About the Explanation of Development Authorization for Star Keeper Branch Version

[fcgamer | 4,723]

14 minutes ago, Tulpa said:

Sell your copy to Tanooki! He wants to play it.

I think I'm gonna throw this one in my next malis cash but then after that yeah, it'll likely be up for grabs 

[Scrobins | 1,725]

10 hours ago, zxdplay said:

I didn't dodge verifying my real identity, I just don't know how to verify it.

I don’t think the pictures are sufficient for me, there are plenty of photos of the box and manual out there that one could easily just print those photos. Why do you have so many more copies of those if you didn’t make more copies?

Anyway, John Riggs gave me the email address from which the developer conversed with him. It is not the same email you used to register here. That alone isn’t an issue, but worth making sure. I sent an email to the email account Riggs gave me yesterday. Your identity would be confirmed in my eyes if you responded to my email.

[zxdplay | 149]

@Scrobins

cn87arts@gmail.com

cn_87arts@yahoo.com

These two mailboxes are mine. yahoo is the official mailbox of 87Arts, and gmail is my personal mailbox.

Edited March 16, 2023 by zxdplay

[Scrobins | 1,725]

Just now, zxdplay said:

@Scrobins

cn87arts@gmail.com

cn_87arts@yahoo.com

These two mailboxes are mine. yahoo is the official mailbox of 87Arts, and gmail is my personal mailbox.

 

Fantastic, glad to have that issue settled, thank you.

[MrWunderful | 2,927]

We got the identity verified, now we just need to figure out the nft thing!

[Tulpa | 3,493]

Just now, MrWunderful said:

We got the identity verified, now we just need to figure out the nft thing!

Specifically, some other route than the NFT thing.

[fcgamer | 4,723]

45 minutes ago, Scrobins said:

Why do you have so many more copies of those if you didn’t make more copies?

Doesn't seem odd to me

[a3quit4s | 4,097]

Well glad to know it’s really you 87arts. Good luck with your NFTs and thanks for stopping by but there’s not much left to do in this thread lol

[Scrobins | 1,725]

@zxdplayI wish you luck in doing what you want and what you think is best. I disagree with your plan, but respect your right to do with your IP as you please.

That said, if you change your mind, I and the staff here at VGS would be happy to create a private discord room where maybe we could find a way to rerelease your game, make alterations to the rom to distinguish it from the original release, and find a way to work with the hardware that isn’t overly burdensome. You would retain ownership of the IP, and would get our help with advertising and additional art in exchange for a share of the profits. Our offer is always open. 

[Tulpa | 3,493]

@zxdplay Please consider Scrobins' offer. If anything, maybe as a backup plan in case the NFT thing (very likely) doesn't work out.

[BlackVega | 583]

I feel like this topic is going to light up another rant about NFTs

Alright I will (fingers crossed). Personally for me NFTs are lousy and uninteresting and I will never buy one because you are just buying a .jpg file. This isn't worth investing for me. Will anyone else like to buy one? Who knows. Maybe they would consider it some sort of official digital art or something and would like to get one. How they are sold exactly? I don't know and I don't care because this is not my business. Either way if they decide to sell NFTs I genuinely wish them successful business

[Khromak | 768]

I said it earlier in the thread, but to answer your...question...? @BlackVega, NFT in this case isn't so much about the art as it is about the ledger, which brings along with it transferability. The idea is that 87arts can sell this thing to someone, which comes along with the rights to make a game. The guy who buys it will make Starkeeper: Blitz, a fighting game for Genesis. Then that guy can sell the NFT to another developer, transferring the rights to him. Then this guy makes Starkeeper: Savior, an RPG for the PS1.

The "benefit" to the NFT part is that these sales will prove to anyone who bothers to look that "Guy 1" bought it from 87arts, and that "Guy 2" bought it from Guy 1. This means that it's easy to track who owns the rights to make these games, and since it's decentralized, it doesn't rely upon a database or owner to maintain/verify this stuff, anyone can.

Now granted, as others have already said, this is basically just cheap (in quality and price) legal contracting. It would be very, very, very difficult for 87arts to enforce these "contracts" if someone did something illicit after getting the rights, and equally difficult for these people to enforce the "contract" if 87arts doesn't follow through on his part, or if Guy 1 keeps making games after selling and Guy 2 gets upset, especially if they're also in different countries, and never actually signed anything.

I'm not a lawyer and I've never bought an NFT or owned a single cryptocurrency, so take what I've said above with a grain of salt, but I've heard lawyers and cryptobros talk about these things at length and this is what I took away from it.

Never mind the fact that this also relies on the idea that developers want to make a Starkeeper game in the first place, but that's a whole 'nother topic we've already beaten to death.

[Tulpa | 3,493]

Yeah, there's nothing truly enforceable about the NFT "contract", as far as I can see. And the contract or user agreement or whatever he had that went with it had a ton of loopholes. He needs a lawyer to iron this out, but can't afford one currently.

That's why a lot of us are saying drop the NFT idea and look for an alternate source of funding.

 

[BlackVega | 583]

Aha wait I misinterpreted this a little and now I understand the author wants to sell the games in a form of NFT. Well, to be clear here- what is an NFT? I know this may sound super dumb but the idea of NFTs is super new and NFTs exploded like a year ago and were very skeptically criticized from the very start and this is the first time I heard this abbreviation. People said NFT is basically a picture that is signed to your account (I don't even know what sort of an account) to indicate that you own this picture. However... it is still just a stupid picture on your computer you can download from the internet. Nothing more, nothing less. If NFT is not just a picture then I admit I'm a little lost in this. I try to read something about it and even as an engineer I can barely understand the idea of NFTs. The answers above are...... complicated to say the least. In short, if this is anything people are supposed to deal with then whatever this idea is it is already doomed. People will ignore anything this complicated. People like simple stuff

Actually... why not just sell roms on a website? People have been doing it for years and they know how it works

[BlackVega | 583]

OK now I read more posts and somehow I know even less. This topic is about selling the rights to someone to make a romhack in a form of an NFT..... what? What is this topic even about?

[Tulpa | 3,493]

13 minutes ago, BlackVega said:

OK now I read more posts and somehow I know even less. This topic is about selling the rights to someone to make a romhack in a form of an NFT..... what? What is this topic even about?

No, he's selling NFTs that give you license to make "branch games" based on Star Keeper's intellectual property. Meaning, you can make whatever game you want using graphics or story from the original game on whatever platform, engine, or genre you choose. Basically, the sprites and stuff can be repurposed into another game.

He's not releasing the source code for the original game.

Yes, we've been over the fact that the Star Keeper IP isn't exactly the most desirable thing in gaming, it's unlikely devs will buy an NFT to make branch games, that the lore of the game is tied into the original NES game, and that it's unlikely to garner any attention beyond the small retro gaming community that wants to play the original.

He's pretty set on going through with this.

28 minutes ago, BlackVega said:

what is an NFT?

Non-fungible token.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-fungible_token

[Link | 2,709]

26 minutes ago, BlackVega said:

now I understand the author wants to sell the games in a form of NFT.

No. He wants to sell rights to create new games, in the form of NFTs. The rest of your description of what an NFT is, is missing a bit of nuance, but it's essentially correct in my opinion, and slso the nuance is a lot of BS applicable oy to the parties that agree to abide by the rules like some club on a playground except serious money is involved (and transcribed over to fake money)

He is not offering the original code or access to the program, so they're not romhacks, and it's not even allowed to make the new games for NES, so they're doubly so not romhacks.

 

[Khromak | 768]

Well, that's a long story. Firstly, he doesn't sell a ROM on the internet because he doesn't want people making repro carts, and since it's a custom mapper the ROM probably wouldn't work with most emulators (unless they integrate support for it).

NFT stands for Non-fungible token, basically it means that each NFT is a unique token, not fungible (swappable, basically) with any other one. A dollar bill is fungible, because each dollar bill is interchangeable with any other dollar bill. NFTs are not, if he releases 10 NFTs, they're NFT1, NFT2, etc. and they're individually trackable and transferrable.

These are used for art because then they can say "you own the NFT of this colorful monkey". You don't actually own the art or copyright, but if you have the NFT you can sell it to some other shlub who hopefully pays more for it because ponzi scheme.

Blockchain technology, which is the backbone of cryptocurrency and also NFTs, is decentralized, meaning that instead of going to Nintendo's servers to authenticate if you own Splatoon 2, or Bank of America's website to determine your balance, it's all available on the internet for anyone to see. People have "wallets" which are basically internet addresses where all their data is stored. They have a password which allows them to transfer things to/from this "wallet" including cryptocurrencies, NFTs, etc. Anyone can look up the wallet and what's in it, anyone can look up the transaction history of who transfer what to whom and when.

The advantages are that everyone can independently verify the ownership of a thing, and that there's no authority to "revert" things. Once you transfer cryptocurrency to another wallet it's gone, that's permanent and has been recorded on the chain, it can't go backwards.

Lastly: sometimes when people buy NFTs or cryptocurrencies etc. they have "smart contracts" built in which say stuff like "when you buy this you get XYZ" or some such similar things. People think this is enforceable in court and it might be, but they're typically written by coders, not lawyers, so good luck with that. Also if it crosses borders, which court has jurisdiction? Good luck enforcing any of this nonsense.

Anyway that's the short version, believe it or not...I simplified a lot of things for the sake of your sanity.

[BlackVega | 583]

Alright, thank you very much for the answers. Well, so this topic is actually intended for developers, not end consumers, at least I got that one. Well, to put things into perspective there aren't that many developers compared to end consumers so why release game programming tools or artwork or just permission to create something new in an official form like an NFT? This part got me very confused. Isn't this stuff usually discussed in private with developers and any sort of business is also done in private? I always appreciate and respect any kind of developer and programmer with the intention to create something new but this must be the most ambiguous topic I've read in the last 5 years. I presume this topic has already been hammered to death so I will not put more oil into the fire

[Tulpa | 3,493]

87arts has acknowledged that he's trying to trailblaze with the NFT concept.

I can kind of see what he's going for and why he wants to do this, but I think there's too many drawbacks and legal loopholes for it. A lot of the discussion went in circles because he thought we didn't see how it would work, when we largely did, we just didn't think it was a good idea.

He's free to try it, but as the saying goes, the first one through the brick wall gets bloodied. I wouldn't want to be the sacrificial lamb on an untested concept. A lot of this is pinned on hopes and dreams rather than anything concrete.

 

Edited March 16, 2023 by Tulpa

[Link | 2,709]

21 minutes ago, Tulpa said:

A lot of this is pinned on hopes and dreams rather than anything concrete.

Yeah, well, you can't stick a pin through concrete! Duh! 

[Tulpa | 3,493]

1 minute ago, Link said:

Yeah, well, you can't stick a pin through concrete! Duh! 

Ah, man, I've been doing it wrong for years.

[darkchylde28 | 1,546]

7 minutes ago, Link said:

Yeah, well, you can't stick a pin through concrete! Duh! 

[MrWunderful | 2,927]

24 minutes ago, Link said:

Yeah, well, you can't stick a pin through concrete! Duh! 

We do it all the time!

 

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[Tanooki | 4,933]

20 hours ago, Tulpa said:

If you invest in the NFT, there's little to no recourse if it goes sideways, right? Yeah, something doesn't smell right.

Yeah you can lose it, just like people who did all those fan funded campaigns for games (not on kickstarter) where you donate, it's good as sent, not put into a wallet like KS does that protects it to some degree.  ANyone could start up an indigogo with some faked plans, hose 50K out of gamers and vanish and that's that.  That's about where this NFT scheme is, pay up...and profit?