I’d have but more swearing into the title, as this stuff makes me really angry, but you catch my drift.
Apparently another company I had supported went into doing these b*llshit n-f-t things, and, oh boy, the community is NOT happy that they jumped that derailing bandwagon barrelling right into the orphanage.
So, I really hope CoG never does that crap. Right now they are the only game company I honestly support.
Just to ask: what is n-f-t?
It’s a digital receipt for a bookmark to (usually) cheap or stolen images that requires the energy of norway to produce. It’s cr*ptocurrency nonsense, and overall a massive scam.
Basically you are paying thousands of dollars for a bookmark you have NO control over. aka it can just be deleted without you being able to do anything about it.
As said, it’s a massive, and very destructive scam.
edit: there are people that claim they support that crap to ‘support artists’, when that’s really just using artists as a ‘get out of jail free’-card. because the ‘artists’ they claim to support either don’t struggle (and are big companies) or stole the art.
Also you commonly need cr*ptocurrency to even buy that crap, meaning the only one getting real money is the bastard selling the currency and stuff.
So yeah, massive, destructive scam and definitely NOT a way to support artists.
We already HAVE a way to financially support digital artists, and it’s called “commissions”.
@Rinnegato Imagine you like the Mona Lisa. Like, REAAAALLLLLY like the Mona Lisa. You can go to a dude that doesn’t need to be in any way associated with the Mona Lisa, da Vinci, or the Louvre, hand them a boatload of cash, and in return they tear down a measurable amount of the Amazon, mulch the trees, and make a piece of paper saying “Rinnegato owns the Mona Lisa”. Then they hang that piece of paper in a broom closet. And that’s an NFT.
also it’s a broomcloset they can brick in to their licking while keeping your money, leaving you with nothing.
edit:
It’s really the weirdest part how unwilling those supporting n*ts are to simply commissioning artists. it’s as if the idea of being, y’know, polite, helpful and patient is asking too much of them.
Be right back, making a NFT of this thread…
don’t you dare, young man D<
Please. My laptop is five years old and has a replacement battery taped into it. If I tried to do anything crypto-adjacent it would explode like a Libyan demo truck in Red Alert 2.
I’m not sure I understand the rage. If someone is silly enough to pay crypto to be able to say they own a digital image or what not (regardless of whether I think the way they are spending that money is worthwhile), who am I to stand in their way to happinesss?
At best it’s similar to buying th rights to an image as you would traditionally, at worst it’s like having a digital trading card or certificate of ownership that doesn’t give you much except “bragging rights” that you own the “original” and the author of the work continues to produce “copies” to whomever they feel like 
. It’d be like COG selling a game to someone so they can say they have the “original file”, but then continuing to sell it as usual on the regular platforms so everyone else can own a copy. I kind of think the business practice is sorta weird if it doesn’t give you special rights over the work you’ve paid for, but whatever floats someone’s boat.
Your comparison couldn’t be further off, with all due respect. Please check the above description of what that crap is and then tell us again how that is in any way a-ok.
Actually, Meeps, fwiw, I’m very interested in getting into NFTs for COG.
Now, before you jump down my throat, let me give some context.
First, we would not do it on the Ethereum blockchain. Ethereum does, as you say, waste a lot of energy. Specifically, Ethereum uses 42 kWh per transaction, or about 2.3 gallons of gasoline. Instead, we would mint NFTs on the XRP ledger, where transactions cost .0079 kWh, or about 0.00063 gallons of gasoline per transaction.
Second, the reason that we’d do it is to try and generate recurring revenue from the art that we produce for our games. Right now, we pay the artist a one-time fee, and then it’s functionally dead. But like artists producing lithographs or prints, it would be nice if there could be a recurring revenue from the art.
What I’m imagining is that we’d auction off the NFT of the art, with the artist taking at least half of the proceeds. This would be a payment on top of what we’d already paid to commission the art. Secondly, in the smart contract governing the NFT we’d put a royalty function, so every time the NFT was resold, a portion of the resale transaction would again go to the artist (and some to us and some to the author).
In the case of the artists that this would be benefiting, getting them a second and/or third payment on art that they’d already done, sometimes years later, would not be nothing. Imagine me going back to the guy who did the cover for Heroes Rise: The Prodigy, 9 years later, and telling him that he’s about to get another check for that work?
Yes, you’d need cryptocurrency in order to participate. But if we did it right, it would not be destructive to the environment, and it would help make being an artist for us a more sustainable endeavor.
Lastly, I know that the XRPL doesn’t have its NFTs up and running yet, but I expect them to have it in the next six months or so. Also, this is not a statement that COG will to this, rather a statement that I want COG to do this.
Well, I had hoped you wouldn’t do this crap.
I guess I’ll be switching to twine as well then.
Let’s not jump to conclusions just yet. @jasonstevanhill’s reply is simply a statement of his opinions and it doesn’t immediately signify that COG will use NFTs, as he mentions above. He doesn’t have the final say on matters such as this, and his words should be interpreted as his words alone, and not as the words of COG as a whole.
There are a lot of people within the company, some who do support NFTs and cryptocurrency and those who do not. I trust that Choice of Games, an “egalitarian company” will listen to everyone–not just in employees in the company itself, but also its community–before pulling things off like this.
However, you are right and have every right to be concerned about things such as these and express these concerns as such. I, too, am against cryptocurrency and NFTs like you, and I also kind of hope that COG doesn’t resort to using them.
I’d rather they’d open a redbubble account or something
It’d rather have a physical tshirt of the Hero Unmasked art, for example, then a flipping NFT.
Heck, even funkopops are preferable here.
There is no way to participate in cryptocurrency without being needlessly destructive to the environment. None. Any support of cryptocurrency inherently promotes cryptocurrency as a whole, and cryptocurrency as a whole is absurdly detrimental to the environment.
I appreciate that you’d like to generate additional revenue for your artists, but this is absolutely not a good way to do it.
as said above, there’s redbubble and similar stores. And I dare say there’s more people out there who’d rather have something physical they bought for real money than nfts…
As an artist and graphic designer, there is significant anti-NFT sentiment in the art community. Not every artist would feel positively about a move like this. It would absolutely limit the pool of artists and authors willing to work with CoG in the future.
Thanks @MeltingPenguins for making this thread. I would never have guessed there was a need for it, but somehow you did!
To be perfectly honest, this is more about of the damage it cause to the environment in the world than a scam or the possibility of a bubble in the economy, just to put how serious it is and how much carbon dioxide and deposited into the atmosphere, a nft transaction equals to use a near 1/4 of 45kg of gasoline, between 30-40kg of the hazardous CO2, that’s insane, and they sell out as a more ecology-friendly than the normal cryptocurrency, which already has done a lot of damage at our whole ecosystem, and talking about it, the land globally are becoming progressively less efficient at absorbing the increasing levels of CO2 from the atmosphere in the lasts years.
This is really a gloomy view, it’s like hardly anyone care about it, not the nft, is just another big addition to a problem which is ignored or deliberated ignore just for money. It make me more disappointed and sad, rather than angry at this point. sigh
Ok point taken, I actually had no idea that Ethereum was that energy wasteful to generate nft. I’ve personally never quite seen the point of nfts myself, but if it could be done without requiring a whole lot of energy as sounds like is the deal with the current Ethereum model (and an alternative is what is being proposed here it seems), then it’s possible it may end up being be no worse for the environment than anything else people decide to collect. (For example if you collected wall prints of game art, you’d have to factor in energy and materials needed for development, printing (materials, power, machinery), packaging and postage. The average cotton T.shirt is actually terrible for the environment when you factor in how much power, water and land (not to mention waste from dyes, fertilisers, pesticides etc) is needed to create one. It’s one of the reason why I have a major issue with “fast fashion” but I guess we need to wear something, we can just try to be more careful about who we buy from and keep clothing for longer.)