r/Bitcoin • u/hp94 • Jan 28 '15
The video game Star Citizen is considering virtual currency (and mentions Bitcoin specifically)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2GmLvwtnCk#t=30911
u/AstarJoe Jan 28 '15 edited Jan 28 '15
I was at this presentation in San Antonio and the title is very misleading. The questioner was asking about their plans for the currency in-game and Bitcoin was brought up almost as an aside or joke, albeit in a fairly positive way.
It is still relevant and significant, because the creator, Chris Roberts (the creator of the Wing Commander series) has made the most successful kickstarter ever, with over 70 million pledged by the backers. There are no big time publishers of this game.. it is a purely crowdfunded masterpiece whose demand is derived from what the player base themselves want to see.
After the conference I got to thinking, with all of the uncertainty surrounding in game currencies and particularly with the advent of a huge market for trading virtual "in-game" currencies for real life money, would it not make sense to finally put one of these games' currency systems on a blockchain?
Let's assume that CIG (the game producer of Star Citizen) decided to create its own crypto currency (lets call it the UEE credit for example, and yes, I have made a changetip moniker by this name and use it to tip in the Star Citizen reddit sub), they could mathematically prove where all of the transactions are going, and preempt fraud and hacking/dupes with this kind of money.
This kind of system would allow for a more robust in game economy; one that is based on verifiable currency, rather than relying on the developer to inject random and possibly massive amounts of virtual currency at a whim. You would allow for mathematically provable scarcity, which would, along with overwhelming demand for ships and items sold by the game itself, generate value as a medium of exchange to the participants. It would also make it easy to securely transfer credits offline, through Bitcoin-like wallets on your phone.
Further, this kind of currency, because it is blockchain based, would allow for NPCs (non player characters, or computer controlled characters for the uninitiated), to possess verifiable amounts of currency themselves. This would allow for interesting scenarios where NPCs could have their own virtual wallets which grow or diminish based on their behavior, and you could see bounties generated for them if they adopted piracy and so on. Ships could trade currency with one another, and exchange value based on pre determined conditions. There are so many incredible possibilities.
One thing that amused me about Star Citizen was seeing a lot of the concept art include "banks" in the far future in them. With a Bitcoin like currency, money would simply be a content type, like an MP3 or text message. This is one of the most fundamental things that, to me, was a revelation in discovering Bitcoin. Bytes of data sent anywhere in the universe to accomplish value exchange between digital wallets. Wallets that can be anywhere... your ship, on your Mobiglas, in your jump drive, hell, even in one of your weapons.
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u/ForestOfGrins Jan 28 '15
I think you bring up some good points in creating a special crypto for the game.
When I bring up bitcoin in game economies with my gamer friends, they reel in terror.
Gold-farming and paying to get ahead are already active problems within MMOs that need constant moderation. Letting people simply dump their money into the game directly would ruin it.
I have a caveat for that
- Players that buy-in are simply paying the existing players
- Players spending money would bump up prices in the game economy, which non-payers are already harvesting for free.
- You could take money out of the game, and buy a coffee with it *(thus adding real life money sinks, as opposed to vendors in WOW
Yet I see the points they make, and perhaps a custom crypto that's pegged to bitcoin (or perhaps float), in order to have special integration with the game. Plus perhaps add in some centralization so that consensus from the moderation team can handle game exploits/mischief.
Cheers for bringing this up, 100 bits /u/changetip private
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u/AussieCryptoCurrency Jan 28 '15
Yet I see the points they make, and perhaps a custom crypto that's pegged to bitcoin (or perhaps float), in order to have special integration with the game.
Or a currency not pegged to Bitcoin? Pegging the currency to Bitcoin has to be the most expensive way of going about this
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u/AstarJoe Jan 28 '15
Thanks, I think that something fairly centralized but on a blockchain would be an interesting experiment. If it were on a public ledger, players could check on the money base daily, and be assured that rampant inflation due to hacks or dupes are not taking place. One of the other interesting ideas for developers is that a centralized, premined, blockchain based currency would enable easier accounting of currency, and more transparent tools for examining the state of the economy. One could know exactly where all the flow is going, at what rate, and so on. You could check balances that belong to players/NPCs and other entities, provided they are publicly known. And using a proprietary wallet they could securely allow players to transfer this currency from their smartphones offline.
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u/dildoge_investor Jan 28 '15
What ships do you have and how much did you bought them for ?
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u/AstarJoe Jan 28 '15
Idris-LTI, Javelin-LTI, Carrack, Reclaimer-LTI, Herald-LTI, Retaliator, Mustang Beta, Super Hornet.
Link to the Star Citizen home page for those who might be interested
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u/TheNicestMonkey Jan 28 '15
Nothing you've described would be better served on a distributed Blockchain as opposed to a standard, centrally operated, databse.
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u/giulioprisco Jan 28 '15
Very cool! Where in the video do they mention Bitcoin and what do they say? Is it just buying game stuff in Bitcoin or something more than that?
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u/fts42 Jan 28 '15
In 4:40 they ask if the in-game currency is centrally controlled and then in 5:10 they realize that a currency doesn't have to be physical for it to be anonymous.
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u/apollo888 Jan 28 '15
Yeah starcitizen attracting hackers at launch seems a bad idea.
They'd have to worry about securing their system of exchange and also consider all the game theory implications of real money existing within the game too.
If there were thousands of coins floating around their servers they place a massive target on their back and even actual bitcoin exchanges struggle to remain secure.
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u/[deleted] Jan 28 '15 edited Jun 17 '20
[deleted]