Comment by firekvz
4 years ago
I didnt read much of the thread but I will assume that most of the people here is aware of how every single NFT game is just a ponzi.
But I've lived myself, what the author mentions as a "way to lift people out of poverty.", from the era before NFT or "play to earn" games existed.
I come from Venezuela, a full 3rd world country and I was "lucky" to play an MMO (lineage 2) during my young days and somehow I was good at it, i invested so many hours on it and managed to get into top tier guilds and worlds 1st event, and somehow, my character and my items were worth thousands of dollars in the market, and suddenly i went from being a 14 y.o boy sitting in pc, to bringing more money in 1 week to my family, than my entire family together for 1 year.
I could understand that, while all other people on the game were playing for fun, it became my job, a job that actually got me and my family out of poverty...
At the time (2007) there were a lot of chinese "farmers", and people used to make fun of them, not only fun but the rest of the players were blantantly denigrating towards them, at 1st I didnt understand but once that I became a non-chinese farmer, I realized how It was a really good thing to do.
Eventually I started botting, I bought more PCs and had a full army of bots, I kept making more and more money, and it helped me and my family leave the country and pretty much bought a house, a car and paid my family expenses for like 4 years out of lineage 2 adena farming.
Also, scripting the bots pretty much got me to learn programming and english, so what I am now it's pretty much the result of some guy from chicago offering me 20$ in paypal for an item i had in my inventory that i got it while killing a monster, it all started there, that litle forbidden transaction in an MMO, changed my life completely
So, even tho it was like a job for me, I never saw it like a job, even tho it gave me a lot of money, i never got into the game as a way to get money, i was just a young kid trying to have some fun..
But now, I get really sad everytime I see those ponzi NFT games, that only sell the idea of getting rich, and I get even more sad when I see tons of venezuelan youngsters fall for it, honestly, they are just playing with their desperation.
That's an awesome story. While I've never lived in poverty, I got my first taste of making money by making bot for a FaceBook game in 2008 (WarBook, if anyone remembers that). I only made around 2,000 USD but that experience really changed my life.
Esa era la mejor era para ese tipo de juegos, entretenidos y se sacaba un rialero, por aqui haciamos lo mismo, con Silkroad y Mu.
Esos de ahorita son diferente, parece hasta macabro. Dan "becas" para que otros "jueguen" y ganen por ellos prometiendoles una parte de la ganancia, eso si, siempre y cuando el nft no caiga.
De vez en cuando conocidos me preguntan que si es bueno entrar en esos juegos nft a todos les digo que ni locos se metan ahi, da mas plata y es mas estable sembrar.
It seems like a bold statement to claim every NFT game is a ponzi. Some existing games are looking into incorporating NFTs to help facilitate the kind of transactions you previously needed paypal for. It seems a bit dismissive to hand-wave any games that want to incorporate the technology as not being able to operate sustainably.
Wild story, thanks for sharing.
> I come from Venezuela, a full 3rd world
Considering the Red Scare rhetoric in the West about Venezuela I’d say it is solidly second world.
Not really. Yugoslavia, another socialist country, was probably the most prominent European country that identified as "third-world". "Second world" was basically the Warsaw Pact, China and their other satellites, not just any socialist state.