Thread by @delaneykingrox

Can confirm, assets as NFTS cannot work and yield no benefit to either the customer or the developer.

https://twitter.com/adetheterrible/status/1480251069712195588

Let's take an item such as Merman's corn cob sword for an example.

To use it in Mortal Kombat, it would need to have anchor points in the right places and orientation to attach it to the character's costume back, have the right hit boxes and have those call back to the character

Now let's move that over to Among Us. So, same sword, now utterly incorrect format. Not pixels, not cutesy style- and at the scale shown, the corn cobs would have to be simplified to show up, meaning it looks totally different too.

Right, so Merman's sword has the ability to call animals of the sea, it is made from enchanted coral. If I take it over to something like minecraft, what data do I take with it? Does it float? Can it summon or spawn dolphins? If so, what are the exceptions?

Code required.

Okay now lets say I take it into Valheim. Sea monsters are extremely high point value food. Can I control sea monsters? If so that breaks the game.

Okay so I nerf it so it is just a pretty sword. Now I get complaints from those who paid for the sword.

And shit... I just dropped all my gear after dying in a dangerous area on a shared server. I am now on a deathloop. I cannot get the item back, and my mate wants to log off the server.
So that means I cannot drop the item. Which makes the game super easy.

Every single game has on the asset side specific data, specific asset requirements, specific shaders used to do things like teleporting or damage.
On the gameplay side it has to be BALANCED IN CONTEXT.
The code has to be adjusted for each and every one.

"Assets" are made up of many asset components like mesh, textures, shaders, anchor points, hit boxes, collision meshes, sound queues, animations, animation flow graphs, particle systems, particle spawn points, data files, damaged versions, versions in construction stages, icons

Assets can take months to not only design and build visually, but integrate into your game. Coordinating this across one studio is hard enough, but now you are asking to do this across many game studios, around the world, each with their own engines, tools and workflows.

And to do this and retain relative VALUE in your NFT purchase is impossible, which also runs the additional cost of fielding abusive calls, complaints and bug reports from dickheads who spent all their doge coins on Merman's sword because the don't have healthy coping strategies

You are talking MILLIONS of dollars and hours spent around the world by game studios, and vast damage to the environment just to fluff the ego of a few individuals who really should just do some personal growth.

Seriously, feed some pigeons, gives to a charity, go get laid.

Let's say there are ten hundred NFT swords out there. Just ten.

Let's say it takes two days to get the core art materials and make them compatible with your game through scaling them, adding collision, reworking texture data.

An artist at minimum wage in Australia...

...a junior gets around 30 Aud per hour. So that is 300 for two days at 9 to 5.

So for ten swords, just for putting existing art into the game and adapting it to fit, would add around 3000 to the project at junior rates.

Just ten. Just to put in.

Now add programmer, game designer and sound designer time. These are generally higher wages, you are looking more like 40 bucks an hour.

That $3000 skyrockets to a very tight minimum estimate of $15,000 for ten swords.

How many NFT assets do you want? More than ten- right?

Who is going to foot the bill for NFT asset integration?

Everyone? Divide up the cost and add it to development?

Game balance? Every asset you add throws it off and so scaling this up makes an exponentially longer development time.

Wanna wait for that?

There is absolutely no scenario where your merman sword is going to be appearing in every game you play. Or even some.

Maybe across Ubisoft game studio games that use their engine but only for a few years and their games becomes more expensive or their share price drops

Grow the fuck up.

If you have money to burn and love videk games, I suggest buying shares in video game developers and backing kick starters for small studios.

Game assets are not non fungible. Anyone with a capture program can copy asset data, modify it a little and sell it as an NFT. So the only NFT component is the receipt for paying *someone* for the asset. Who are you paying? How does that money pay the studios integrating it?

I personally, after two decades doing this, can churn out game assets like a machine. Way faster than studios can integrate them. Swords? Boom. Hats? Boom.

Even just me, one artist, can make enough assets to flood the market. Who moderates this? Who decides on their stats

If nobody is moderating, then items are nerfed and made OP just to push trading of them. Massive insider trading on your cursed salami sword value, or deluxe master chief Pikachu gold edition bio resistant suit suddenly being useless, selling and then being booned again.

Two words.

Cluster. Fuck.

Speaking of clusterfucks, I am adorable and know a lot about game assets. Pat me on the head with some non fungus moneys here.

ko-fi.com/dellak

Sexy people tip x

I am Delaney King- and I have made assets for game studios the world over including thousands of fucking swords:

Dragonage:origins
Lord of the Rings Online
Dungeons & Dragons online
Civilization IV
Unreal Tournament 04
Blah
Blah
Blah
And many more