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No way. There are many ways to introduce artificial scarcity to digital goods, and no it is not a new or good use of the tech.... Artificial scarcity is a huge part of all of the world's problems.
Before we start blaming a digital trading card game for the sins of capitalism, let's both acknowledge that "artificial scarcity" is built into games. Mario suffered "artificial scarcity" when he didn't have a red mushroom at the ready. Anything that requires "unlocking" can be argued to be artifical scarcity. At the end of the day it doesn't really matter because these are aspects of a game and not real world resources.
Every digital TCG - Hearthstone, mtg arena, etc. all already have artificial scarcity.
This is just allowing for you, as a player, to actually have a semblance of ownership over the digital goods you obtain, independent of the company you purchased it from, which is far more than any other digital platform will allow for.
Just because the artificial scarcity is digital doesn't magically make it different. If the intent is to get more money, it is exactly the same. No wait, it's even more despicable because there's no reason for actual digital scarcity.
Just like most games that were designed to eat quarters in arcade machines do not receive any honor after their time, these decisions invariably go down in history as just greedy fucks being greedy fucks.
It sounds like your issues are with that of games in general, which is outside of the scope of this discussion, so I don't have much to say in response. Hope you have a good day!
No, you're just proving to be too dumb to understand the nuance I'm aiming for.
Do you think there would be dozens of versions of Mortal Kombat if it stayed as the arcade machine? Or did removing the monetization when they released it on consoles allow far more people to truly engage and fall in love with it?
I'm sorry you're too dumb to understand the problems of rent seeking from modern corporations, but denying them won't fix anything.
Did they release that shit for free or something? Are you claiming "they" released dozens of versions of it after "they" stopped using the game as a source of profit?
You realize making an arcade game that eats quarters for breakfast is a monetization scheme... Don't you? You realize Mortal Kombat and many, many older games started in arcades, right?
How can you be so dense as to fail to realize the similarities between microtransactions and arcade games eating quarters? Except microtransactions are much worse because they do not enable a secondary economy like arcades did.
Again, artificial scarcity is bullshit. It was BS back then, and it's WAY more BS these days. It is not something to celebrate, unless you're a piece of shit that wants to leverage things against other human beings for profit unnecessarily.
And is "releasing it on consoles" not a monetization scheme? If they didn't give it away from free, they....sold it for money, which means it's a monetization scheme.
What's worse is that on consoles it's simply a digital copy of a file being made - at least arcades needed maintenance, justifying an ongoing cost. Arguably your example of games being released on consoles is an even worse example of artificial scarcity - why should they charge for a digital copy of a game that costs them nothing to copy? Is that not a textbook example of "artificial scarcity"?
Are we in agreement that digital cards as NFTs does enable a secondary market, especially when compared to digital cards not associated with NFTs?
No, it artificially creates a psudo-second market by introducing scarcity. Why is this concept so fucking difficult for you?
So we are in agreement that the Blockchain aspect of the game creates a secondary market, but via artificial scarcity, which is the big bad boogie man of your entire argument. Makes sense to me. We're once again circled back to "most popular digital games have artificial scarcity built in, this is not unique to a game that is a legitimate use of Blockchain, which OP asked about, so it seems like your beef is with most digital games in general"
While you're taking a breath between each vitriolic insult you throw out, did you give any thoughts to the idea that the positive example you brought up, mortal Kombat being released on consoles, is also a form of artificial scarcity, since they're charging relatively high prices for a mere copy of the code?