> People have made money by selling virtual goods acquired in-game at least as far back as Second Life in 2005.
I saw it happening at least as far back as ‘98 in DragonRealms, a MUD and (when it moved off of AOL) one of the first online games with a monthly subscription.
That doesn't come off as "lazy research" to me. The author didn't write "the earliest time this happened was 2005", but rather "at least as far back as ....".
The author's correct in their wording, and the point was simply that getting real money out of games in some way is not novel to this new "play to earn" genre.
The point of the article was to talk about Axie Infinity and Bullshit Jobs in the present, not to spend significant time on historical background.
To be honest, I think using Second Life, or runescape, or such as an example, instead of Ultima Online or such, actually is better writing in that it's more likely to be something the audience is familiar with, or at least can google and read more about. In that sense, using a well known historical example is less lazy writing than finding the oldest possible thing that others are unlikely to relate to for a peripheral comparison which already explicitly was worded as "at least as early as" ("kinda old, but not necessarily the oldest").
Hey, yourworldoftext creator here! It was launched here on HN. Thanks for the mention.
I love what you've done--lots of great features here. Curious to hear more about how you deal with spam. And generally happy to chat/brainstorm anytime.
Hey, thanks for making yourworldoftext! Drawing an ascii town with friends on your site is what inspired me to make this.
In regards to dealing with spam, by far the most effective trick is to get very little traffic (how foolish of me to post my site here!)
The site also saves old changes even if they have been covered up so it's possible for me to remove vandalism and restore what was underneath.
Lastly I have a theory that people are more likely to spam if they see that there's lot of spam already and they are less likely if it looks like everything so far was written with intent. So I try to stay on top of removing spam as soon as it appears.
- With generative art there's usually a tension between variety and beauty, but Fidenza achieves an extraordinarily high level of both.
- I like the Artblocks model in general. Pieces are minted on-chain. It means the artist can't curate the output, so the algorithm itself is the art. Artists have been making generative art for decades, but it feels like this is the way it was always meant to be done.
- Artists can make certain outcomes of their generative algorithms more rare than others. The decision of what should be common or rare can be made for commercial reasons (kind of like hologram trading cards), or artistic reasons. After studying all the ways Fidenza runs, it seems like Tyler Hobbs has hewed really closely to the artistic ideal.
She has spent the past 10 years collecting old documents, photos, and artifacts mentioned in Ulysses. For example, there are some really obscure people mentioned in it who she's found pictures of. It's a fun game for her, and if you're reading along it can help you picture what's going on!
The goal is to eventually cover every line of the book.
Many person-lifetimes of work have been spent on fighting spam/abuse/harassment on internet platforms. The idea proposed here is to greatly reduce this cost by making users pay a small, fully refundable deposit.
These things come and go: virality, selling shovels, uncanny valley, Dunning-Kruger, Overton window, Dunbar's number...
While there is some signaling and "everything looks like a nail"-ness happening, I think on balance it's are a good thing. These concepts, including the ones you mentioned, are genuinely useful. Their hype cycles are a collective process by which we figure out when and where the concepts are most useful, and then they settle into their place.
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