GOALS - What We Know So Far About the NFT-Centric Soccer Game

[ChaseB]

This past fall there was a lot of soccer news all at once. FIFA 22 was...

Written By: Kevin Groves

Click here to view the article.

[CM Hooe]

Quote:

It will use a play to earn model where time spent and skill in the game will be rewarded through digital assets (NFTs) so more people hopefully can make a living playing the game.

I despise this game already.

Any game that tries to position itself as my future side hustle is an immediate hard pass for me. I explicitly do not want to turn my recreational free time into a job.

[CM Hooe]

Another thing:

Quote:

Through the use of blockchain and non-fungible tokens (NFT), every asset will be fully owned by the player, and not by us.

This isn't how NFTs work.

When you buy an NFT, you don't purchase the advertised asset or even a license for it. You the buyer only own the digital receipt for the item in the ledger. That receipt typically contains a blob of JSON data which includes a URL from which to fetch an asset. The asset - in Goals' case, I assume it's the models / textures / animations for a league-licensed soccer player - is far too large to live on the blockchain itself.

If the Goals game servers get shut down in a year if the game fails (or let's be charitable and say this game succeeds and a Goals 2 comes out) and the servers for this game get turned off, that URL in your NFT you bought points to nothing, and then you own nothing. Since NFTs are decentralized by technical definition, there is no governing body which can get you your money back once this happens. More nefarious, if some third party buys the Goals content server domain and puts some other thing at the URL in your NFT receipt, that's now what you have access to instead, whatever it is (be it a totally different asset, a virus, pornography, a dumb meme, or whatever the third party feels like putting there).

NFTs in video games are not worth the trouble, they add no value for people who want to play games for recreational leisure, and they add no value for people who play games for the thrill of competition. I encourage everyone to push back on the concept as loudly and forcefully as possible.

I encourage everyone here to read game designer and critic GB "Doc" Buford's two articles (first article here and follow-up piece) about the implications of building NFTs into video games.

[KG]

Quote: Originally Posted by CM Hooe

Another thing: This isn't how NFTs work. When you buy an NFT, you don't purchase the advertised asset or even a license for it. You the buyer only own the digital receipt for the item in the ledger. That receipt typically contains a blob of JSON data which includes a URL from which to fetch an asset. The asset - in Goals' case, I assume it's the models / textures / animations for a league-licensed soccer player - is far too large to live on the blockchain itself. If the Goals game servers get shut down in a year if the game fails (or let's be charitable and say this game succeeds and a Goals 2 comes out) and the servers for this game get turned off, that URL in your NFT you bought points to nothing, and then you own nothing. Since NFTs are decentralized by technical definition, there is no governing body which can get you your money back once this happens. More nefarious, if some third party buys the Goals content server domain and puts some other thing at the URL in your NFT receipt, that's now what you have access to instead, whatever it is (be it a totally different asset, a virus, pornography, a dumb meme, or whatever the third party feels like putting there). NFTs in video games are not worth the trouble, they add no value for people who want to play games for recreational leisure, and they add no value for people who play games for the thrill of competition. I encourage everyone to push back on the concept as loudly and forcefully as possible. I encourage everyone here to read game designer and critic GB "Doc" Buford's two articles (first article here and follow-up piece) about the implications of building NFTs into video games.

Yeah I found that quote from the GOALS folks VERY ODD. I didn't want to get too deep into debating it in the article because a discussion about NFT's could go very sideways lol.



Also.......welcome to the footy world! We'd like to see more of you around these parts!

[CM Hooe]

Quote: Originally Posted by KG

Also.......welcome to the footy world! We'd like to see more of you around these parts!

Any time I have played a manager mode save in FIFA, the team I pick would immediately get relegated from their league in real life that same season.

You all don’t want me here, when it comes to the beautiful game I am a curse. :-)

[jrnlgrn]

As the kids would say this seems a bit "sus".

Something just feels off. GOALS feels like that friend that's trying to get you in on the ground floor of this amazing opportunity if you just sit through this half hour presentation and tell 10 friends about it

As a comparison the news from USL always feels like an actually game studio announcing an upcoming project with a TBD date.

Sent from Operation Sports Xtreme Mobile App

[dubcity]

Geez. Well the hope and optimism for an indie type soccer game quickly went awry hear with the NFT nonsense. I feel like as a single-player offline gamer I am being pushed out of sports game completely lol.

[longway911]

Anytime I see NFT in an article about a video game my brain immediately turns off.* NFTs are just about the dumbest and most pointless thing our civilization has ever created.*