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In Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, when the player’s character achieves level 55 (the max level), they gain the option to *prestige*. If the prestige option is selected, all unlocked weapons and perks are removed, so the player must earn them again on a second quest to hit the level 55 cap. Leveling up and the cycle of prestige soothe players with tidbits of individual expression and hierarchal worth in the form of prestige emblems displayed next to the player’s call tag in game lobbies. Achieving 10th prestige in CoD became a right-of-passage for elite players.
The History of Gaming and Its Web3 Future
Sal Qadir
Basically if you’re a regular old venture capitalist and you invest $1 billion in an artificial intelligence startup at a $10 billion valuation, you only make money if the startup eventually sells or goes public at a higher valuation. But if you’re Amazon and you invest $1 billion in an AI startup at a $10 billion valuation, and as part of the deal it agrees to pay you $500 million a year for computing power, you can make money on the commercial deal even if the investment doesn’t work out. You are investing not only to make money on the deal, but also to increase your own revenue. (And you might not even be investing cash — the $1 billion might be in the form of compute rather than money.) This lowers your bar for investing,3 so you will be willing to invest more money at higher valuations in AI startups if you can also get the commercial deals. Which means that regular old VCs will either be frozen out of those deals, or will have to overpay for them.
Shareholders Are People, Too
bloomberg.com
Technology companies are not just exercising a form of sovereignty over how citizens behave on digital platforms; they are also shaping behaviors and interactions.
The Technopolar Moment
foreignaffairs.com
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