What is 100% dystopic on allowing a 2nd hand market of digital items? NFTs are only a secure certificate of ownership of digital items that doesn't depend on the people who made them.
This means that can be sold from a player to another player using 3rd party stores not controlled by those who made the items, but following rules made by the ones who made them like tracking previous ownership of these items (so you can prove it did belong to some celebrity) or giving a percent of transactions for selling them to the item creators.
Beyond that it doesn't imply anything else. It's like collecting games, dlcs, cards or whatever. But in this case digital. Everything else it's up to the implementation of each case.
They could be used to sell 2nd hand digital games or dlc, or to allow players from games like Dreams or Minecraft sell their creations. Or to sell in-game items or loot you got in-game and won't use anymore. And just in case these game servers die/get shut down, since the ownership of these things isn't on their game servers if later someone else like the devs or some fans revive the game in the future items could be used there.
In fact, NFTs don't even imply you have to buy these items with money, but can be given to you for free (by unlocking them or whatever). And also don't imply they can be sold. They can be simply virtual items whose ownership is certified by -in theory- unhackable blockchain that since it's P2P in theory would never be shut down as long as there is a single person supporting it.
There's nothing wrong with it.
P.S.: In this particular case we know that the digital collectibles that Sony is working on is PlayStation Stars, which aren't nfts, even if they are digital collectibles. And as far as we know you won't be able to buy or sell them.
I think the big issue with NFTs in terms of gamers accepting them, is that practically EVERY mention of them we've seen from actual companies and businesses wanting to push them, have had the greediest reasons for wanting to do them. Every example of NFTs I've seen thus far has been horribly egregious in terms of the rather ripoff pricing associated with them, combined with the relative (lack of) quality of some of the NFT items I've seen (like the horrible "virtual drawing" NFTs various celebs have made).
No one's really presented a sensible NFT product yet that doesn't stink of greed or restrictions for the consumer. And while Sony might be able to come up with uses for NFTs that are much better than most, the BS they've been doing with GT7's premium cars (in terms of their MTX pricing) doesn't inspire too much confidence on that front, so understandably gamers are worried.
Sure, NFTs as a technology can be used for good, but it's up to companies to actually do that by
showing that good use, before customers start accepting them in their products. And that's 100% fair IMO.
That is something I want Sony looking into...
With NFT we can finally transfer ownership from digital products and that allow it to works just like physical items... you can lend, trade, or just gift a digital game for another user in the same network.
And I agree with I can't understand why some people hates NFTs... it is a tool... who use it to explore consumer should be hated... not the tool.
NFTs come to fix a lot of issues we have in digital ownership today.
Sony can use NFT in digital ownership of their products allowing trade, lend, gift, etc...
Sony can use NFT in digital collection... allowing trade, lend, gift, etc...
Sony can use NFT in rewards... here they can block trade, lend, gift, etc.
Sony can use NFT in trophies... again blocking trade, lend, gift, etc.
There are a lot of possibilities.
Those are neat uses, but like
@IntentionalPun said I don't know if you actually need NFTs for any of those features. Maybe some underlying aspect of the technology, but at this point it might be better to just take that specific technology which would be useful for enabling those features, spin it out, and rebrand is something not NFTs.
Because truth is NFTs have an extremely bad rap with hardcore/core gamers and it's probably too alien a concept for casuals to wrap their head around yet, much less accept considering the costs associated.
You sound like the typical case of people who hates something only because it's new and different even if doesn't understand or know that new thing. For the main reason of being afraid of seeing the current stuff replaced with that new one. I saw it many times before with:
- 8/16 bit computers users and arcade players hating 8/16 bit consoles
- Arcade players hating 16 and 32 bit consoles
- 2D players hating 3D visuals during 32 gen
- Dpad players hating dual analog controls
- Cartridge players hating disks
- Physical game players hating digital games
- Console players used to have only big publishers hating indie games
- Hardcore players hating casual games
- Local multiplayer players hating online multiplayer
- Hardcore players using traditional controls hating motion based controls
- Gamers used to games without DLC hating DLC
- Gamers used to games without DLC hating MTX
- Gamers used to games without DLC hating
- Gamers used to games without DLC hating season passes
- Gamers used to games without DLC hating free game updates, unlockables and free DLC
- Gamers used to games without DLC hating GaaS
- Gamers used to paid games hating F2P
- Console and PC gamers hating mobile game
Some of these didn't see as much pushback as it may seem. I don't remember people on dpads "hating" analog sticks, for starters because they weren't forced on people and most games (at least on PS1 & Saturn) didn't support them. But also, Super Mario 64 was HUGE right at launch and the N64 had very strong adoption rates in the West, both that game and the console were built around analog controls.
Same way, I don't remember a lot of people hating the switch to discs becoming mainstream. Cartridge games were getting more and more expensive, and storage space wasn't increasing in line with the increase in costs. Systems like the 3DO failed because of reasons aside of supporting discs, because the PS1 did very strong right out of the gate and was a disc-based system at its core.
I wouldn't even be sure arcade gamers hated 16-bit or 32-bit consoles because most people who went to arcades were console gamers anyway, and for certain games if you wanted the absolute best version, you still needed an arcade even towards the end of PS1/N64/Saturn era.
I agree on some of the other things though; thing is, they became acceptable because over time enough examples of beneficial, good usage came from various games and gamers chose to eventually be okay with them because of that. NFT acceptance is, understandably, much further behind and will take some years before it's accepted (IF it's accepted), and that will depend on devs/pubs actually utilizing the technology in ways beneficial to gamers, fair to gamers, and doing so over a long period of time.
All these things hated in forums so loudly by 'hardcore' 'real' gamers became mainstream and ended accepted by mostly everyone and didn't replace the thing that was feared to be replaced with the exception of arcades, which are almost extinct. The next ones to be added to the list are, which are on track of becoming mainstream:
- Gamers used to buy games hating game subscriptions
- Gamers used to play locally hating cloud gaming
- Players used to play on tvs and monitors hating VR games
- Gamers used to paid games or F2P hating NFT and P2E
F2P is already more way popular than paid games both in number of players and revenue and is on a growing trend. And revenue from addons (DLC/MTX/season passes etc, mostly from F2P/GaaS) is also bigger than the one from buying games and is also in a growing trend. Subscripions to get games is also growing.
So the trend is that paid to buy games is almost going to dissapear even if there will be always paid games.
Which leads me to think 2nd hand for bought digital games won't exist because won't make sense since most games will be free. But the revenue will come from mostly for digital add-ons but will grow the one from player to player transactions (with the dev getting a portion of the transaction) for unlockable items, bought items or user generated items because companies will be interested on getting new revenue sources. The market trend is also going multiplatform and crossplay. And this is why they'll use NFTs (which btw are platform agnostic/crossplay).
I think players will adopt it because in the same way that people logically prefers to play for free over paying to play, players will also prefer to earn money for playing over not earning money for playing.
I don't know if the combination of F2P, aggressive MTX and NFTs are going to be a net benefit to gamers or the industry without some catastrophic consequences. You'd think the presence of NFTs would lead to a general curtailing of MTX pricing and practices (i.e will EVERY single simple color variant of an armor be its own NFT?), but we know publishers don't think like that.