Exgrasia: RPG-style sandbox game where every tile is a player-made contract(twitter.com)
twitter.com
Exgrasia: RPG-style sandbox game where every tile is a player-made contract
https://twitter.com/exgrasia/status/1523727062896300034
39 comments
I don't think the underlying game is fun or interesting and the blockchain shtick is the only thing it's got going for it which imho is a detractive quality. I think its only merit is that it sated the author's interests.
I get what you are saying, but I see it from a more positive perspective. I wouldn't play it, but it's a really cool tech demo and proof of concept. I was amazed that it managed to run as smooth as it did, with every action corresponding to a blockchain transaction. And how easy it was to create new tokens, and contracts for automatically exchanging them. So I did enjoy the video and learned new things. And it made me think that making an interesting on-chain game is actually possible, even if this was not it.
> And it made me think that making an interesting on-chain game is actually possible, even if this was not it.
Sure, it's possible. But I would add that any on-chain game would be equally good, if not better by not being on the chain. I dare anyone to show me a game that is only good by existing on the blockchain.
I'll wait.
Sure, it's possible. But I would add that any on-chain game would be equally good, if not better by not being on the chain. I dare anyone to show me a game that is only good by existing on the blockchain.
I'll wait.
"See, look! An application for blockchain! I told you it's not just for speculative assets!"
"And by the way, you can buy this house-tile contract as an NFT!"
Mm, quite - I can't help but feel that most Blockchain-based-Thing announcements are little more than exercises in domain-specific omphaloskepsis.
I don't know if it is intentional, but your use of omphaloskepsis seems to be an ironic form of omphaloskepsis in its' own right.
That's very sweet of you, but no, it's just a damn good word.
Hey folks,
Creator here, thank you for sharing this here - it seems there’s a decent bit of misunderstandings in the comments (particularly around the security model/monetary cost) so I’ll clarify some things:
- Your main wallet is never exposed to the game tiles, only a burner proxy wallet created for in-game interactions. This limits any attack surface area significantly.
- Frontend plug-ins are decently sandboxed and cannot learn things like “what’s your private key?” or make transactions on your behalf unless you explicitly approve it.
- This runs on a testnet L2 (Optimism Kovan) so it’s free to play - this is just meant to be a proof of concept exploration. Anyway, transaction costs are on the order of 1/100th of a cent on such L2s, so it’s really not prohibitively expensive to play the game even if it was with real money!
I’m a bit disappointed that most of the comments here pose rather shallow understanding of what’s interesting about exgrasia/blockchain as a data layer for games - I’d think nothing would excite fellow programmers more than the ability to build their own systems and mod it into a “world” without any limits/permissions on it :(
Creator here, thank you for sharing this here - it seems there’s a decent bit of misunderstandings in the comments (particularly around the security model/monetary cost) so I’ll clarify some things:
- Your main wallet is never exposed to the game tiles, only a burner proxy wallet created for in-game interactions. This limits any attack surface area significantly.
- Frontend plug-ins are decently sandboxed and cannot learn things like “what’s your private key?” or make transactions on your behalf unless you explicitly approve it.
- This runs on a testnet L2 (Optimism Kovan) so it’s free to play - this is just meant to be a proof of concept exploration. Anyway, transaction costs are on the order of 1/100th of a cent on such L2s, so it’s really not prohibitively expensive to play the game even if it was with real money!
I’m a bit disappointed that most of the comments here pose rather shallow understanding of what’s interesting about exgrasia/blockchain as a data layer for games - I’d think nothing would excite fellow programmers more than the ability to build their own systems and mod it into a “world” without any limits/permissions on it :(
> I’d think nothing would excite fellow programmers more than the ability to build their own systems and mod it into a “world” without any limits/permissions on it :
You don't need a blockchain with global consensus to do that.
You don't need a blockchain with global consensus to do that.
That’s a fair criticism - I like to think a blockchain is akin to a shared computer we all have access to (via programs/contracts) which makes it really convenient to use blockchains in such ways. Besides, the perpetual machine properties of a blockchain allow code to exist independent of an individual creator/entity - exgrasia cannot go the way of club penguin for instance.
> the perpetual machine properties of a blockchain allow code to exist independent of an individual creator/entity - exgrasia cannot go the way of club penguin for instance
Which is framed as a net positive here, but is it? What happens when my little fishing tile is surrounded by $RACIAL_SLUR-ville? What happens when the landscape becomes a sea of swastikas?
Which is framed as a net positive here, but is it? What happens when my little fishing tile is surrounded by $RACIAL_SLUR-ville? What happens when the landscape becomes a sea of swastikas?
> its frontend is highly composable too - just drop in JS code to extend!
Eagerly looking forward to new and exciting vulnerabilities this will open players to!
Eagerly looking forward to new and exciting vulnerabilities this will open players to!
That's one level, the other was "connect your Metamask wallet to this game, where every tile is an unvetted smart contract"
Love the spirit of engineering here.
"Let's see what we can stitch together with these exploratory technologies"
Hate that it has to be with blockchain technologies.
"Let's see if we can siphon off easy money from more suckers with another piece of crypto vaporware"
"Let's see what we can stitch together with these exploratory technologies"
Hate that it has to be with blockchain technologies.
"Let's see if we can siphon off easy money from more suckers with another piece of crypto vaporware"
Since this runs in Kovan, it doesn’t cost any money to play.
“Every tile is a player-made contract” immediately gives me visions of griefing other players by plopping down a ring of “pay me $lots to step on this tile” around their bases.
In high school, we used to play Monopoly with player contracts, usually insurance and no-rent deals. Of course, the friendships that existed outside the game ended up refracting into the contract structure of the game.
Any game that involves diplomacy needs to be played anonymously to prevent that sort of stuff. Not just pre-existing friendships, but people you play with frequently will learn your habits and tells, and will refuse to cooperate with someone they know is good at the game. It was easy to fix in the play-by-email Diplomacy days where you could create a new email address for each new match, but it's a lot harder in today's era of voice-chat-enabled social deduction games.
I have this recurring idea of a game where each player can construct their own islands, and players can travel around the world from island to island. Think Animal Crossing meets Skyrim.
I have no clue how a "contract" would contribute to that idea at all, and would in fact pose more risk to vulnerabilities and hacks than would exist from a centralized architecture.
I have no clue how a "contract" would contribute to that idea at all, and would in fact pose more risk to vulnerabilities and hacks than would exist from a centralized architecture.
Long since dead but I put a lot of time into a browser-based (2D) MMO called Nowhere Else and Beyond back in the day.
You could build islands and they'd be placed somewhere in the world for people to sail to, you could create quests set on your island etc. There was even an object inventor for creating equipment.
You could build islands and they'd be placed somewhere in the world for people to sail to, you could create quests set on your island etc. There was even an object inventor for creating equipment.
oh nice, that's exactly what I was imagining. A crafting system that allows you to create one-off unique items.
That sounds pretty cool. Was it a fork of an existing codebase such as BrowserQuest?
> I have this recurring idea of a game where each player can construct their own islands, and players can travel around the world from island to island.
That is called No Man’s Sky.
That is called No Man’s Sky.
Similar idea, yes! But I'm imagining a single planet where each players island is specified by a set of GPS coordinates. You'd only be able to travel by boat, so initially only islands close to one another would feasibly be able to interact.
"Every tile is a contract" sounds a bit like wandering around the dog park barefoot to me.
It's unfortunate that most comments are predictable anti-blockchain comments again. Can't we just enjoy this guy's creative exploration?
HN is allergic to Blockchain; people don't even read the articles they just jump straight into their opinions.
The only exception is Vitalik; sometimes that guy is just too smart to ignore.
The only exception is Vitalik; sometimes that guy is just too smart to ignore.
> It's unfortunate that most comments are predictable anti-blockchain comments again. Can't we just enjoy this guy's creative exploration?
If the game's whole shtick is blockchain, is it really unreasonable to comment on the blockchain aspect of the game?
If the game's whole shtick is blockchain, is it really unreasonable to comment on the blockchain aspect of the game?
Web3/NFT/Blockchain games remind me of Edutainment Games or Christian rock bands. Failing to achieve your core mission by trying to shoehorn in an orthogonal concept.
"You're not making blockchain better, you're making games worse", to paraphrase Hank Hill.
That does NOT look fun
So after connecting your wallet, no matter the ominous per-tile player-created contracts, every keypress drains your wallet.
Oh, and of course in the author's example they can "fish" at a certain tile and every "fish" is an NFT - but of course it is!
A "permissionless collaborative surface" that is nothing but a barren wasteland of nothingness fuelled by a desperation to find a reason d'être.
What you've created there is a sandbox, maybe, but not a game. There's nothing to do there, no goals, no sights, and connecting wallets, deploying smart contracts, and literally paying for every step you take doesn't sound like fun either.