RE: Explaining Rising Star’s List of Rules
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I find the claim that RS isn't an investment to be somewhat deceptive. You can claim that it isn't intended to be an investment all you want, but the structure of the game itself sort of contradicts that. The more you invest > the more NFTs you acquire > the higher rate of STARBIT earnings you receive. The game has a clear ROI incentive, it even states it clearly that the goal of the game is to earn money while playing. There isn't a player in the game who spent money on it without the intent to increase their STARBITS accrual (earnings) (taxable income?).
I feel like if the game was truly intended to just be a game and not an earnings / investment vehicle, then a lot of these rules wouldn't need to exist. What would it matter how many accounts someone has or what it does to the market if the money is of no consequence? If it was a fake market? There would be no harm in it. But it is a real market, and the money IS of consequence.
Anyways, I just wish people would just call a spade a spade.
I'm a fan of RS and understand why all of these rules exist, this particular little nit-pick just annoys me is all.
I feel ya. Let me try and tease out some counterpoints though.
This mechanism is true of most games with a progression mechanic, whether fiat currency is involved or not. Idle and incremental games especially build this in (ever play Kittens Game? Dangerously addictive if you like idle/increms.
So I'd say we're still a "game" here.
A few points here.
All web3 enabled games will have some form of pathway to fiat, no argument or disillusion here. And if you're clever enough and willing to math things out, yes—you can find ROI.
But these rules and restrictions are intended precisely to blunt this instinct to wring ROI out of the game. They're a conscious disincentive!
Where's that? Not doubting you, I feel like I've seen something to this effect—but if we're getting into nuance the proper quote would be helpful. Maybe it needs to come down. I can't easily find it anywhere prominent though.
It's actually experimenting with being a bit of both: mostly a game, and also a way to plug into the wacky wild world of value exchange on web3. To have both, you need to find a balance between letting bots run roughshod over the whole ecosystem and cutting out the web3 stuff altogether. Is the RSG balance perfect? Hell no. It'll evolve. It will be forced to if it ends up ramping as recent user adoption suggests it might.
There are dozens of games that don't (seem to) care about this balance on Hive and elsewhere, and they're legit! This one's trying something different though—and the response and joy it brings to the community I think speaks volumes.
This is a fair point. And RSG has openly welcomed market makers and whatnot into the system.
So this comes back to me understanding that saying it's "just a game" is not... perfectly accurate. But it's also not "just an investment vehicle." It's something in between, with a heavy bias towards being a game (no roadmap, no whitepaper, features implemented based on what devs thinks is fun, no backup plan if dev quits, etc.)
For all the "no plan no safety net" things above... if we're seriously talking about investments, RSG is a terrible one. The risk is nuts. Don't assume any ROI will ever come out of it! It might! It'd be great if so... but yeah.
I think the community has embraced "it's a game not an investment" to simplify the notions above.
Hopefully I've made the case as to why she's not exactly just a spade 😉
Cheers, and thank you for sharing these thoughts!