This article analyzes specific characteristics of value created through digital scarcity and blockchain-proven ownership in cryptogames. Our object of study is CryptoKitties, the first instance of a blockchain-based game that has garnered media recognition and financial interest. The objective of this article is to demonstrate the limits of scarcity in value construction for owners of CryptoKitties tokens, manifested as breedable virtual cats. Our work extends the trends set out by earlier cryptocurrency studies from the perspective of cultural studies. For the purpose of this article, we rely on open blockchain analytics such as DappRadar and Etherscan, as well as player-created analytics, backed by a one-year-long participant observation period in the said game for research material. Combining theoretical cryptocurrency and Bitcoin studies, open data analysis, and virtual ethnography enables a grounded discussion on blockchain-based game design and play.

This paper presents the case of the blockchain-based game Cryp-toKitties (Axiom Zen, 2017), more specifically, one particular way of making game tokens potentially more valuable by labeling them 'vintage'. Firstly, I show how the meaning of 'vintage' was collectively constructed by the community of players and negotiated online until it was acknowledged by the owners of the game. Secondly, I measure the influence of the 'vintage' label on the game market in the first six months of 2018. I base my measurements on open market data available through such services as KittyHelper, Etherscan and the Chrome plug-in CKBox. I conclude that 'vintage kitties' did not acquire surplus market value even after they became a publicly recognized part of the game: breeding them resulted in losses for the majority of players. However, their retro aesthetics inspired creativity of many players and signified the social status of "the new rich".

CryptoKitties (Axiom Zen 2017) is a pioneering blockchain-based game that disrupts the 'classic game model ' (Juul 2003; in a way that turns it into a gambling web application. As previous research has shown, its mechanics are almost exclusively based on chance (Scholten et al 2019), and the rest is mostly speculation with game assets (Lee, Yoo and Jang 2019). This raises the question whether this game requires any skill, such as strategic planning. In my case study, I revisit the game system and perform a practice of playing it to differentiate between unpredictable (or "aleatory", as in Johnson 2018) and decision-making points in the game. I argue that mapping the journey of a player should complement analysis of the game system to assess the balance between skill and chance in a better-informed manner.

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Little known beyond the Russian speaking world, The Story of Wanderings is a dark fantasy film produced in the late period of the Soviet cinema. The film was classified as a children's film by the director, film critics, and the state. Produced by Mosfilm, the third oldest and the most influential film studio in Soviet Russia, it is a rare example of Soviet children's horror, featuring several death scenes and a personified plague. Death's presence in The Story of Wanderings stands in contrast to idealised Soviet pioneers selfsacrificing themselves for the good of others, by presenting a world of flawed characters stymied by the ambient everpresence of death. In post-Soviet Russian-speaking territories, the film is understood critically as a masterfully constructed 'adult' horror disguised as a state-sponsored family film. This article examines the way Alexander Mitta's film serves a 'dual audience' in the context of a socialist 'cultural industry' that lacked an established horror genre. It also highlights how the contradictions of late Socialism are revealed in the specific power dynamics between the adult and child characters of the film.