RE: Drugwars - Introducing FUTURE the new DrugWars Token.

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RE: Drugwars - Introducing FUTURE the new DrugWars Token.

birchmark in #drugwars • 7 years ago (edited)

You make a point but, most games don't have money tied to them as returns for using microtransactions though. This game claimed drug production and the heist were connected to returns in steem. It is a game not an investment, but it's in a grey area.

If you buy a skin in Fortnite, you get a skin in Fortnite. They didn't say you would get money as well. This game basically did.

If you use a microtransaction in a mobile game (and there are quite a few with similar gameplay to drugwars) you get the sped up upgrade, or the upgrade without resources, or the ad less experience or whatever else the microtransaction would have been for and you are happy because you got what you paid for. If the game said some aspect of it would return a particular cryptocurrency and you didn't get it, you didn't get what you paid for.

I've only paid for one transaction in drugwars and didn't intent to again until I reached 5 steem earned, then 10, then 25, then 50, then 100 and every 100 since. I am nowhere near any of those but my one transaction has been "earned" again by now and I've made a tiny tiny profit. I'm interested to see where this game goes both in terms of changes to gameplay mechanics and changes in the whole system (which is what this is). I've made a miniscule profit rather than a loss, so I'm personally okay with this. But... people played this based on the value proposition of it, and the fact is if you were going to get money from buying a fortnite skin, you are probably more likely to buy the skin than if you didn't, so the value proposition of earning crypto from a game does make it different to microtransactions in games that don't claim you will earn cryptocurrency. I'm curious if this change will be part of drugwars actually improving a lot but I don't blame some people for being pissed off.

Some people were more ambitious with this and put lots of investment into it. The game said they would get steem based on drug production and heist. The microtransaction itself was for a particular thing, like an upgraded alcohol production, but many people were upgrading alcohol production for example, in order to have the resources to increase drug production, which from the basic premise of the game, had a return in steem.

I believe they should continue paying heist, production and referral via steem until the steem is gone and then switch to the tokens, rather than using the steem to inflate the value of the new coin. This way all of the steem goes to players in steem form. I think they should then give all players a starting amount of tokens moving forward with the new system and a proportional amount of tokens on top of the starting amount to those who invested based on what people invested (if they have that data). It won't have the same value as this is a new coin, but just work out a proportional amount for different levels of investment. This also supports the people who supported them. I don't think the people who invested more should get any in-game advantage, but they should get extra of the new currency as that is a situation appropriate equivalent of giving more in-game currency in a normal game to people lets playing your game or who were part of a kickstarter etc for your game (except it is real, but not yet valuable currency). Giving away a bit might slow the coins value growth but it is appropriate to start people off on appropriate amounts.

It's not stealing but it makes the original conditions of the game change which could have mislead people's behaviours. The people behind no mans sky also weren't stealing and forcing people to buy their game but that misleading situation still affected people's choices and therefore wasn't good.

I actually think it will be interesting to see where this goes, but buying upgrades that lead to an end goal of earning steem isn't the same as buying upgrades in games that promised no currency / return. It's not an investment, but it is tied to money, and that means while this isn't stealing, it isn't on the same level as other microtransactions. I'm excited to see where drugwars goes and how it develops over time, and who knows - while it rightfully pisses people off now, it might be the best thing they do with this game based on what follows - but I do not blame people for being pissed off about this and I can't agree that normal microtransactions are comparable to this due to the fact this game is tied to a return and most games aren't. Hopefully they will make good business decisions from this point forward and the token will gain a worth similar to or exceeding steem and therefore, people aren't worse off, but a general principle that affected people's choices in terms of whether to engage with the microtransactions has changed regardless.

I don't agree that it is a scam or fraud as some have said. I think it is more that they changed their plans with it and hope this will work better in the long run, but THEY MUST pay the steem out first if they don't want to look like a scam. It's the right thing to do by the users.

They definitely should be leaving the pay out as steem (or both with the new one being "extra") until it all dries up either way rather than using it to inflate the coins, as users put that steem in and therefore it should be distributed to users as steem. That point is a given and should definitely be what they do at least.

7 years ago in #drugwars by birchmark

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dana-edwards 7 years ago

Steem is also a game not an investment. If you buy Steem thinking it's a security you could lose your money too. If you post on Steem assuming you will get money you could be wrong. There is uncertainty in all of this.

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birchmark 7 years ago

Cryptocurrencies generally are considered an investment in the financial world though. The two things they are generally classed as are investments or a form of currency (in reality they are both but some people will class them as only one or the other). They certainly aren't a game though. Investing in them is uncertain so you could say investing in them is a "gamble" but something being uncertain / being a "gamble" is not the same as it being a game and cryptocurrencies do not meet the basic definition of a game.

You can also lose money on securities. Cryptocurrencies are a high risk, potentially high reward investment and investing in anything comes down to a risk-reward analysis, with term deposits and government bonds etc being low risk, real estate being about medium risk and shares and cryptocurrencies being regarded as high risk investments (cryptocurrencies more-so than shares but both are high risk investments). Higher risk investments have a higher risk of losing money but also typically have higher potential returns. That's where risk / reward analysis comes in, as well as whether an investor is risk-averse etc.

Posting on steem also doesn't have the risk that buying steem does. You are potentially wasting time there, not wasting money directly like you would if you spent money on steem and the value of steem falls.

It can be debatable if cryptocurrencies are investments or not (though the general concensus seems to be that they are an investment, albeit a high risk one), but they aren't a game. Being uncertain does not mean it is a game.

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dana-edwards 7 years ago

Cryptocurrencies generally are considered an investment in the financial world though. The two things they are generally classed as are investments or a form of currency (in reality they are both but some people will class them as only one or the other). They certainly aren't a game though. Investing in them is uncertain so you could say investing in them is a "gamble" but something being uncertain / being a "gamble" is not the same as it being a game and cryptocurrencies do not meet the basic definition of a game.

A college degree is considered an investment too. Does this mean we should have the right to sue all colleges who put us deep into debt via college loans etc? After all, we could make the claim of false advertising, scam, etc, just as some people say about the gaming business.

My point is, yes you can go with that angle but to be lawsuit happy only brings greater lawsuit risk for all parties. Lawyers benefit of course when everyone is suing everyone but the industry suffers because innovation becomes much more costly.

I'm going to say I agree that from an ethical point of view perhaps the DrugWars team messed up. They did not consider the impact their decisions could have on the sentiment of their customers/players. Player sentiment in my opinion should come before all.

If they can find a way to profit in a way where the players share in the success as stakeholders then I'd be okay with it. Drugwars in my opinion should also become an SMT and support the Steem ecosystem but the exact economics in my opinion need to be negotiated with the community. The team needs to understand that a loyal fanbase can allow future games to inherit the same players (player loyalty) in the same way Blizzard for example did with World of Warcraft from the Starcraft, Diablo and other fanbases.

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birchmark 7 years ago (edited)

"A college degree is considered an investment too. "

Not in the way I'm talking. I'm talking about financial investments - shares, term deposits, bonds, rental properties, government bonds etc. A university degree does not fit into that description, but yes, it is an investment in yourself, but not a financial investment. It would have been ridiculous in the financial planning courses etc I did at university if we learned about those sorts of investments, because investing in financial investments is a completely different thing to investing in yourself via education etc.

But I never went with the angle of lawsuits or calling drugwars a scam. I said I don't agree with the people calling it a scam etc and I think it is just that they changed direction, but people's choices were still made based on the value proposition originally mentioned so that included the steem, not just the upgrade. All of this is truthful. I don't think it is a scam, and I think what they do from here might be what actually improves the game, but it doesn't change the fact people put money into it based on the value proposition offered. That's what the situation is. I don't think people should sue them or call them scammers, but I do think both morally and for the sake of positive public relations they shouldn't pump their new coin with the steem spent as artificially doing that by buying it themselves doesn't often work so people will lose out from them doing that, but they SHOULD continue paying out steem via drug wars until it is all gone. They've now given us future tokens but still seem to be paying steem so I think they may actually be doing it, and if they are doing it, I think that's the best thing they could have done.

I never went with the angle of suing them or calling them a scam but I did say they should respond correctly to changing the way the game works and the resulting backlash, and that I don't blame other people for being pissed off.

As for games, it was the other person who was making a point about it being a game anyway as though that absolved it of responsibility, but it doesn't. If it did, people wouldn't have been able to get refunds on No Mans Sky for their false advertising. It doesn't matter if steem is a game or not, as that doesn't change anything in this situation, but you'd be really stretching to say that it is / it does meet the definition of a game and most people wouldn't agree with someone who made that claim, regardless of if it was steem or bitcoin or whatever else. Risk and uncertainty doesn't make something a game either, or shares would be a game too as they are uncertain, risky and can drop too.

How someone invests could be gamified but that's them gamifying a task in their life. I gamify most of my life as it works well for me and my goals but that doesn't make the individual tasks at their essence a game. It gamifies my experience of doing that task.

As far as I can see we agree that player sentiment / positive public relations is important in this situation and they messed up ethically. I never said we should sue them and I talked about what they could do to not "look like" scammers etc. I think we actually agree on the main point here because I said nothing about suing them and actually said I don't agree with calling them a scam etc. We just disagree on whether cryptocurrencies at their root are games or not and whether cryptocurrencies are considered investments, and also we were using different definitions of the word investment as I was using the financial definition and you were using the broader definition that includes investing in yourself etc. We agree on the main point here, and I don't think anyone should be suing drugwars.

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dana-edwards 7 years ago

It can be debatable if cryptocurrencies are investments or not (though the general concensus seems to be that they are an investment, albeit a high risk one), but they aren't a game. Being uncertain does not mean it is a game.

No that isn't "general consensus" unless you can cite some poll data to support this claim. Show me sentiment which shows most people want cryptocurrencies to be treated as securities?

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birchmark 7 years ago (edited)

Okay, my bad, I should have worded that differently. It "seems" to be the general concensus in the financial world. I meant in terms of financial discussions, articles etc of cryptocurrencies.

I wasn't referring to what every Tom, Dick and Harry thinks of cryptocurrencies, because their opinions don't really matter for the purposes of this discussion. I was saying that when you read information on financial websites, tax office websites etc, most seem to consider it to be an investment (not necessarily only an investment but an investment still), so it is reasonable to believe that the financial world considers cryptocurrencies to be a potential investment. It's not necessarily regarded as a good investment as it is more risky than shares (which are otherwise considered the riskiest investment, and you can also lose money on them so the fact steem isn't certain doesn't mean anything because neither are shares - that reflects on how risky an investment is not whether it is an investment) but most see it is a digital asset and discuss it in the context of investing in it as an investment and in the context of it being used as a currency. The financial world seems to accept it as both an investment and a digital currency, and that makes sense because that's what it is.

I haven't gone and interviewed and polled people from finance but the general information expressed by the industry seems to suggest it is an investment and a digital currency, albeit a high risk one. I haven't gone and polled random people because that's not what I meant, I don't care what they think compared to the industry and a lot of people don't understand investing at all, let alone cryptocurrency.

But it definitely isn't a game. Cryptocurrencies can be used in games, like drugwars, but a cryptocurrency itself is not a game.

The air quotes around general consensus seem a bit unnecessarily hostile though. My reply was less about investments and more about the fact that a cryptocurrency isn't a game. Drugwars is, the cryptocurrency itself isn't. WOW is a game, the in-game currency isn't (it's interesting and has even been used for economic studies, but it isn't a game in its own right and neither is a proper cryptocurrency).

Whether it is an investment is debatable because it can be seen just as a currency or just as an investment, or most ideally both as it meets the definitions for both, but financial information generally seems to feel it fits the investment definition regardless of if they feel it is a good idea to invest in it or not, and if it is a choice between it being a game or being an investment, it is much closer to an investment than a game. You can gamify how you go about dealing with cryptocurrency (just like you can gamify washing dishes) but the cryptocurrency itself isn't a game in its own right. I don't really care if people class it as an investment or not, but it's not a game.

And also whether something is a game or not plays no role in what the drugwars devs should do either, because No Man's Sky was a game and only a game but their product did not match the advertising and that was enough to get people refunds so I don't really see how classing Steem as a game makes the actions the devs should take any different. In the case of drugwars, it was still a case of it said one thing, people put money in and then it changed. Steem being a game wouldn't change the fact their decision changed the value proposition that affected people spending money on the game. NMS is a game (and supposedly is finally actually being turned into what was promised) but the fact it didn't line up with the original marketing meant people spent money on it when they wouldn't have otherwise. The promise of steem in drugwars meant people spent money on it when they wouldn't have otherwise. It doesn't matter if these things are games or not. For the sake of good PR and morality, drugwars should pay out what is left in there first and I think they might be doing that by the looks of it, so if they are, that's a good decision on their part.

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mattjack 7 years ago

If you have a lot of steem power you get rewarded for voting as well or you can self vote which does give u a return so I don't agree with you saying steem isn't a investment

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dana-edwards 7 years ago

Is there a guarantee that your votes will be worth money? Or is it just an expectation?

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