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RE: Drugwars - Introducing FUTURE the new DrugWars Token.
Steem is also a game not an investment. If you buy Steem thinking it's a security you could lose your money too. If you post on Steem assuming you will get money you could be wrong. There is uncertainty in all of this.
Cryptocurrencies generally are considered an investment in the financial world though. The two things they are generally classed as are investments or a form of currency (in reality they are both but some people will class them as only one or the other). They certainly aren't a game though. Investing in them is uncertain so you could say investing in them is a "gamble" but something being uncertain / being a "gamble" is not the same as it being a game and cryptocurrencies do not meet the basic definition of a game.
You can also lose money on securities. Cryptocurrencies are a high risk, potentially high reward investment and investing in anything comes down to a risk-reward analysis, with term deposits and government bonds etc being low risk, real estate being about medium risk and shares and cryptocurrencies being regarded as high risk investments (cryptocurrencies more-so than shares but both are high risk investments). Higher risk investments have a higher risk of losing money but also typically have higher potential returns. That's where risk / reward analysis comes in, as well as whether an investor is risk-averse etc.
Posting on steem also doesn't have the risk that buying steem does. You are potentially wasting time there, not wasting money directly like you would if you spent money on steem and the value of steem falls.
It can be debatable if cryptocurrencies are investments or not (though the general concensus seems to be that they are an investment, albeit a high risk one), but they aren't a game. Being uncertain does not mean it is a game.
A college degree is considered an investment too. Does this mean we should have the right to sue all colleges who put us deep into debt via college loans etc? After all, we could make the claim of false advertising, scam, etc, just as some people say about the gaming business.
My point is, yes you can go with that angle but to be lawsuit happy only brings greater lawsuit risk for all parties. Lawyers benefit of course when everyone is suing everyone but the industry suffers because innovation becomes much more costly.
I'm going to say I agree that from an ethical point of view perhaps the DrugWars team messed up. They did not consider the impact their decisions could have on the sentiment of their customers/players. Player sentiment in my opinion should come before all.
If they can find a way to profit in a way where the players share in the success as stakeholders then I'd be okay with it. Drugwars in my opinion should also become an SMT and support the Steem ecosystem but the exact economics in my opinion need to be negotiated with the community. The team needs to understand that a loyal fanbase can allow future games to inherit the same players (player loyalty) in the same way Blizzard for example did with World of Warcraft from the Starcraft, Diablo and other fanbases.
"A college degree is considered an investment too. "
Not in the way I'm talking. I'm talking about financial investments - shares, term deposits, bonds, rental properties, government bonds etc. A university degree does not fit into that description, but yes, it is an investment in yourself, but not a financial investment. It would have been ridiculous in the financial planning courses etc I did at university if we learned about those sorts of investments, because investing in financial investments is a completely different thing to investing in yourself via education etc.
But I never went with the angle of lawsuits or calling drugwars a scam. I said I don't agree with the people calling it a scam etc and I think it is just that they changed direction, but people's choices were still made based on the value proposition originally mentioned so that included the steem, not just the upgrade. All of this is truthful. I don't think it is a scam, and I think what they do from here might be what actually improves the game, but it doesn't change the fact people put money into it based on the value proposition offered. That's what the situation is. I don't think people should sue them or call them scammers, but I do think both morally and for the sake of positive public relations they shouldn't pump their new coin with the steem spent as artificially doing that by buying it themselves doesn't often work so people will lose out from them doing that, but they SHOULD continue paying out steem via drug wars until it is all gone. They've now given us future tokens but still seem to be paying steem so I think they may actually be doing it, and if they are doing it, I think that's the best thing they could have done.
I never went with the angle of suing them or calling them a scam but I did say they should respond correctly to changing the way the game works and the resulting backlash, and that I don't blame other people for being pissed off.
As for games, it was the other person who was making a point about it being a game anyway as though that absolved it of responsibility, but it doesn't. If it did, people wouldn't have been able to get refunds on No Mans Sky for their false advertising. It doesn't matter if steem is a game or not, as that doesn't change anything in this situation, but you'd be really stretching to say that it is / it does meet the definition of a game and most people wouldn't agree with someone who made that claim, regardless of if it was steem or bitcoin or whatever else. Risk and uncertainty doesn't make something a game either, or shares would be a game too as they are uncertain, risky and can drop too.
How someone invests could be gamified but that's them gamifying a task in their life. I gamify most of my life as it works well for me and my goals but that doesn't make the individual tasks at their essence a game. It gamifies my experience of doing that task.
As far as I can see we agree that player sentiment / positive public relations is important in this situation and they messed up ethically. I never said we should sue them and I talked about what they could do to not "look like" scammers etc. I think we actually agree on the main point here because I said nothing about suing them and actually said I don't agree with calling them a scam etc. We just disagree on whether cryptocurrencies at their root are games or not and whether cryptocurrencies are considered investments, and also we were using different definitions of the word investment as I was using the financial definition and you were using the broader definition that includes investing in yourself etc. We agree on the main point here, and I don't think anyone should be suing drugwars.
No that isn't "general consensus" unless you can cite some poll data to support this claim. Show me sentiment which shows most people want cryptocurrencies to be treated as securities?
Okay, my bad, I should have worded that differently. It "seems" to be the general concensus in the financial world. I meant in terms of financial discussions, articles etc of cryptocurrencies.
I wasn't referring to what every Tom, Dick and Harry thinks of cryptocurrencies, because their opinions don't really matter for the purposes of this discussion. I was saying that when you read information on financial websites, tax office websites etc, most seem to consider it to be an investment (not necessarily only an investment but an investment still), so it is reasonable to believe that the financial world considers cryptocurrencies to be a potential investment. It's not necessarily regarded as a good investment as it is more risky than shares (which are otherwise considered the riskiest investment, and you can also lose money on them so the fact steem isn't certain doesn't mean anything because neither are shares - that reflects on how risky an investment is not whether it is an investment) but most see it is a digital asset and discuss it in the context of investing in it as an investment and in the context of it being used as a currency. The financial world seems to accept it as both an investment and a digital currency, and that makes sense because that's what it is.
I haven't gone and interviewed and polled people from finance but the general information expressed by the industry seems to suggest it is an investment and a digital currency, albeit a high risk one. I haven't gone and polled random people because that's not what I meant, I don't care what they think compared to the industry and a lot of people don't understand investing at all, let alone cryptocurrency.
But it definitely isn't a game. Cryptocurrencies can be used in games, like drugwars, but a cryptocurrency itself is not a game.
The air quotes around general consensus seem a bit unnecessarily hostile though. My reply was less about investments and more about the fact that a cryptocurrency isn't a game. Drugwars is, the cryptocurrency itself isn't. WOW is a game, the in-game currency isn't (it's interesting and has even been used for economic studies, but it isn't a game in its own right and neither is a proper cryptocurrency).
Whether it is an investment is debatable because it can be seen just as a currency or just as an investment, or most ideally both as it meets the definitions for both, but financial information generally seems to feel it fits the investment definition regardless of if they feel it is a good idea to invest in it or not, and if it is a choice between it being a game or being an investment, it is much closer to an investment than a game. You can gamify how you go about dealing with cryptocurrency (just like you can gamify washing dishes) but the cryptocurrency itself isn't a game in its own right. I don't really care if people class it as an investment or not, but it's not a game.
And also whether something is a game or not plays no role in what the drugwars devs should do either, because No Man's Sky was a game and only a game but their product did not match the advertising and that was enough to get people refunds so I don't really see how classing Steem as a game makes the actions the devs should take any different. In the case of drugwars, it was still a case of it said one thing, people put money in and then it changed. Steem being a game wouldn't change the fact their decision changed the value proposition that affected people spending money on the game. NMS is a game (and supposedly is finally actually being turned into what was promised) but the fact it didn't line up with the original marketing meant people spent money on it when they wouldn't have otherwise. The promise of steem in drugwars meant people spent money on it when they wouldn't have otherwise. It doesn't matter if these things are games or not. For the sake of good PR and morality, drugwars should pay out what is left in there first and I think they might be doing that by the looks of it, so if they are, that's a good decision on their part.
If you have a lot of steem power you get rewarded for voting as well or you can self vote which does give u a return so I don't agree with you saying steem isn't a investment
Is there a guarantee that your votes will be worth money? Or is it just an expectation?