meaning to join in to just play with chemistry and see if I can put together a new molecular structure.

[@shakalaka5446]

I'm six minutes in and have already gone from hating gold sellers to realizing that any sane Venezuelan parent would do exactly that.

[@SuperKratosgamer]

Exactly, is quite sad.

[@unyieldingsarcasm2505]

I am suddenly feeling extreme guilt for hunting gold farmers in the wilderness....

[@ridhosamudro2199]

@@unyieldingsarcasm2505 from now on ask where they're come from and spare the venezuelans

[@unyieldingsarcasm2505]

@@ridhosamudro2199 shit il prob help them tbh, its just a game for me, its life for them

[@MalekitGJ]

@@unyieldingsarcasm2505 don't feel guilty. They already know the risks. And either you protect your game economy or theirs.

[@micksmith1812]

These conversations and format is brilliant. Please do more of these with Callum in the future 👍

[@1IGG]

They have a whole channel, Tangent tavern, where they do exactly that

[@alexanderxyz6146]

Indeed. Now that I think about others agreeing with me. It must be really good. I agree this kind of format really had something. (And I was secretly always wishing for this, or thinking that is one of the best things you want in a yt gaming discussion) 2 People seems to be rather optimal. Needless to say we have 2 quite fancy guys here at that. BTW: This is the 2nd video with Callum right after the previous for me: _Josh on World of Warcraft and Dragonflight..._ just FYI, of course just for me (didn't check the dates). I don't go with the wow topic too much, (which I also expressed there) but I still found it really nice to listen to and thinking about their points and what not. Afterall it's not a bad game, anyways. Let's stop here, it's about the really beautiful format of these 2 individuals. The question always is, ofcourse, who to watch if they are both in the video together? Haha.

[@micksmith1812]

@@1IGG cheers lad!

[@GrandMagusDK]

I like these talks with Callum, he has such great insights into these things. Keeps reminding me that game dev really is way different than corporate dev.

[@uhurunuru6609]

Copy/Paste post: Callum got the Axie Infinity thing completely wrong, there are nine transaction validators, and the devs hold 4 of them the discord community validator is one of the 5. In December due to short term popularity, they couldn't keep up, and "temporarily" added coding that gave the discord control of the devs 4+1, for a majority. The "temporarily" time limit expired, but nobody changed the code back, so when the Discord was hacked, the hacker gained majority validation, and took $650 million. Worst part was none of that money belonged to the devs, it was the collective fund of ALL the players money, their "Earnings" included, and the "hacker(s)" work for North Korea.

[@FrostyFate]

I used to like Second Life. So I started creating content for Second Life. I worked my ass off to compete with the thousands of other creators, and made good money, and grew to hate the work, and ultimately hate Second Life.

[@4.1132]

Pay-to-earn even if it could (operative word being could) function legitimately would require a plethora of new legislation for everything from basic contract rules to taxation and that’s before getting into questions of oversight, enforcement and liability. The other thing that was briefly mentioned that is being traded for real money already in a lot of games are lootbox items and accounts, which is technically illegal under the terms of service of those games, because it’s a breech of contract. Also it would not be in the company’s interest to encourage that because as Josh mentioned it puts them in a very different legal position. Though I don’t think the shareholder comparison works that well here, as the items aren’t directly tied to the company value itself or ownership of the company. However, companies would more likely be held liable as marketplaces or brokerages for tampering with the value of items. A more apt description would be stakeholders, which is bad if the game developers make decisions solely based on the in-game economy and not their best judgment. Overall pay-to-earn might be a short term solution to the economic crisis in many countries but in the long run, it’s likely to fail and have far reaching negative consequences.

[@RedOphiuchus]

Fun fact with Magic: the Gathering and the secret lairs: they've kind of acknowledged the secondary market indirectly through it. Most secret lairs are $30 for 5 nonfoil cards or $40 for those same 5 foil. But then randomly they decided to do one with 5 of the 10 fetchlands and it was almost $200. I don't think anyone has taken the steps needed for their to be any consequences for this but it seems like blatant acknowledgement to me.

[@Mama_Alessiah]

To comment on the last question: what MMORPGs focus more on art and less on flash, I would personally say, from what I have heard, FFXIV. I haven’t personally played it (though I badly want to) but every time I hear it mentioned I don’t hear people talking about the graphics or looks or anything I’ve ever heard a lot of the post-WoW MMO’s focus on, but rather the story and the characters. FFXIV has built a community of people that love the characters and character progression and plot and lore. Yes, the gameplay is very good and offers a lot for those that delve into it, but I always hear people gush over the characters and that’s honestly really encouraging. Another example I feel is LOTRO, which did start as a ‘copy WoW, but with a different license,’ and it failed bc of that. However, over time, it has focused on creating a very long form, slow burn, story focused experience that many have just fallen in love with, and I think that is really notable.

[@axsprime]

The play to earn thing always reminds me of when I tried to get into writing as a job, the money was nice but it killed my drive to do it for fun for a long ass time. After that I realized that me working a factory job for 5 days a week worked better for me due to it making the time off doing my hobbies a lot more enjoyable. Some people can do it and I'm sure most can turn their hobbies and passions into a career but I'm not that kind of person.

[@Nyaxxy]

As someone who has financialised their hobby of creating art, I can definitely relate to all the topics brought up in the middle of this video. I find myself battling internally between drawing things I want that isn't optimal, and drawing things immediately that are clearly popular and trending. And when I do either of them, I feel conflicted either way. Also the same goes for the monetisation of content. I have noticed that certain types of content i create attract much more financial support than others, so I feel like I am obliged to create that kind of art to maintain growth and my livelyhood. Nothing feels worse than seeing your monthly income drop because you stop creating content for the algorithm and you start creating for yourself.

Do the most money that you can now, so you can do what you want later. I'm a musician, learning to swallow my pride and "artistic integrity" and on the way to make some bucks. I'd rather play music that I don't like than no music at all

[@uhurunuru6609]

Well split your time appropriately, set aside a number of hours for paid projects, ideally commission based which is how most artists actually earn all their money. Work done, for the day you can concentrate on doing what you find fun, without self imposed guilt. Money is but a means to some end goal, but it should never be the end goal. What I always found disingenuous was the idea that NFTs benefited digital artists, when in reality it's about creating a second hand digital art market, which benefits very few artists. The true reason NFTs exist, is to stop Crypto Bros hoarding (hodling) crypto, because the big money investors earn profit from those transaction fees. NFT greed got the fees moving.

[@ootdega]

Wait...I recognize you. You're that guy who does all the Holo stuff. Well met, fellow degenerate. I hope you can let yourself be happy once in a while.

[@Nyaxxy]

@@ootdega haha yea that's me! I try to keep a balance so that I stay happy with what I'm working on

[@professionalpauper8890]

I really want Josh to cover Entropia Universe if he hasn't yet. Longest running real currency MMO in existence. The multiverse has been here for 20 years already.

[@Nerobyrne]

hmm, this does look interesting. I'd love to see him cover it, if it's been around this long they must be doing something right.

[@dogearflopper7011]

12:42 The fact that you can manufacture community members, bots, to authenticate transactions via vote is wild to me. It's like gerrymandering on steroids.

[@Tak3034]

Gotta love how this video is talking about how NFT’s is dangerous or ruining how we see games. And then I got hit with an ad about NFT for some game. I see your game KZbin.

[@JoelElRican]

Literally got a "play to earn game" ad before watching this video...

[@mistandfog5442]

Mostly agreed with a lot of points, excellently brought across; in fact the only major disagreement I have is that the Halo tv show could be even remotely good. It fails as an adaptation, and even with the argument of games vs movie medium, you can look at the first silent hill film that although did not accurately portray the story beats of any particular silent hill game, still told a story worthy of the silent hill franchise due to how respectful they were of the source material. The Halo producers did not treat Halo with much, it at all, and strikes me more as you said, "we have IPs, what's popular?" The writers and even the made it a boasting g point in an interview that "we did not play the games." And it shows. Story and writing? Atrocious -- mimi guns that fail to hurt elites until master cheif pick them up? The girl at the end refusing to help account how her entire town was wiped out by elites because "I am not helping you with propaganda" which is simply stupid. Finally, and SPOILERS... The covenant are taking orders from a Human that wants to genocide her species. Again, solid talking points outside of saying the new Halo show has any merit whatsoever; I personally find the show artistically void, poorly written, and vomited out at the cost of $10 MILLION per episode-- and another atrocity in a time where sonic the hedge is the best game adaptation we've had. As for the rest, I find that play to earn would require people work and for their to be people who want to buy, and there would be the whole legality of making in game stuff acceptable assets that can be securely traded without taking a countries economy.

[@JimmerzzOfficial]

Yea you could even see it in Josh's face. He wanted to move on from that point as fast as he could because it was not a good one.

[@weirdo3116]

yeah it seems like he has these takes every once in a while. I think it was the same with Elden Ring.

[@VerhoevenSimon]

A superb collaboration with Callum. Thank you for the thorough chat. I have never been too keen on play to earn games, it just quits feeling like a game, and starts feeling like a job to me.

[@206Zelda]

If a game focuses on grabbing revinue due to how desirable their 'rare items' are, then the Law of Supply and Demand dictates that game may not make much for long on either side of the spectrum, whether only a few players play a long time or a ton of players play briefly. True, they could make a killing off of you for years, but it can't last as long as it could if it was structured around low-pay 'useless fun' or full accessibility for a minor recurring fee. Whoever is designing Pay-To-Earn is out of touch with reality and can't see past their nose, but above all, does not have common sense with spending. Their target audience is the weak-willed, right up there with NFTs. Be very cautious if you give games like these a chance, because they were made by psychologists targeting your wallet and not by gamers who love to create.

[@anthonystrickland7049]

When I hear play to earn, it's always advocated by the same folks that hold up the concept of "modern mmo" as a justification for poor mmo design choices.

[@mcclawrinaldi7451]

Great conversation guys. I feel like the “Art vs Science” in making entertainment needs its own seperate video? Your observations helped explain to me why some things I watch seem great and other things, that I think I should enjoy, seem hollow. Keep up the great “work”

[@KawaiiSemeKiller]

As a person who likes to do artsy fartsy stuff as a hobby, I’ve seen what monetising hobbies does. It always ends in the hobby not being fun or relaxing as it used to. It also normally leads to burn out. I’m /constantly/ asked why I don’t monetise my clothes modification or my hand embroidery. I’ve got a lot of reasons why. A main one is watching friends and great artists burn out because they pushed themselves too hard and the hobby no longer being fun. It happens with KZbinrs who only play one game all the time. It’s obvious that hustle culture and the state of economies are root causes. ((Also the lack of value most people have for art)) But too many people are either - not hurting from it so they don’t care, too proud to admit that hustle culture is toxic, benefiting from these things so why would they admit any fault or a mix or even stuff I’ve missed. Anyway, sorry for the rant. I’m just glad y’all are talking about this.

[@pholkhero2145]

The whole play-to-earn scheme seems to be linked to the rise of both fantasy sports (why just watch when I can earn?) and "hustle" culture. Great vid guys!

[@bloodbarage]

Im glad people watch these guys. I’ve been saying this stuff for 4 years and to hear people with a wide reach say it makes me happy.

[@humbertoquadros9384]

At this point, i need the whole stream please

[@rolfs2165]

I appreciate Josh for not swapping out the thumbnails and titles on his videos to see which one gets more clicks. I feel like channels who do that have absolutely awful start-abort rates. Because I often go "huh, haven't seen that one yet" and click on the video, only to realise within the first minute that I _have_ seen it.

[@NaudVanDalen]

21:45 It's the same for regular RPGs like Pokemon. I had more fun playing it as a child and not caring about stats than now, when I can't stop thinking about getting the best nature and IVs and training in a specific way to get the best EVs and even researching the whole game to make sure I pick the best Pokemon for my team that I just don't play the games anymore. Ignorance is bliss. Same with the stock market and cryptocurrencies. I wish I never learned about those things because now I have to choose between risking all my money or missing out on money.

[@TheJacob232]

dude, your green dragon runescape example is what we did right out of highschool when OSRS dropped

[@Crystan]

Loving these longer clips, and some really good points were raised not only in the video, but in the comments as well. *insert 'proud of this community' meme here*

[@jordanread5829]

I also like how the plot of the first pirates film is simple yet engaging. The antagonists basically want their humanity back. They are evil people but they just want to feel human again. They went after Elizabeth because she had the medallion they needed. However since their pirates, she thinks they are after her because of her wealth and status. She catches on that it is the medallion they are after but makes the mistake of still suspecting they might use her for ransom. So she lies about her name. Using Wills surname instead. Not knowing that they are also after Bill Turners child. As they need his blood to complete the breaking of the curse. Hell, when they get there, they only do a cut along Elizabeth's hand. It is subverting expectations done right. The characters feel real. I also feel having Jack being a secondary character worked best as well. Making him the focus of the sequels was the wrong move.

[@bangla996]

josh, you should have this conversation with someone within the blockchain gaming space. it would be interesting to hear their perspective and how they would justify it. the current state of gaming youtubers just bashing nft gaming has pretty much turned into an echo chamber at this point

[@pkscarr]

when you 2 were talking about the burnout and feeling of "wasted time when just playing a game", that was exactly the issue i ran into when I was working as part of team developing games as a subcontrator. At first I was like, oh, this is brilliant, i get paid to turn my old hobby of modding games into creating games! fantastic! what could be better! fast forwards 5 months, and I had lost all motivation to come home after work and actually play a game to relax. and anytime i did, I felt like I should be taking notes on what worked and what didn't, could i do something similar, etc. All my modding projects also had to be put on hold because i simply wasn't enjoying doing it anymore. A couple of years later, I left the industry to work in another IT field and as soon as i finished my last day, I came home, booted up a game and had more fun than i'd had in years because that mindset had vanished and suddenly I was playing that game to unwind again and not thinking "ok, how have they implemented system x or y, how is it balanced, what can I learn from it, would it work when applied to game z". Anytime your hobby becomes your job, the enjoyment will suffer.

[@TalkingRaven_]

I once earned while playing Warframe. Grinded some relics to sell off prime warframes for platinum (premium currency) then sold it to IRL friends.

[@carinadominguez22]

Wow. Was the money worth how much time time you spent on it?

[@TalkingRaven_]

@@carinadominguez22 If talking about it as a typical job then no. Though I enjoyed the game enough for the money to be a side objective for me rather than the main.

[@carinadominguez22]

@@TalkingRaven_ That's good. Like John said, once you introduce money into a hobby, it just turns into another job.

[@carinadominguez22]

@NA H What you typed out makes no sense.

[@finalfantasy50]

earning relics doesnt take that long, you can earn one every 5 minutes or quicker and then sell them on the trading website for easy and reliable premium currency, easily the most friendly game to earn premium currency as a free to play gamer

[@lizzfrmhon]

Love how you guys have banded together for good causes. Kudos. I watch Callum now because of Josh. Thanks guys.

[@trotskyeraumpicareta4178]

About the Star Wars films, I believe the 8th episode was leaning more towards art than science, at least compared to the others. Ironically, they dedicated the 9th episode to basically retconning most of the things established by the 8th and it just finished the ruining of both movies. Anyways, if you wanna see movies that are more art than science, the safest way of doing it is watching stuff that are not made in Hollywood, since it's like a lab today. Seeing things from other places, other countries, and so on will open your eyes for the possibilities of Cinema.

[@TirOrah]

Agreed. If you ask me, The Last Jedi (warts and all) was wasted on the rest of that trilogy, and really, the same can be said vice versa. They don't fit together and their ideas should've been kept separate.

[@VASM160689]

You guys talk here about something really important right now. Companies are now banking on the KZbinr and Streamer craze and telling the future gamers that it's "better" to earn money while playing your favorite games and that is why companies like SE are investing in the NFTgaming thing. Because we have so many mod teams and people creating custom content, that they think people actively want to get money with that and they want to be the providers of that opportunity. They see pontential and they want to monetize it. But what they fail to understand (and what the future generations will also fail to grasp and then get burned out) is that most people do mods or do custom content not because they want to earn money with it, but because they need a creative outlet, they just want to create something with their favorite games. It's not the profit they're after, it's the enjoyment of creating something. Although we who are adults right now can understand this, the kids watching streamers and youtubers will not have the understanding needed to separate both, because they are spoon fed with certain content that makes it a certainty in their heads that this kind of career is "an obvious choice". That's why FIFA and lootboxes keep being used and that's why NFTgaming will be a thing in the future, albeit possibly a niche thing. But it will be around and there will be a player base that interacts with those. Honestly, the min-maxing of real life is being a problem nowadays, because it is alienating people from the true meaning of doing things. It is driving people away from emotions and connection and focusing them in the marketing/monetising of things, the success loop, the recognition trap. Play the algorythm, the true end-game of life. This is why I also fear the Metaverse and anything related to Meta's objectives, because it feels so... dystopic. Now I'm off to grab my gardening utensils and help my mom digging and preparing for planting. Down to earth, one could say. And I take more enjoyment from that now, than I do for videogames. There was a time where the opposite was true, believe it or not. Not now though.

[@JonatasAdoM]

Play to earn already exists. It's called work. People that make money on MMOs are not playing, they're working inside the game.

[@Tinyflower1]

24:00 the problem with board members in most companies making the decisions is, they are usually detached from the actual production process, so they have no idea if what they decide makes sense. It's better if such a board is made up of the actual workers (like in a co-op) as they actually know what they are talking about. While a board of directors in a standard company are usually just investors who want to increase their return on investment and don't care about the product as long as it increases their return on investment

[@cryslacks7608]

Why does this have the tag #shorts, it's 33min :')

[@sinom]

Cause it's a smaller portion of a giant stream so it's a clip and they put #shorts on all of the clip videos

[@TouruZen]

I had someone who got into Diablo 3 because of the real money auction house and they tried to make money off of it. After they closed the real money auction house a year later they said "I miss Diablo 3 ..." and I just stared at them and said "You can still play Diablo 3 ... the game is still there. there just isn't any real money auction house" to which they responded "but what is the point." and that is something I think about often still.

[@someinternetuser1131]

Decent analysis of the runescape farming. However, I didn't hear you consider this side of it. The amount the farmer in Venezuela gets paid for each bomb crafted, is DEFINITELY 100% not the money it is sold for. If I had to guess, it is very likely it's about 10% of that. If not, 2%. etc. Although, the video game farming business is probably not nearly as brutal as say.... a certain illegal leaf farming business over there, I'm sure there are still tycoons. And I am sure that the people there can't just up n start their own "new" farming/RMT trading business just because they don't like the % cut their current one is giving them. Edit: However, I still think you guys prob right about farming being more than minimum wage etc. Just.... but a smaller margin.

[@gwillis01]

What ever happened to the old idea that sometimes you merely want to have fun? Whatever happened to the idea of relaxing? I can't believe there are those who don't want to have fun.

[@RothenX]

As a Venezuelan currently not living there (left a few years ago to live like a decent person) can confirm that for years ppl used to maintain their families with just farming in runescape and even with wow tokens (if you pass the monthly sub fee) runescape is more suitable because has lower graphic requeriments... over there ppl still game on core 2 duo, that's the power of communism, they wanted to make everyone equal. so everyone became equally poor.

[@ElBarto-ft1qe]

As a Brazilian I feel bad for the Venezuelans, but it's crazy that even knowing what is happening on Venezuela, there's still a LOT of Brazilians that want communism here, you need to be extremely brainwashed to not notice the mistake that is this system.

[@Roboshi2007]

the important distinction between gambling and trading cards is simple, the fact that the card companies are not running the secondary market. Once the house determines the value they are a casino. When you buy a trading card, you will always have that card until you sell, lose or destroy it. In a casino or a lotto, you don't get to own anything except the possible pay out. the most you get to own is a slip of paper (which becomes worthless if you lose) or a casino chip (which are just IUOs for cash). You may say that a trading card is a random gamble on the true value of an item, but then buying livestock would be called gambling as you have no idea how much value that animal will have in the future, if you buy a painting you may be gambling on the artist dying and spiking the value. You may also think this is a silly comparison, but then the laws have to cover every purchase you can make, from buying a pack of gum to a cow to a house. Fun fact; if you've ever seen or heard a phone in quiz that's so easy it seems ridiculous, that's because they're disguising gambling as a "test or skill or knowledge" which are not regulated under gambling laws in most countries. Claw machines do this too as they pretend there is skill when the claws are designed to lose grip most of the time and only "pay out" once enough money has gone in.

[@NekoNekonoTabiTabi]

I played axie infinity before and stopped by like a month or so. Damn that game wasn't really fun to play and totally affected my studies. Got burned out on school since I got introduced to it. I predicted at some point axie's Currency SLP should I say would go down and determine it being worthless after couple of months. I was scolded by my father because of this but no I ain't touching another play to earn game. Fuck that shit

[@SoyChrisDarker]

Venezuelan here... Not millionare, current monthly salary is 4$ (yeap... just 4 bucks) we can earn 4$ normally, Im a artist, and earn 900$ a month editing videos, and making art for youtubers, Im not a millionare, the real problem comes when you purchase food, Redbull? 25$ a single can, Flour? 55$ each 1kg... is a weird situation. i move now to Chile, much better but not the best, and still send money to my family while i save money to bring them with me. Venezuela is hell, to resume the living there, took me 11 years to move out there working non stop every single day to move away.

[@PokeMaster22222]

26:13 It's a shame that LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga had to include the "sequel" trilogy, when those films just had no heart, had barely any true connecting threads, and were all mired in controversy for more reasons (such as Mary Sue feminism, and bringing back characters who should've stayed dead, and ruining other characters' characterisation). That game would've been a classic, had it been able to leave the newer garbage out.

[@wireshock4633]

I don't think they would have had a choice. Disney likely would not have allowed it.

[@PokeMaster22222]

@@wireshock4633 Unfortunately, that's almost certainly the truth; it's just shame Traveller's Tales HAD to include that junk. As a result, I kinda don't want to waste more money supporting that rubbish by buying the game, and The Complete Saga still has relevance (it's still fun enough, even if it doesn't have the little details or VA).

[@zac-1]

Star wars hasn't had a good movie since return of the jedi its time to move on lmao prequels were hot garbage and not any better than the Disney ones

[@MTweedC4]

Callum has such a sharp, fast grasping mind and very precise wording. On the point - straight to the point. Love that guy

[@mightyshilon]

Who is the idiot who plays an instrument and is not a professional musician or goes to the gym and is not a professional athlete?

[@fierypandaofdoom]

what

[@mightyshilon]

​@@fierypandaofdoom gotta do it for the money!

[@mrcaos999]

The Raid film also has a lot of this kind of fights, where you feel each hit was planed out, because of love for the martial arts.

[@Kasaaz]

Analytics eventually ruins everything in a capitalist society.

[@brucenatelee]

22:35 This explains why so many games are stuck trying to out-do each other on the same formula, but when something like Elden Ring comes out, all of a sudden developers get mad at the success, like it "broke the science." Games shouldn't be based on rules.

[@CrimWorld9]

Dropping shade on Camels. Camels are absolutely AMAZING animals, VASTLY more interesting and useful than Horses.

[@DB-ku7vu]

path of exile is a good example, when asked in an interview what kind of testing or metric they used to determine when the patch was ready, they replied " We dont use metrics, we play the game, and when it felt right we knew it was ready"

[@ItsShiggy]

16:00 The optimization of content for monetary gain is what has lead us to the constant deterioration of overall quality the past 2-3 years. Everyone is focused on making the most amount of money with as little effort as possible instead of ensuring the quality of the content and letting the money flow naturally. I would also go further and say this is the same "min/max efficiency over everything" mindset that has infected gaming. No one likes to "sit back and enjoy the ride" anymore. If people don't get the instant gratification they were looking for, they simply go to another game to find it causing game developers to lean into this mindset more and more.

[@vizthex]

and adding onto his bit about the fight scene, the sword fight in The Princess Bride is another good one like that. they basically talk for like 70% of the battle, but it's great because of that.

[@pablojosecrespogomez949]

Hi Josh, Venezuelan here, I have been following your content for a couple of months, love what you do, I just wanted to thank you for mentioning the critical economy of many countries in South America, Venezuela being among the worst cases. A friend of mine was living out of Runescape gold, but decided to jump to WoW since Runescape was getting flooded and was not viable for him anymore.

[@DimitriosGACCA]

its so refreshing to see actual people from the gaming community to speak about things that are actually interesting (finance person here)! i was at about to give up as many people just talk for the shake of talking and content! Love this type of content, keep it up guys!

[@allesarfint]

Love how all the ads I got in this video were either Buff or crypto schemes.

[@shytendeakatamanoir9740]

For the last part, another good example is the Super Robot Wars franchise. It can't work without any passion for Mecha shows, old and new. Most of my Mecha show knowledge comes from playing a game and picking a few shows to watch afterwards. (The fact it's thanks to fan translations works they realized there was a market outside of Asia is also a plus). It's visually incoherent, and a giant fanfiction. But you will come back for more, because someone cared.

[@abcdexe]

So happy to hear you mention that bus scene Nobody, I've rewatched it so many times on KZbin after the film. It's just an absolute masterpiece of a fight scene.

[@TheOrian34]

It goes so well with doom music.

[@dimwarlock]

About that last talk of passion over science: I'm just watching a walkthrough of this game "Northern Journey", it looks like an early PS2 game and it looks like an Skyrim clone at a glance, it is a little janky, unbalanced and really really weird with obscure nord legends... but it is it's own game, it has it's own voice, this absolute fever dream of a game it's a better than most AAA games I've played in the last 5 years.

[@YawaruSan]

Uh, something about those gold farmers, turns out a lot of that gold in a bunch of popular MMOs were hacked with packet injection, that gold was sold to the Chinese to resell to buyers, in addition to gold farmers.

[@vincentrao3466]

Just making a point here. RuneScape gold is not a cryptocurrency. It is just a currency in a game

[@jakedizzle]

Rarity of digital goods. I can’t believe that’s a thing. I miss the days of old expansion packs where you got a new campaign, new multiplayer levels, new weapons, new skins etc.

[@KatoCoyoteCombatWorkshop]

This is edited really well. Well done, thank you for making it so punchy and minimizing hang time

[@tempestindustries9446]

Ironically when u were talking about how u need to look at the analytics, I think the reason you are so successful and why we love your content is because we can legit tell that you are enjoying making this content. If there's a video that isn't as interesting as some its okay! It doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things because the people who watch, watch for you not just for the topics. There are so many channels I'm subbed to that I can't even count let alone name just because we get an itch for that one random niche game that is cool and all and find some random guy on youtube who talks about it and then forget about them because the channel itself wasn't interesting and the person was just doing it for youtube money or clout. I love this channel and you have my absolute respect (sorry for rambling haha)

[@gwillis01]

I do not like video game publishers saying that fun is not important. That seems disgusting and weird to me. I want to take a break from earning money in the evening.

[@KazeMemaryu]

I love your input on how games changed in the way they're created. It's kind of what people online tend to boil down with the oversimplified "soul vs soulless" narrative, often comparing to games of the same sereis/franchise to portray how much it has changed, and generally argue that said change was for the worse. These kinds of arguments are often vague and thus devolve into petty back-and-forth, but even to the less savvy people, the corporatizing of entertainment has become noticeable enough to warrant these kinds of arguments. Big companies are only going to push further and further to monetize everything the player could possibly do. And they have the backing of enough IP's to ignore the backlash and just power through until players begrudgingly accept this new state, and then push the next thing. That's how Day 1 DLC and microtransactions have become a sad reality, and gachas are slowly creeping into the (global) mainstream right now. Next on the list is advertisment pop-ups in full price titles, then play-to-earn systems.

[@CJFloyd90]

As someone who has been trying to make content for the past year, I totally get that feeling of time wasted when I'm playing a game. It's always in the back of my mind, "You should be working on content, not playing this game." This really feeds into a burnout mindset.

[@gwillis01]

If you are trying to earn a currency, that is called work in my opinion. People usually play video games to escape from the 9 to 5 grind.

[@LEWIS1992]

Great video, interesting to listen to, but the 1st link in the description doesn't work.

[@1Apep1]

No full-time content creator can tell me that they enjoy every single bit of what they do and are always fully motivated to do it, whether it is organizing coops with other creators, discussing sponsorship conditions, editing stuff, instructing moderators and artists, analysing interaction statistics or whatever else is going on behind the scenes. And everyone will at times make trade-offs between what they enjoy doing and what is optimal for their income. But that is not unique for content creation or even arts in general. When people decide on a career to pursue, very few only look at the income prospects, but most also consider what they expect to be at least somewhat enjoyable. There are many stories of people switching to a less profitable job to get a better work-life balance. I think it is healthy to be aware of these trade-offs and make them consciously. It certainly is a luxury to be able to do that a lot, but not the kind of luxury of a gold-plated sports car but more the kind of luxury that is buying high quality food and living in a neighborhood where you don't get mugged a lot.

[@TheFinagle]

The HUGE question you need to ask is about Play to Earn is : *Where does that money COME from?* If you can take that money out (convert to USD) then that money has to go INTO the system somewhere and the company that made that game only did it to profit off it so they will NOT be the ones paying you. If you cant take the money out in USD then its not PtE at all.

[@Raziel2404]

The thing about gaming is that there will always be mainstream games that come along, and niches that pop-up now and again. People can talk about "science" of game making - cutting corners, making templates, re-using assets, but what is that without placing the passion into it? What hammers the final nail into the metaphorical coffin is the actual trend at the time. Trends are a social product of the time - or era, but also the opposite can be said in terms of nostalgia, bringing back an emotional feeling from times that have passed. The memories, the sensation of what it felt like to be in that era. Memories can be a very powerful tool in different ways. It may be unfair to use numbers when it comes to online players in gaming, but when it comes to multiplayer, that may be useful given new players to a particular game that has multiplayer implemented. Number of players for "Internet-required" games catered for the single player experience? A COMPLETE WASTE! As long as servers are still active, why bother with such BS? You're playing a SP game, all the data required should be downloaded / assembled on the medium of the publisher's choice, not half-assing it with internet accessibility.

[@jorgemotta8290]

Runescape is 21 years old and the gold still are worth more than some countries jobs. Kinda crazy to think about.

[@okamichamploo]

even outside of actual monetary value. I think I've noticed a trend in the way people talk about MMOs lately in that the focus is often put on how much XP, or what rare drops you can get from X activity, rather than looking at the activity as a source of fun, but only a means to an end.

[@SeiphersZone]

Josh brought up a point that a lot of people struggle with, and that is separating his personal enjoyment from his work, but it is important to be able to draw that line where when your career does not eat into your own personal fun and knowing you do not have to share everything you do.