Welcome to 2022; it's a mess.
So I really hope you're not sick and tired of hearing about NFTs, the blockchain and Metaverse; because trust me when I say that those buzzwords are due to hit a veritable fever pitch over the course of the next few months. (I bet Elon Musk is kicking himself that he didn't knock up Grimes a few years later so that they could have auctioned of his son's name as an NFT. Better luck next time, Martian Homehunter.) This plaything of the already rich is dripping off every single news story you can think of, stories about crime, national supermarket chains and, yes, even gaming. All because these desperate little gremlins can't bear the though of missing out on the ground floor of this 'revolutionary' new concept; investment with more steps and less reward. That right, don't you want to become financially involved with your favourite game franchise only with a fraction of the returns an actual shareholder would receive, absolutely no power in influencing those games with your money like an actual shareholder can have and the ever-present threat looming over your neck that at the drop of your hat the market might pop and everything you own will become worthless? (That last one actually is enjoyed by some shareholders out there.) 'Cause if not then this topic must be wearing very thin with you too.
For me the funniest new Metaverse-related nowhere-project came from Walmart's giddy adoption of Metaverse technologies. Well I say 'adoption', what I really mean is hopeful dreaming, because this whole concept of an 'Oasis' style virtual world that holds everything you could want to do in real life but in a virtual space is still a pipe dream so far. But Walmart, eager giant shopping market conglomerate that they are, want in on the ground floor, baby; they want to be cooked into the concrete! As such, they released a mock-up video to the public, wistfully dreaming about the pleasures of a fully virtual shopping experience. One guided entirely within a VR headset through the direction of a personalised shopping assistant who's annoyingly present during your entire shop and whom has the gall to make suggestions! That's right, at one point in the video our Virtual Intelligence here notes that we have milk in our fridge at home (How does she know that?) so that we can put the one we picked up back. How far could they take that concept? Amazon has the whole 'other users who purchased that also got this' widget on their store page, so is it so wild to imagine a world where this robot lady spots the whiskey you've just bought and suggests a chaser? "Oh, I've noticed you're an alcoholic; shall we further feed that addiction so that my corporate overlords can profit from it?" I'm sure that will go down well and not cause a single compliant from anyone, ever.
Additionally, Walmart seem to be as confused as to what this whole Metaverse thing will be useful for as much as everyone else is. I mean, general consensus is that this seems like more hassle than current online shopping, but Walmart seems unable to even figure out where someone would make use of this service. During the demo video, the assistant mentions how our car is being fuelled up and that these groceries will be taken out to it. So wait- am I supposedly in the parking lot right now, sitting in my car with a headset on, pretending to walk around the store that is just a few feet away from me? Am I literally wandering around the real Walmart's shop shelves with a VR blindfold on, bumping into other shoppers and causing a nuisance for myself? Or am I actually at home, but my Tesla-powered robot car has been hijacked by Walmart's VIs in order to be my delivery boy for the groceries? Somehow every single possibility there is a bad one. Way to sell the concept, team!
But if that was the most amusing, what has been the most painful? Well that would easily go to another Metaverse proposition; the Cryptoland project. Oh good lord what an ugly, ugly disaster. Typically I wouldn't keep up with the hundreds of pathetic cryptobro scam schemes that flare up and sizzle out overnight, but most of them don't come with a nifty animated video. Oh yeah, these lunatics went all out to advertise their Metaverse-crypto dream project with an extended explanation video featuring godawful animation, eye-watering bad voice acting, kill-me-now jokes, haemorrhage inducing musicals and a romance subplot so bad my skin crawled clean off my body to start a den in the attic. It took weeks for the creators to realise what a horror they had created and take it down, (either that or there was a copyright claim filed for the stolen animation assets and/or obviously unlicensed song soundtracks) but the damage was done. Everyone has seen it, it has been captured and reuploaded, and now we'll have to stare into the soulless eyes of it's Cryptocoin mascot popping up in memes across all unexpected corners of the Internet for the rest of time. Nice going, guys.
Now the obvious question is: what even was Cryptoland's idea? Well it's a little hard to keep track of everything thanks to my active bawling for every awful frame rendered on the screen, but I think it was something like this: Cryptoland is a scheme to create a Metaverse island resort that would be a hub for all kinds of NFT trading, Crypto gambling, and everything you could imagine off the blockchain, all whilst coinciding with a real-life island off the coast of Fiji that these creeps could go visit. So you could buy a property NFT on Cryptoland and then go stay at that place in real life whilst, presumably, sharing airspace with other loathsome wretches who were duped by this scam. The video features an anthropomorphic coin host called 'Connie' who sounds like the sort of amusement park mascot that you would absolutely not leave your children around, a frankly criminal number of embarrassingly outdated jokes and memes, all utilised pathetically badly, (the Bitconnect guy is no longer funny. They killed it.) and this smug sense of 'you know this is the greatest idea ever' that permeates every scene so much that you simply can't settle on whatever the hell it is they're trying to sell here and just instinctively hate it's guts. Oh, and there's a stereotypical boring pixie-chill-girl for the video's main character, Christopher, to poorly fawn over, (Because we need that in our animated marketing pitch musical extravaganza- thanks bunches) who's every line sounds like it was recorded on a mobile phone balancing on a cabinet on the otherside of the kitchen. So at least someone recognised this trainwreck and simply got the bag and left; good on Miss Phone-it-in. Or perhaps I should say that all of this is what Cryptoland was going to be, because they just fell through on their $12 million bid to buy that island in Fiji, and now the land is back on the market. (Yikes, I guess Reddit Island 3.0 is going to remain a dream forever.)
But not every bit of NFT adjacent news was stupidly funny or apocalyptically awful; some of it was just plain sad. (And this is where we come to the gaming side of things.) For one, a member of 'Linkin Park' went full uniformed-boomer talk about the potential of NFTs in games. He spouted wide eyed dreams trying to open gamer's minds with "buying a skin in Fortnite and then using it in Apex, or COD, or Minecraft; all without paying extra because you own the skin!"(I'm paraphrasing, but that is the general gist) Despite this man apparently being an actual gamer and a freakin' Streamer in his spare time, as well as an adult with a fully formed and 'presumably' working frontal lobe, apparently he couldn't possibly spot the massive glaring problem with his own stupid example. Who is going to code these skins into these games? The developers? Of every single online game ever? The very second one company makes their NFT skin to sell, they're just going to smoke signal all other online companies across the world to stop what they're doing and get on coding these skins into their game that instant, completely free of charge, because this NFT's one future owner might someday want to cross this skin over to their game? Genuine nonsensical gibberish rockets around in these people's heads and comes out of their mouths (or Tweets) as 'ideas for NFTs!' How do you reason with delusional people? Someone please tell me.
And it goes one devotion deeper into the covenant of sad disappointment, because now our most beloved video game voice actors are sacrificing their reputations on the hard alter of NFT praise. (Maybe we should speak their garbled language and explain how their careers are, in fact, Non-Fungible) Tara Strong is making a movie with her friends starring NFTs, but at least her heart is in the right place with that one so I can kind of excuse it in the cold recesses of my soul; with Troy Baker on the otherhand, it's harder. Troy is one of the most celebrated voice actors in the gaming industry with roles in Call of Duty, The Last of Us, Bioshock Infinite, Death Stranding- that's just naming a handful because I probably don't even have to introduce the guy to you- he's a legend. But yes, he advertised an NFT project and its, ah... it's pretty bad.
Voiceverse is this very questionable NFT fuelled prospective service that proposed to gather up AI generated voices of famous consenting vocal artists and sell the rights to generate lines using those voices as NFTs. If that sounds confusing, that's because it is. It's also kind of weird. The idea is for people to have their Metaverse avatars spew personalised lies of dialogue in their favourite famous person's voice, but it easily opens up all kinds of moral quandaries about how this will effect the value proposition of voice actors, as well as hypothetical fears such as people falsifying voice lines for fake evidence on all sort of heinous subjects. All that isn't even touching on the fact that if we're being honest with ourselves, the NFT aspect of this bears questionable relevance to the product. I can see the argument that this is the easiest way to democratize the service they want to provide, but I have to wonder if pre-existing services like Cameo doesn't already achieve pretty similar results without the moral crises, environmental impact and probably with better inflections on the actual line reads. (I've heard AI voice acting, it sucks.)
But of course, when confronted with these concerns, Troy did what most do in the NFT bubble- he strawmanned a little. One of the reasons his original endorsement rubbed so many people the wrong way, was because of the offhanded way that Baker tried to ward off criticism before it could arise with his sign off: "You can hate or you can create. What'll it be?" Which just oozes with the kind of self righteous fart sniffing that makes you just want to go "Oh, go spin on a fat one you pompous pr-" but I digress. That was the only part of this whole PR disaster that Troy addressed. He acknowledged how that was a bit confrontational and kind-of apologised, but not really. Then, of course, it came out that Voiceverse has pirated one of it's sample lines from a wholly not-consenting voice actress and now suddenly all the news sites are saying things like "Troy Baker backed Voiceverse accused of stealing" and "Troy Baker supports Voice actor thieves?" And it all sucks. It sucks because I don't just like Troy Baker, I respect the hell out of him, and seeing his goodwill just melt away thanks to this whole stupid mess is... it sucks, okay? This isn't a hill that anyone should be dying on.
And so there it is: hardly one month into 2022 and everything feels like it's on fire thanks to NFT garbage. Okay, I think that Walmart video and Cryptoland were actually back from December, but I heard about them in this month. (And Cryptoland only lost their island this month.) I don't know what it's going to take for the Non Fungible spell to break over the minds of the online collective, but we really need that to hurry up and get it all over with already before I end up losing faith in everything and everyone I once respected. (Not that I ever respected Walmart at all... yikes.) Troy Baker is still a legend, and no matter how odd his self-marketing choices are, I'll still get a kick out of identifying his voice ringing out of a cool new game character. God this whole topic is giving me a headache, let me go watch a reupload of Cryptoland one more time so that I can slip into that deep coma again.
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