Wonderful discussion - thanks all.
Thanks for the gambling clarifications, istar. I've looked at kickstarter, so thanks for the recommendation HostFat.
I agree with fornit that putting Bitcoin into a game would have to make sense to the game. In-game currency seems to be the go-to concept, but ultimately I don't think this is a wise business decision in the first place. Surely it would create buzz, but the legal aspects are daunting. I agree with markm's insights that if you wouldn't have your monsters/shops using USD, then there is no reason you'd want to integrate Bitcoin.
Thanks for your deapthful insights, markm. You have a keen sense of the community.
The WoW & EVE demographics mentioned by Serith are interesting. Maybe that age bracket would be much more inclined to "play with" Bitcoin, rather than younger demographics. However, as markm pointed out, there are already a number of "play money" gaming tokens out there. The smarter business model may be to integrate with one of those, rather than Bitcoin directly. If players have Bitcoin (which sounds like a rare thing), someday they can buy those tokens with their Bitcoin (again, it's just another currency).
kiba, thanks for providing us with your experience trying to get into the Bitcoin-related game biz. Sounds disheartening, but I hope you find what you're after. Best wishes (sorry I can't offer anything - I'm really just getting started myself).
I'm still infatuated with Bitcoin, and I appreciate everyone's discussions. I'm forming a better picture of the whole Bitcoin scene. I'm starting to formulate a more solid idea of what I'd like to do with Bitcoin+games, but it'll be a while before I can really devote any time to it. Having these community discussions is certainly inspiring!
Topic: Potential Games LLC - Island Forge BTC Discussion - page 2. (Read 5699 times)
much simpler reason not to use bitcoin ingame: the ingame money is part of the balance, therefore its properties (creation and destruction for example) must fit the game. bitcoin has its own rules and using it in a game directly would require the whole game to be tailored to fit bitcoin.
In games like WoW and EVE, players buy game-money and the automated software money-interfaces in the game for shopping and for what monsters "drop" and so on is in the game-currency not in whatever currency the players used outside the game to initially equip themselves with game-money, right? Even in the upcoming Diablo 3 it is not contemplated that various Earth-currencies be used in normal gameday to gameday stuff like grabbing a beer or bed at an inn or picking a troll's pocket or the like?
So basically what I am suggesting is be prepared to leave actual bitcoins out of the list of port numbers in-game money-routines can choose from in selection among the many cryptocurrencies that all use the identical bitcoin-style RPC call API. Accepting bitcoin as outside currency instead of USD or GBP etc for the normal outside the game things like subscriptions or buying a bunch of boosts or whatever is fine, you could just as well accept USD or GBP or whatever there. But don't put actual bitcoins into the hands of the monsters and barkeeps and so on in the game unless you are equally prepared to have some of them happen to "drop" GBP or USD or whatever. (Maybe trolls use USD, orcs use GBP, whatever, however you choose which currency which monster happens to "drop".)
The point is, bitcoin aims to be like GBP, USD etc: "real money". So you need to expect that some day all the reasons why you don't want your monsters to drop dollars or francs or yen or pounds etc should equally well lead you to not want them to drop bitcoins either.
However, things like for example DeVCoin could be fine for monsters to drop, since DeVCoin's aim is to promote free open source software, and encouraging players to play free open source software based games could be well in line with that purpose.
Thus I consider DeVCoin much better suited to use as "game money" than BiTCoin is.
I expect that if even Diablo chooses to have its monsters start dropping fiat, it will run into legal hassles, don't you?
We should expect and plan for bitcoin to end up being, for such legal purposes, pretty much just another "real money". If you want your monsters to drop dollars, fine, have some drop bitcoins instead. But consider too, how will you convince the monster to even admit it has a "brainwallet" let alone tell you the passphrase? Surely any bitcoins owned by monsters will be harder to get them to "drop" than any dollar bills or silver quarters etc? Intelligent monsters would, I would expect, use cryptocoins for the greater security they provide over carrying cash. Unintelligent monsters likely would not have much use for cryptocoins, though I suppose you could find in a dog's tag a message saying "here is a bitcoin address, I offer you its contents as an inducement to return my pet unharmed, more awaits you when that is accomplished" or some such...
-MarkM-
So basically what I am suggesting is be prepared to leave actual bitcoins out of the list of port numbers in-game money-routines can choose from in selection among the many cryptocurrencies that all use the identical bitcoin-style RPC call API. Accepting bitcoin as outside currency instead of USD or GBP etc for the normal outside the game things like subscriptions or buying a bunch of boosts or whatever is fine, you could just as well accept USD or GBP or whatever there. But don't put actual bitcoins into the hands of the monsters and barkeeps and so on in the game unless you are equally prepared to have some of them happen to "drop" GBP or USD or whatever. (Maybe trolls use USD, orcs use GBP, whatever, however you choose which currency which monster happens to "drop".)
The point is, bitcoin aims to be like GBP, USD etc: "real money". So you need to expect that some day all the reasons why you don't want your monsters to drop dollars or francs or yen or pounds etc should equally well lead you to not want them to drop bitcoins either.
However, things like for example DeVCoin could be fine for monsters to drop, since DeVCoin's aim is to promote free open source software, and encouraging players to play free open source software based games could be well in line with that purpose.
Thus I consider DeVCoin much better suited to use as "game money" than BiTCoin is.
I expect that if even Diablo chooses to have its monsters start dropping fiat, it will run into legal hassles, don't you?
We should expect and plan for bitcoin to end up being, for such legal purposes, pretty much just another "real money". If you want your monsters to drop dollars, fine, have some drop bitcoins instead. But consider too, how will you convince the monster to even admit it has a "brainwallet" let alone tell you the passphrase? Surely any bitcoins owned by monsters will be harder to get them to "drop" than any dollar bills or silver quarters etc? Intelligent monsters would, I would expect, use cryptocoins for the greater security they provide over carrying cash. Unintelligent monsters likely would not have much use for cryptocoins, though I suppose you could find in a dog's tag a message saying "here is a bitcoin address, I offer you its contents as an inducement to return my pet unharmed, more awaits you when that is accomplished" or some such...
-MarkM-
I actually prefer the alt-coins to bitcoin for games, largely because bitcoin is the gateway to/from fiat and thus the one most likely to run into all kinds of legal problems. Others might be much easier to claim to be purely play-money, whereas bitcoin has a lot of folks who are trying to convince people it is a real money. So for play money it just seems safer to stick to the altcoins, and let players convert them to/from bitcoins if they wish as long as bitcoins are not considered money, but always ready to throw out bitcoin as a game-currency the moment is gets legally declared to be real money.
It is unfortunate that DIablo seems to have realised that banning players from buying and selling game stuff is bad, because that was a major thing indies could offer that the big companies did not: freedom to buy and sell game stuff, no rules saying you cannot sell characters, you cannot sell gear and all that crap. Free trade.
Hopefully Diablo will actually turn out though to still not really be as free as some might hope, maybe there will still be some stupid restrictions like you gotta use their shops and pay them a cut or something, that might still leave a huge field for indies.
I have been testing every free open source game codebase I can find, trying to sort the actually working ones from the vast numbers of totally broken ones, setting up as many games as i can with the core shared concept that the whole point is you CAN trade game stuff, and thanks to blockchain based coins you can even move value/wealth from game to game.
It does seem to be true though that despite the occassional suggestions that someone should make games that accept bitcoins, very very few bitcoiners are at all interested. They just want some other shmuck somewhere to play some stupid game so their personal bitcoin hoard will increase in value due to someone somewhere uses coins, they don't actually want to play games, they have no intention of bringing players iDiameter: 9825km (137/138)
Temperature: about 23°C to 6nto such games, they certainly have no intention of becoming a part of one of the main selling points of multiplayer games, which is a community of players that welcome new players and help them get into the game long term instead of trying to kill them off and discourage them as fast as possible.
Basically this forum has been one of the worst places to find players for games. They are all into making money, not into playing games, and the concept of making in game stock exchanges that will try to avoid EVE Online's problem of all in-game investments turning out to be scams is just alien to them, I doubt they would even invest in a game company if it listed on GLBSE. It is getting that my players don't even like bitcoins because of the people involved with bitcoins. They have more fun playing with devcoiners and groupcoiners and even the sole solitary character who is trying to establish Ixians as a people whose currency is Ixcoins. There just aren't any bitcoiners actively working in game to establish bitcoin as a good useful in game item. You can buy decent stuff in game for devcoins or groupcoins or Ixcoins, probably even Iocoins, but bitcoins? Hmm, people seldom even offer stuff for them because they have learned that bitcoiners aren't players, and even if they were they would be offering anything other than bitcoins to buy stuff with since to them bitcoins are real money not an in game token to play the game with.
Bottom line: bitcoiners aren't there to spend money, the only way they'd bother being there is to suck money out of the other players not to pump money in. They aren't players, they are "the man", out to feed on the players.
-MarkM-
It is unfortunate that DIablo seems to have realised that banning players from buying and selling game stuff is bad, because that was a major thing indies could offer that the big companies did not: freedom to buy and sell game stuff, no rules saying you cannot sell characters, you cannot sell gear and all that crap. Free trade.
Hopefully Diablo will actually turn out though to still not really be as free as some might hope, maybe there will still be some stupid restrictions like you gotta use their shops and pay them a cut or something, that might still leave a huge field for indies.
I have been testing every free open source game codebase I can find, trying to sort the actually working ones from the vast numbers of totally broken ones, setting up as many games as i can with the core shared concept that the whole point is you CAN trade game stuff, and thanks to blockchain based coins you can even move value/wealth from game to game.
It does seem to be true though that despite the occassional suggestions that someone should make games that accept bitcoins, very very few bitcoiners are at all interested. They just want some other shmuck somewhere to play some stupid game so their personal bitcoin hoard will increase in value due to someone somewhere uses coins, they don't actually want to play games, they have no intention of bringing players iDiameter: 9825km (137/138)
Temperature: about 23°C to 6nto such games, they certainly have no intention of becoming a part of one of the main selling points of multiplayer games, which is a community of players that welcome new players and help them get into the game long term instead of trying to kill them off and discourage them as fast as possible.
Basically this forum has been one of the worst places to find players for games. They are all into making money, not into playing games, and the concept of making in game stock exchanges that will try to avoid EVE Online's problem of all in-game investments turning out to be scams is just alien to them, I doubt they would even invest in a game company if it listed on GLBSE. It is getting that my players don't even like bitcoins because of the people involved with bitcoins. They have more fun playing with devcoiners and groupcoiners and even the sole solitary character who is trying to establish Ixians as a people whose currency is Ixcoins. There just aren't any bitcoiners actively working in game to establish bitcoin as a good useful in game item. You can buy decent stuff in game for devcoins or groupcoins or Ixcoins, probably even Iocoins, but bitcoins? Hmm, people seldom even offer stuff for them because they have learned that bitcoiners aren't players, and even if they were they would be offering anything other than bitcoins to buy stuff with since to them bitcoins are real money not an in game token to play the game with.
Bottom line: bitcoiners aren't there to spend money, the only way they'd bother being there is to suck money out of the other players not to pump money in. They aren't players, they are "the man", out to feed on the players.
-MarkM-
If who you have in mind are teenagers as your target group, then the above is correct. Bitcoin is not a toy and it would be weird to try to combine it with a meaningless game. A game that utilizes bitcoins should be aimed for people of 25+ age, WoW and EVE average player age is 29 and 30 respectively, so it is not a small target group.
You should definitely be talking to the people over at ogrr.com btw, that is your audience/community.
Aren't they mostly into the piracy / Terms-Of-Service-Breaking side of things - encouraging / enabling trade of game stuff the game operators do not want traded? Those people are willing to break the Terms of Service to support (by playing, by being enthusastic about, maybe even by encouraging others to play) games that do NOT support such trade. They are black market opposers of the whole principle of making games that lack such restrctions on trade, they'd rather support the very games that want such trade-restrictions in place. They likely have no interest in supporting the development and deployment of games that lack such restrictions, and in fact those making money at it maybe even have an incentive to keep the restrictions in place, in much the same was a heroin dealers benefit from the illegality of heroin...
-MarkM-
You should definitely be talking to the people over at ogrr.com btw, that is your audience/community.
I actually prefer the alt-coins to bitcoin for games, largely because bitcoin is the gateway to/from fiat and thus the one most likely to run into all kinds of legal problems. Others might be much easier to claim to be purely play-money, whereas bitcoin has a lot of folks who are trying to convince people it is a real money. So for play money it just seems safer to stick to the altcoins, and let players convert them to/from bitcoins if they wish as long as bitcoins are not considered money, but always ready to throw out bitcoin as a game-currency the moment is gets legally declared to be real money.
It is unfortunate that DIablo seems to have realised that banning players from buying and selling game stuff is bad, because that was a major thing indies could offer that the big companies did not: freedom to buy and sell game stuff, no rules saying you cannot sell characters, you cannot sell gear and all that crap. Free trade.
Hopefully Diablo will actually turn out though to still not really be as free as some might hope, maybe there will still be some stupid restrictions like you gotta use their shops and pay them a cut or something, that might still leave a huge field for indies.
I have been testing every free open source game codebase I can find, trying to sort the actually working ones from the vast numbers of totally broken ones, setting up as many games as i can with the core shared concept that the whole point is you CAN trade game stuff, and thanks to blockchain based coins you can even move value/wealth from game to game.
It does seem to be true though that despite the occassional suggestions that someone should make games that accept bitcoins, very very few bitcoiners are at all interested. They just want some other shmuck somewhere to play some stupid game so their personal bitcoin hoard will increase in value due to someone somewhere uses coins, they don't actually want to play games, they have no intention of bringing players iDiameter: 9825km (137/138)
Temperature: about 23°C to 6nto such games, they certainly have no intention of becoming a part of one of the main selling points of multiplayer games, which is a community of players that welcome new players and help them get into the game long term instead of trying to kill them off and discourage them as fast as possible.
Basically this forum has been one of the worst places to find players for games. They are all into making money, not into playing games, and the concept of making in game stock exchanges that will try to avoid EVE Online's problem of all in-game investments turning out to be scams is just alien to them, I doubt they would even invest in a game company if it listed on GLBSE. It is getting that my players don't even like bitcoins because of the people involved with bitcoins. They have more fun playing with devcoiners and groupcoiners and even the sole solitary character who is trying to establish Ixians as a people whose currency is Ixcoins. There just aren't any bitcoiners actively working in game to establish bitcoin as a good useful in game item. You can buy decent stuff in game for devcoins or groupcoins or Ixcoins, probably even Iocoins, but bitcoins? Hmm, people seldom even offer stuff for them because they have learned that bitcoiners aren't players, and even if they were they would be offering anything other than bitcoins to buy stuff with since to them bitcoins are real money not an in game token to play the game with.
Bottom line: bitcoiners aren't there to spend money, the only way they'd bother being there is to suck money out of the other players not to pump money in. They aren't players, they are "the man", out to feed on the players.
-MarkM-
It is unfortunate that DIablo seems to have realised that banning players from buying and selling game stuff is bad, because that was a major thing indies could offer that the big companies did not: freedom to buy and sell game stuff, no rules saying you cannot sell characters, you cannot sell gear and all that crap. Free trade.
Hopefully Diablo will actually turn out though to still not really be as free as some might hope, maybe there will still be some stupid restrictions like you gotta use their shops and pay them a cut or something, that might still leave a huge field for indies.
I have been testing every free open source game codebase I can find, trying to sort the actually working ones from the vast numbers of totally broken ones, setting up as many games as i can with the core shared concept that the whole point is you CAN trade game stuff, and thanks to blockchain based coins you can even move value/wealth from game to game.
It does seem to be true though that despite the occassional suggestions that someone should make games that accept bitcoins, very very few bitcoiners are at all interested. They just want some other shmuck somewhere to play some stupid game so their personal bitcoin hoard will increase in value due to someone somewhere uses coins, they don't actually want to play games, they have no intention of bringing players iDiameter: 9825km (137/138)
Temperature: about 23°C to 6nto such games, they certainly have no intention of becoming a part of one of the main selling points of multiplayer games, which is a community of players that welcome new players and help them get into the game long term instead of trying to kill them off and discourage them as fast as possible.
Basically this forum has been one of the worst places to find players for games. They are all into making money, not into playing games, and the concept of making in game stock exchanges that will try to avoid EVE Online's problem of all in-game investments turning out to be scams is just alien to them, I doubt they would even invest in a game company if it listed on GLBSE. It is getting that my players don't even like bitcoins because of the people involved with bitcoins. They have more fun playing with devcoiners and groupcoiners and even the sole solitary character who is trying to establish Ixians as a people whose currency is Ixcoins. There just aren't any bitcoiners actively working in game to establish bitcoin as a good useful in game item. You can buy decent stuff in game for devcoins or groupcoins or Ixcoins, probably even Iocoins, but bitcoins? Hmm, people seldom even offer stuff for them because they have learned that bitcoiners aren't players, and even if they were they would be offering anything other than bitcoins to buy stuff with since to them bitcoins are real money not an in game token to play the game with.
Bottom line: bitcoiners aren't there to spend money, the only way they'd bother being there is to suck money out of the other players not to pump money in. They aren't players, they are "the man", out to feed on the players.
-MarkM-
I´m a fan of some independet games and have done some work for big gaming companies.
Some clarifications.
If you get coins by betting, its gambling.
If you get coins by winning because of skill, its skill.
If you get coins for free, its donations.
If you give interest and loans as a business you are a bank.
If you let people buy things, thats ok but if its expensive things they can buy and sell or huge sums you have to
make sure those players cant money laundry.
Some clarifications.
If you get coins by betting, its gambling.
If you get coins by winning because of skill, its skill.
If you get coins for free, its donations.
If you give interest and loans as a business you are a bank.
If you let people buy things, thats ok but if its expensive things they can buy and sell or huge sums you have to
make sure those players cant money laundry.
You should write a good plan with other game developers and publish it on http://www.kickstarter.com
Hobbyist game developer here. I have some experience with trying raise BTC for game development. That being said, it does not goes well with the bitcoin community, or rather any community if you don't have a compelling demo.
Failed to reach my 300 dollars worth of bitcoin during March. Ran out of motiviation-fuel for the moment to continue my project and now I need money-fuel. So I am trying to freelance in the bitcoin community when possible, but it does not look good when every lead I follow end up with no project on my desk.
That being said, I don't plan to give up on my dream of fundraising money for my game and make it go for it, fulltime.
Failed to reach my 300 dollars worth of bitcoin during March. Ran out of motiviation-fuel for the moment to continue my project and now I need money-fuel. So I am trying to freelance in the bitcoin community when possible, but it does not look good when every lead I follow end up with no project on my desk.
* kiba sighs
That being said, I don't plan to give up on my dream of fundraising money for my game and make it go for it, fulltime.
The Island Forge game looks interesting. I'll definitely be checking that out (until D3 comes out).
It does sting a little to see you market Paypal as "free and easy".
It does sting a little to see you market Paypal as "free and easy".
You can setup bitcoin pool and have players generate bitcoins while playing the game , I think I even saw browser based miner somewhere or at least a project of that. Players would have bitcoin balance where generated coins would be stored and a player can withdraw and deposit additional coins at anytime, much like internet based bitcoin wallet, and all in game transaction would happen within your server.
Players would use bitcoins as in game currency to by items from you or other players, but would be able to sell the items only to a player. You would need to carefully calculate average CPU mining power to have reasonable prices for in game items. You can also establish market where players would be able to buy and sell in game items to each other.
You should treat players account balance as their own regardless of how it was earned and get revenue from selling in game items.
Players would use bitcoins as in game currency to by items from you or other players, but would be able to sell the items only to a player. You would need to carefully calculate average CPU mining power to have reasonable prices for in game items. You can also establish market where players would be able to buy and sell in game items to each other.
You should treat players account balance as their own regardless of how it was earned and get revenue from selling in game items.
Thanks for your interesting concept, Serith. The whole idea of players earning Bitcoin is legally unclear to me. I'm sure it can be done, but there would need to be some legal work done up front to clarify such things. I've seen games where players can make cash money (prizes), so maybe it would be set up like a contest. Anyone here have legal experience with such a thing?
Many Bitcoin games seem to just boil down to some form of gambling, which is fine if that's your business model, but not really what I'm after.
Further discussion welcome!
You can setup bitcoin pool and have players generate bitcoins while playing the game , I think I even saw browser based miner somewhere or at least a project of that. Players would have bitcoin balance where generated coins would be stored and a player can withdraw and deposit additional coins at anytime, much like internet based bitcoin wallet, and all in game transaction would happen within your server.
Players would use bitcoins as in game currency to by items from you or other players, but would be able to sell the items only to a player. You would need to carefully calculate average CPU mining power to have reasonable prices for in game items. You can also establish market where players would be able to buy and sell in game items to each other.
You should treat players account balance as their own regardless of how it was earned and get revenue from selling in game items.
Players would use bitcoins as in game currency to by items from you or other players, but would be able to sell the items only to a player. You would need to carefully calculate average CPU mining power to have reasonable prices for in game items. You can also establish market where players would be able to buy and sell in game items to each other.
You should treat players account balance as their own regardless of how it was earned and get revenue from selling in game items.
Sent you a small donation to your 1PG address 
Hurray - so it actually does work! As stated, I'm extremely excited about Bitcoin, and hope to get more involved. It's definitely inspirational to find a supportive, helpful community. Thanks for appreciating my aspirations, psy!
Sent you a small donation to your 1PG address
FYI: Cleaned up the Potential Games Bitcoin-related pages, for better clarity. Also now linked on the home page with a shiny Bitcoin.
Our primary purpose at this point is simply to show our support for Bitcoin (and accept donations), which we hope will encourage others to do the same. Thanks for your interest (and thanks to everyone who promotes Bitcoin)!
Our primary purpose at this point is simply to show our support for Bitcoin (and accept donations), which we hope will encourage others to do the same. Thanks for your interest (and thanks to everyone who promotes Bitcoin)!
Even though only speculating, your remarks are very insightful, and you've highlighted exactly why Bitcoin is so exciting. Out-of-band item sales have generally been frowned upon by MMOs, but if Player A walks up to Player B (in-game) and offers a Sword of Magnitude for 2BTC, it's just a matter of sending the payment address as a chat, then handing over the item. ... Now if only I had a character with something to sell.
yeah, thats the very basic method.
now imagine a ultima online-like house shop were the buy-button uses the bitcoin uri scheme to send a signal to the client for a certain amount and address and the user only has to confirm. the game transfers the item immediately when it sees a block with the appropriate transaction. supereasy, no fraud risk and the game never handles any money directly.
Very similar to what I was thinking - the game would provide a way to trade items like this: Player A puts item(s) into escrow for Player B pending payment of X BTC to some address ABC. The game server releases the item(s) from escrow when the payment is met.
My concern is that the server is still managing monetary exchange - I know it's a gray area. These are the discussions I'm interested in. Thanks for your thoughts.
Are there no games doing this yet?
Hope you could integrate bitcoin into this game, you'll be the first guy.
Even though only speculating, your remarks are very insightful, and you've highlighted exactly why Bitcoin is so exciting. Out-of-band item sales have generally been frowned upon by MMOs, but if Player A walks up to Player B (in-game) and offers a Sword of Magnitude for 2BTC, it's just a matter of sending the payment address as a chat, then handing over the item. ... Now if only I had a character with something to sell.
yeah, thats the very basic method.
now imagine a ultima online-like house shop were the buy-button uses the bitcoin uri scheme to send a signal to the client for a certain amount and address and the user only has to confirm. the game transfers the item immediately when it sees a block with the appropriate transaction. supereasy, no fraud risk and the game never handles any money directly.
Creating an RPG with bitcoin as the in-game currency brings up business/legal questions if players can earn bitcoin in-game. Does anyone here have experience with games in which you can earn something of monetary value (of value outside the context of the game, that is)? Can this be done in a way that is not legally defined as gambling?
Sorry, I don't have much experience with in-game currencies, maybe except Linden dollars, however I'd like to speculate. In the model I described, the game makers don't have to handle the money, process transactions or provide any financial services, it could all flow purely between the players (depending on the design, maybe even without the server even directly knowing). This has never been possible before, so it seems like a gray area. But theoretically it should be legally much safer than deploying your own in-game currency.
As a side note, all virtual currencies have monetary value, game currencies are being exchanged for fiat currencies since their inception, though I don't really know about the legal aspect of it.
Even though only speculating, your remarks are very insightful, and you've highlighted exactly why Bitcoin is so exciting. Out-of-band item sales have generally been frowned upon by MMOs, but if Player A walks up to Player B (in-game) and offers a Sword of Magnitude for 2BTC, it's just a matter of sending the payment address as a chat, then handing over the item. ... Now if only I had a character with something to sell.
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