NFTsoft

 Non Fungible Guillemot 

If there is one thing this year will be known for, more than anything else, it's going to be the unending rug pull crypto scams that have been enabled by the rise and almost instantaneous fall of NFTs. What was originally marketed as a cool way for artists to be credited and rewarded for their hardwork, something has been notoriously abused in the age of the internet, quickly devolved into endless get-rich-quick schemes by unscrupulous asshats without a talent of creativity left in their bones. In 2021 alone there have been a staggering number of high-profile and seemingly obvious pump and dump schemes, I mean 'Squid Game coin'? Really? How do these people dress themselves in the morning? Okay so yeah, maybe that was actually wasn't technically NFT reliant, but how could I not mention the Squid game coin? How about the Lazy Lions and Bored Apes? Yeah, that's a literal scheme to turn objectively ugly art into priceless collectibles that no one outside of these overly optimistic ecosystems are going to want to buy from. (That's a lot of perceived value going nowhere) And what has come from all of that narrow-box success? The mindbogglingly inept Internet show: 'Red Ape Family'. Just perfect.

But where am I going with this, you may ask? Good question. So whenever it comes to things that could generate bunches of money it's obvious that the vultures over in the gaming industry are going to start circling the wagons because this medium is like a vacuum for funds. Steam had to put their foot down early about not allowing any of these sorts of NFT schemes on their platform, likely on account for how real-life value trading nearly got Valve wrapped up in international wire-crimes back with Counterstrike. But some aspiring developers have in-kind expressed some ideas of wanting to make games featured around NFTs, and they're always very careful with such statements too, in order to ensure that they always sound like benign curios, simply enchanted by the wonder of it all. (As though they'd give this even the slightest time of day if people weren't becoming millionaires off it.)

Even hearing of these ideas makes me cringe in thinking how games might be purposely compromised in order to fit in some NFT mechanic. Using Blockchain-ownership to justify some onerous design choice that actively encourages the purchase of some vague NFT, having bidding wars on special assets just because the team did a particularly desirable colour swap on this particular one, (a total Assassin's Creed move) or maybe something totally unhinged and moronic like I read about from one idiot who has no idea what games even are. This was an idea wherein he proposed a Mario Kart player where someone buys the character of Mario, makes him able to win every race and then rents access to Mario for other people to play as him. I would do you all a disservice to explain how mind-shatteringly stupid that even is as a concept, so I'll let your own sanity just do backflips with trying to get to grips with that primordial sin which is that idea. 

Yet what if I told you that this was no longer the realm of fiction and speculation? What if I told you that there was one video game company which actually went the distance to set a trend by announcing their own imminent NFT efforts, and what if I then blew your mind by saying that it was Ubisoft. That's right, Ubisoft. The kings of 'We lack the balls to take any risks so we've been trend riding for the past ten years with all of our games', the 'we've adopted and weakened the open world genre, but will actually attempt to take credit for the entire movement we didn't start when Breath of Wild becomes popular' company. Those guys were ahead of the curve on something! Or rather, they were ahead of their big name competition, the small companies announced their plans months ahead of Yves and his gang of buffoons. And another reason might be because the other companies considering this are actually looking for a unique way to use NFTs, whilst Ubisoft's proposal is, fittingly, logically bankrupt.

Ubisoft wants us to close our eyes and imagine a world where Ghost Recon Breakpoint is enough of a game to justify being the pioneer of the NFT trend. Yeah, Ubisoft still aren't brave enough to stick this onto an actual upcoming game and risk a launch, so instead they attached it to an rotting cadaver of a a game to see if it manages to resuscitate the corpse. My hopes aren't high. (Actually I don't know, as of time of writing this blog the biggest Breakpoint Stream on Twitch is a French woman with 14 whole viewers, so maybe this game is ripe to pop off and I don't even know!) And how are they going to change the world? Can you guess? It's the most bare bones basic way possible: assets you can buy off their store that'll be imprinted with a random serial number that you will 'own'. That's it. I'm not kidding.

It's not clear if any of these assets will be unique in model, but from the Youtube video which Ubisoft dropped, it seems to be a system where these assets will be sold in limited degrees with these numbers attached to each sale, but considering that's how limited time marketplace sales work in games anyway, there's nothing special about that. In fact, even the idea of having a gun with unique numbers that tracks the owners who used it isn't special, Team Fortress 2 has been doing that for a while. Both these empty sales points are said to be tools to help make players 'part of the game legacy' whatever that means, but neither require the blockchain to function and thus sound more like excuses. Throw this ontop of the fact that Ubisoft's best foot forward for the NFT craze is to propose more microtransactions, and it's not hard to see that we've stumbled upon another plain example of 'greedy soulless machine wants to convince us that it's trying to save the world'. At least they said they won't use Ethereum, so the carbon footprint won't kill us alongside making us cringe.

The only part of this proposal which is actually unique and could only be done through the blockchain is the whole idea of reselling these assets. Well, not the idea, but rather the mandatory bitcoin kickback that Ubisoft will receive with each transaction. (Which is the point of all this) Steam have allowed ingame marketplaces in the past, and as for how transferrable these special NFTs will be across games, well that depends on how willing Ubisoft are to actually support this. Are they going to model these ingame items for every future Ubisoft title? Are we going to running around ancient Japan with a tactical camo helmet in Assassin's Creed Infinity 3? And what about other non-Ubisoft games- okay, that's not even a question- no competitors are going to waste their time modelling someone else's content into their game to satisfy some vapid NFT chase. Undoubtedly this will all be entirely closed ecosystem trading and showcasing, which defeats the whole purpose of NFTs and makes this proposal redundant at every level of it's implementation.

We take Ubisoft bashing here for granted, whilst always making sure that we give credit where it's due and never point a finger without having an evidence-backed reason to do so. That's only fair, I think. And yet consistently I've been unable to say anything else about Ubisoft but 'wow, that's stupid'; because time and time again the Ubisoft creatives are proving themselves to be some of the literal dumbest human beings in art. They are either dedicated to squandering ideas championed by their more talented subordinates, or writing up elaborate plans for clueless concepts that have no future before they've even left the boardroom. Thank god, at least, that the public has seen right through their blind optimism and downvoted this trailer to death. Literally, Ubisoft killed the trailer after the response they received. Which is doubly impressive when you realise that Youtube just removed dislikes. (Although through some extensions you can still find the score and see it was ten of thousands into the dislikes. So people are still willing to let their displeasure known as long as it hurts someone.) Will they go through with it anyway? Probably. Ubisoft management are about as competent as a room of goats with suitcases.