<potoco> Is it possible to implement using Bitcoin as an in-game currency?
<zukaraka> yes.
<potoco> hmm
<zukaraka> the question is
<zukaraka> why would you
<zukaraka> potoco: oh
<zukaraka> and
<zukaraka> you'd have to be a collosal dick
<zukaraka> and put a btc cracking engine in the gam
<zukaraka> *game
<zukaraka> and have it give you all the btc
<potoco> hmm?
<shuknar> btc cracking engine?
<shuknar> what for?
<shuknar> that poker site works well and uses BTC as in-game currency
<shuknar> I'd love to see BTC inside OpenSim, someone was mentioning it
<potoco> I'd like to implement bitcoin as in-game currency for a project I'm working on.
<shuknar> do!
<shuknar> the more games use bitcoins the better for the currency
<shuknar> whether or not bitcoins will be suitable depends of course on the type of game... it's perfect for poker
<shuknar> but if you want NPCs give monetary rewards to players who complete quests... it might not work
<potoco> shuknar, "but if you want NPCs give monetary rewards to players who complete quests... it might not work" -- Could this be possible though?
<shuknar> potoco, yes... if the NPCs had their cache of bitcoins ;-)
<shuknar> e.g. you would generate BTCs for them or something
<shuknar> or give out very small rewards, like the bitcoin faucet
<shuknar> either way, it's an interesting problem :-)
<shuknar> I think in general, if you want to be able to control the in-game currency, then BTCs are a bad choice. If you want to allow for an open market however, then not necessarily so
<zukaraka> <shuknar> btc cracking engine?
<zukaraka> <shuknar> what for?
<zukaraka> <potoco> hmm?
<zukaraka> to produce btc for the in game economy, duh
<tritro> you don't really need it but...
<shuknar> zukaraka, you don't need to crack BTC for that, you just need to generate them
<tritro> you could have your entire game economy = 1 BTC
<zukaraka> shuknar: exactly, and heres the great part
<zukaraka> the more people that play your game
<zukaraka> the richer YOU get
<tritro> then you process your ingame transaction yourself
<shuknar> zukaraka, not necessarily, it all depends on the game
<potoco> tritro, How can entire game economy be 1BTC if transactions smaller than 0.01BTC are not possible as of yet without costing more than the transaction itself?
<shuknar> worst comes to worst, you can fork off bitcoins and create something similar but on different rules
<zukaraka> shuknar: well, Im assuming mmo conditions
<shuknar> e.g. give 1M BTCs to the game world and don't allow for generation
<zukaraka> it'd be interesting as fuck, though, to let people import BTC
<tritro> potoco: if you really want btc to process transactions you would need to implement zukaraka solution
<shuknar> zukaraka, it's kinda possible already, with a L$ <-> BTC exchange
<tritro> you may process transactions yourself with 0 fee
<shuknar> you'd need shitloads of CPU power though
<zukaraka> shuknar: yeah but he asked for BTC in game
<zukaraka> as opposed to merely transferring
<tritro> but really there is no good reason to use btc ingame
<tritro> better to separate those
<shuknar> well I'd create a thought experiment
<shuknar> say we made a WoW clone and hosted the servers ourselves
<shuknar> I never played WoW, but what would the problems with using BTC as in-game currency?
<tritro> hacking
<zukaraka> actually
<zukaraka> that'd be hilarious as fuck
<zukaraka> use BTC
<zukaraka> have everyone gen coins
<zukaraka> you get the coins
<tritro> legally it would be easier to defend with ingame credits than with btc
<zukaraka> they get paid, say, interest on their coins in the game bank
<murror> The fee is rediculous, there has to be some way of adjusting the fee to vary with the load on the network, if it is absolutely necessary at all
<zukaraka> and the BTC economy, as a whole, savagely rapes the ingame economy.
<zukaraka> murror: dobut it
<tritro> the fee is *enormous*
<zukaraka> you'd have to do trillions transactions a second to do anything to the network
<tritro> that is the same than having ipv6 but only be able to use 10 bits for your own usage
<murror> So then why is it there?
<tritro> ask satoshi
<shuknar> zukaraka, I don't understand your "you get the coins" statement
<zukaraka> shuknar: the clients ran on other people's computers run a btc cracker in the background
<shuknar> what? the fee on <0.01BTC transactions can be easily removed
<zukaraka> shuknar: the users dont get the contents of the cracker
<tritro> the only advantage i see using btc ingame is that you don't have to write some code
<zukaraka> shuknar: the owner of the mmo does.
<shuknar> zukaraka, but that kills their CPU and they can't play the game
<zukaraka> shuknar: not at all.
<shuknar> tritro, the big advantage that I see is that it boosts BTC economy
<tritro> if you implement btc miner in your mmo you can process your own transactions without fee of course
<zukaraka> shuknar: because, see
<zukaraka> shuknar: people have more than one core.
<zukaraka> and operating systems, generally, allow thread priorities
<tritro> maybe we should try to write some simple mmo game with btc ingame
<tritro> just to see what happens
<shuknar> well, yes, you could do that
<shuknar> that'd just be ripping off peoples' computers
<zukaraka> shuknar: nope
<tritro> of course with some 5% fee for me
<zukaraka> it'd be paying for the infrascturue
<shuknar> you can do that with any game, it doesn't even need to have BTC as an in-game currency
<zukaraka> mmos dont come cheap.
<shuknar> if they agree to it and do it, why not
<tritro> but if you use BTC as ingame it will raise value of BTC economy
<tritro> ie games will know thay their currency is usable elsewhere
<tritro> gamers
<zukaraka> well
<zukaraka> the fun part is
<tritro> and everything is virtually 'free'
<zukaraka> you could rebase btc
<shuknar> well these are two unrelated subjects really
<zukaraka> if you only have 1000btc in the economy
<zukaraka> that could be like
<zukaraka> 1000 million game coins
<shuknar> you can just let the players generate BTC themselves and charge a BTC fee for playing the game separately
<tritro> even 1 BTC could be enough zukaraka
<zukaraka> tritro: well no
<zukaraka> remember, its limited to 8
<shuknar> yes, you can further fractionize BTC in your game
<tritro> you could use nanoBTC as your unit ingame
<zukaraka> so if you have btc
<zukaraka> and you're limited to 8
<zukaraka> you can only do 100 million in the whole economy
<tritro> we are not limited to '8'
<zukaraka> tritro: yes you are
<shuknar> no, you're not limited to 8
* tritro looks at the code exactly
<zukaraka> the clients are limited to 8 places.
<shuknar> you can make 0.00000001 BTC be 1000 in-game coins
<zukaraka> they visibly show only two
<zukaraka> shuknar: except you need to be able to have sub-gil transactions
<zukaraka> ie, gil should bottom out at 2 places.
<zukaraka> ergo
<tritro> static const int64 COIN = 100000000;
<zukaraka> we have _6_ places.
<zukaraka> so 1 btc == 1 million gil
<zukaraka> which, dont get me wrong
<zukaraka> thats not horrible
<shuknar> what's gil?
<zukaraka> shuknar: game coins.,
<tritro> i don't find that much
<potoco> (Japanese ?? giru) is the name of the fictional currency used in every game in the Final Fantasy series, although English translations have occasionally replaced it with "GP" (short for "gold piece(s)") or simply "G". "Gil" is both the singular and plural term for the currency. ...
<shuknar> it depends how you implement the transactions. if your game processes all the transactions itself, you just buy in for 0.0000001 BTC and get 1000 gil, you then do in-game transactions with gils, and withdraw your BTC if you earn > 1000 gil
<zukaraka> potoco: thank you.
<zukaraka> shuknar: no no no
<zukaraka> gil is just a mockup of btc
<zukaraka> shuknar: I mean
<zukaraka> sure
<zukaraka> you COULD just run your own transaction network
<zukaraka> which is actually possible since the users dont own btc
<zukaraka> they just own gil
<zukaraka> the actual btc (which is the "gold in fort knox" of the game economy) is owned by the mmo owner
<tritro> paytxfee option exists btw
<zukaraka> so sur,e that could work.
<zukaraka> but
<zukaraka> I have like 450 btc.
<zukaraka> that'd be 450 million gil.
<potoco> zukaraka, shuknar tritro murror: May I post transcript of this discussion to forum? ^_^
<shuknar> potoco, I'd be thankful if you removed the timestamps
<zukaraka> potoco: fix my typos first.
<tritro> replace my nick
<shuknar> or replace my nick, yeah, that'd be cool too
<potoco> zukaraka, Blah...too much work ^_^
<murror> potoco: That's cool
<shuknar> anyway the most interesting way would be to make actual players exchange bitcoins between them
<potoco> I'll just replace names then
<shuknar> are linden dollars divisible?
<zukaraka> shuknar: no, because then it invites the IRS to come look at both BTC and the mmo
<zukaraka> allowing a one way in is fine though
<zukaraka> ie
<zukaraka> you pay the mmo in btc, you get gil, but you cant gil->btc
<zukaraka> which would be fucking hilarious when you get really rich douchebags running around being douchebags.
<potoco> I would like to implement gil<->btc
<zukaraka> potoco: dont
<zukaraka> otherwise it just leads to very direct gold farming
<shuknar> not true
<shuknar> take SL with L$<->BTC exchange
<zukaraka> yes, and I dont trust that L$ shit
<potoco> zukaraka, In such cases, players could then sell ingame currency themselves. So why provide the barrier in the first place?
<shuknar> I don't trust any currency like that
<zukaraka> potoco: so the IRS doesnt start snooping in my shit.
<zukaraka> in other countries, they're even trying to tax virtual goods
<zukaraka> the aformentioned virtual goods are owned by the owner of the game, not the user; yet the user is still being taxed
<shuknar> the goods don't even exist
<zukaraka> so having limited inroads for exploration by governments is very much worth it
<shuknar> taxing is funny
<zukaraka> shuknar: yup.
<zukaraka> and its absurd
<zukaraka> Im surprised mmo companies havent sued the governments trying it
<shuknar> to work around taxes, you'd have to have a totally distributed and at least semi-anonymous game engine
<zukaraka> since its a massive legal liability
<zukaraka> shuknar: nope.
<zukaraka> like WoW will never be taxed
<zukaraka> you cant buy gold, and you cant sell gold for usd.
<zukaraka> and gold farming is massively illegal under WoW's rules.
<potoco> You can, but not through official channels
<zukaraka> but having _any_ sort of inroad for external currency, even btc, attracts unwanted interest.
<zukaraka> so, I'd only ever let btc->gil
<zukaraka> never gil->btc
<shuknar> zukaraka, you'll have users doing that anyway
<shuknar> some game, don't remember the title, allowed only 'balanced' trades for that reason
<zukaraka> shuknar: no I wont.
<zukaraka> gil wont be able to be transferred.
<shuknar> which is ridiculous, the whole point of the excercise is to bind the in-game economy with the real world economy
<zukaraka> thats not what I mean
<zukaraka> they can only interact WITH the economy
<zukaraka> they are forced to.
<zukaraka> ie, they can buy from in game stores BUT players arent allowed to run the in game stores
<shuknar> then it makes you the central owner of the whole thing and I don't want to play your game
<zukaraka> shuknar: too bad. most games are ran that way.
<zukaraka> and I own your shit anyhow
<shuknar> there are enough games that do that already
<zukaraka> even if you own it, I own it.
<shuknar> second life is a nice exception
<zukaraka> even the most free and open sort of game, that allows all sorts of shit
<zukaraka> anything in the game, I own.
<zukaraka> its in the EULA.
<shuknar> error: undefined identifier: own
<zukaraka> so if I decide to, one day, nuke the whole fucking thing and run away with the money
<zukaraka> I'm legally allowed to.
<shuknar> zukaraka, I don't want such a game
<shuknar> that's boring ;-)
<shuknar> I haven't looked at OpenSim yet
<zukaraka> thats every mmo ever with an economy.
<shuknar> but it looks interesting
<zukaraka> businesses _cannot_ be held liable for things that _dont exist_
<zukaraka> _period_
<shuknar> yes
<shuknar> that's why these games are boring
<zukaraka> yes, being not sued is boring. I like that sort of boring.
<shuknar> make a distributed, p2p, pseudonymous MMO: THAT's interesting
<zukaraka> its extremely chaotic
<zukaraka> and the IRS wouldnt care if its anonymous
<zukaraka> they'd still track down the guy who created it and tax him
<shuknar> tax him for what?
<shuknar> they can track down Satoshi this way and tax him for creating BTC
<zukaraka> essentially, a very large random number.
<zukaraka> shuknar: yup. they can.
<shuknar> it'd be hilarious to watch
<shuknar> "we want to tax you for your bytes!" "why don't you tax them for their bytes?" "ok, we'll tax them for their bytes too" "HEY EVERYONE! PAY \inf TAXES!"
<shuknar> delegalize internet!
<shuknar> then let's tax everyone who uses an abacus
<shuknar> for every movement of a stone
<potoco> "so if I decide to, one day, nuke the whole fucking thing and run away with the money" -- Therefore, if btc<->gil, then the end user has no risk for any loss and can use that as a reason to feel more comfortable with accepting playing the game and not to be concerned about wasting their time due to addictive gameplay that could have otherwise been pursued for more productive activities.
<shuknar> they either have to come up with a clever way to GTFO with their taxes, or the whole thing will collapse
<zukaraka> shuknar: my god, that is an irs agent's wet dream
<shuknar> zukaraka, you can see that won't work though, right?
<zukaraka> dude, the way the IRS already operates doesnt work
<zukaraka> that wont stop them
<zukaraka> rule #41234: NEVER hand the crazed gunman more ammo.
<zukaraka> potoco: anyhow, I dont want to stop people from doing it
<zukaraka> I just want them to protect themselves with common sense.
<zukaraka> I would be very interested in a game that used btc to back gil
