Wtf is The Walking Dead Empires?

 A scam, probably. I'm guessing a scam.

I try to steer away from topics that I think I'm covering too much so that neither I, nor you, get overly familiar, and thus bored, with the same old thing. I mean of course I'm going to talk about games, but if I veer off on a tangent of the topic and stick rigidly to that then I'm just going to end up one-day missing the forest for this one particularly unique-looking tree with these really cool branches that cast sick grasping shadows in the moonlight. But then I see a trailer for The Walking Dead Empires, pick up pretty quickly, without being explicitly told because upfront and transparent marketing is for wimps, that this is an NFT project- then I can't just simply not talk about that! It's using the Walking Dead branding, which means that either this is an officially licenced AMC NFT game, which is just a hilarious proposition, or it's an unofficial NFT cash grab like that Squid Game NFT which made headlines a while back. And I think that's just as funny. So join me as I dip my toes into yet another non-fungible disaster, with 'TWD Empires!'

So the second you see a trailer full of funko-pop looking chibi versions of Walking Dead characters, you know something screwy is going on. Even when I have to admit that these all seem to be custom made quality assets, all things you absolutely can not take for granted when we're talking about NFT projects, that doesn't mean I'm not going to have a huge critical eye toward the validity of what I'm looking at as a package. In fact, I'd argue that the best chibi assets in the world would fit poorly within the world of The Walking Dead, due to the inherent mismatch of that visual aesthetic and the tone of the TWD universe. But this game had me even more critical than I would have been at first glance after I followed the link, scoured the page, and discovered that these artist have no less than three utterly distinct art-styles they're working with. Which I would say is a dead give-away of stolen art assets... but then this is branded by AMC themselves, so I guess I can give the team the benefit of the doubt and assume they just locked their artists inside of three totally different basements so that their work had no possible chance of matching up.

But what about the game that these assets are made for? Well, hilariously enough, The Walking Dead Empires is pitching itself as a blockchain-powered (Whatever that means) zombie survival MMORPG with NFTs haphazardly shoved in there. That's a lot of hats to wear, especially for a game that, judging from the trailers and screenshots, is a top-down tilt-cam action title similar to 'How To Survive'. I'm not saying that those sorts of games can't be MMOs or anything, just look at Lost Ark. I'm more just trying to highlight the absolute ambition radiating from what this game wants to be, when compared to the conceptual restraints it's operating within, the hairbrained ideas it's working with, and the pedigree of the team who are working on it. Their name is Ember Entertainment, and they've made only Mobile games. And from the two I looked at, it seems they are one of the millions of other small development teams out on the mobile space who love their 'city builder' paint-by-numbers games. You know, the type of game which is so generic that you can literally buy a pre-made archetype for it off the internet for pennies? Something with actual effort and, you know, a game inside of it isn't just out of their comfort zone, it's like throwing a Penguin into the middle of the Arctic and expecting it to be finished with an Igloo city within the year.

As one might expect from a totally legitimate project like this one, their official landing page is painfully short of actionable details. I know they expect this game to facilitate scavenging for supplies, base building and some sort of NFT-based land ownership system. (Because that always goes so well. Just ask ArcheAge.) There's not a single 'read more' prompt on the page, but about 4 paragraphs that end with a 'buy now' prompt which sends you to a page to buy their NFTs. So yeah, this definitely doesn't smell like a incredibly suspicious scam project at all. (Except it does. It does smell like that.) But apparently this is a legitimate thing, according to everything I can dig up. This game was supposedly even revealed at something called 'GoGalaGames' which is an absolute honey pot for garbage crypto game failure stories. I could start an entire dumpster-diving series based on their recommendations alone. Let anyone talented enough not to be featured on their platform count their many fortunes.

But what about the NFT side of all this? Because you know that 'buy' button has to lead somewhere, right? Well again, this is hardly touched on because this site is apparently allergic to providing genuine information, but as far as I can tell we've got an NFT crafting station that you have to own in order to create, quote, "A particular type of ingame item" that you can then sell on to friends or use yourself. Essentially creating an entirely player backed ingame economy, on the bones of real economy in order to make the damn items in the first place. Sounds legit. And then there's the land rush, because we can't be an NFT game project without a stupid land-rush strapped on top everything. Here we're looking at what seems to be cards of differing rarities that people can buy in order to own a piece of a yet-to-be revealed map so that can build their base ontop of it? Because I guess that's where 'Empire' comes into the title? One would have to ask what concerted base building has to do with a post apocalyptic setting, but then I hardly think these project creators have the mental acuity to comprehend what words like 'thematic consistency' mean.

So of course I'm going to get bored and look at the NFT storefront, because the landrush hasn't started yet so I can't get sad about all the pathetic saps that have spent thousands on digital land for a game that won't ever be released. Right now there are only 8 types of NFTs to buy and they're all crafting stations, 4 being Forges and the other 4 being Labs. Forges allow for weapons to be built who's tier is dependent on the rarity of forge that you own and Labs allow medical supplies to be made within the same metrics. So a pretty skin-deep crafting system so far. Oh, did I mention that these are all pre-sale NFTs because the game isn't finished and doesn't even have a release date or gameplay footage yet? (I felt that was implied.) Now if I can believe what the store front is telling me about how many of these NFTs were made, minted and sold (And trust me: I do not believe this site as far as I can throw it) than these have sold depressingly well. However they haven't sold out, which is curious. In fact, since I checked it first the other day and as I checked it now, all depleted inventory numbers have remained stunningly stagnant. Makes you think, doesn't it?

Now the only question is; how do I buy these NFTs? Because clearly I hate my money and want to give it to some spotty talentless hack running scams out of his attic, so what do I need to get in on the action? Well, these NFTs can only be bought with Gala coin- which, considering we're looking at coin prices in the tens of thousands, either makes these the most expensive NFTs on the market, or tells of a ludicrously valueless coin. And... Gala is hovering around 0.25 of USD as of writing this, so there's your answer. So the cheapest NFT is the 'Uncommon Lab'. (Huh, I just noticed that the lowest rarity of NFT is the 'Uncommon Lab'. Meaning there's no 'Common Lab'. It hasn't been sold out either, the common designation just doesn't exist. Truly some evolutionary rejects are helming this project.) But lets get to the maths. So that Lab costs 2,402 Gala, making the average price of this NFT about $600 USD. That kind of hurts, but it could be worse. Let's look at the most expensive, the Ancient Forge, which is 258,249 Gala. That's $64, 562.25 USD. And according to the site, those had 25 in stock and have sold 23. I wouldn't weep for humanity yet, though; because numbers that silly pretty much confirms that this market is either an obvious fake designed to drum up FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) or they're trading to some particular parties. (I won't accuse anyone of doing anything that could be legally liable. But I will just put a hyper-link here for the Google definition of Wash Trading for no particular reason.)

It was around about this point that my head was spinning and I decided to take a gander at those screen shots in order to claw some hope for the future of a project that is proudly sporting the AMC brand. (These aren't just some nobodies screwing around with a pathetically crappy game plan, afterall. These guys are apparently backed by a real world entertainment brand! Allegedly.) That's when I noticed the differing art styles. The game looks significantly different to the reveal trailer showcasing their cartoon-version of Michonne cutting down walkers and exactly 0 seconds of actual gameplay. The game is top down,  moody and, provided these are real screenshots and not just mock-ups, actually doesn't look terrible. I've played similar games that look significantly worse than this game is pretending that it does. But then I glimpsed their character concept art and I came away with some questions. 

Firstly, these artists seems to have stuck 2 of their OC-don't-steals into these shots, and both of these OCs look genuinely trash. You have a heavy-looking guy with a square-box head and a cartoon M60 looking thing in one hand, and another girl who looks like a Fortnite character. She's wearing a schoolgirl blazer, skirt and akimbo pistols; someone on the team has a bit of an introduction-to-fetish phase they are going through and hasn't yet figured out how to keep it out of their work. (No shame from me, I'm just saying "Does this fit in The Walking Dead?" And I think the answer is pretty apparent.) And then there's Glenn. Good old Glenn. Only, hold on; this Glenn looks good. Not cartoonishly out-of-proportion like the OCs, and not freakishly inhuman like the Michonne from the trailers! What's up with that then, team? I mean, I don't want to accuse them of anything else, beyond what they're nakedly guilty of, but I can't help think there might be a little something untoward coming out in these artistic depictions. Schoolgirl fetishists and potentially unconscious racism- phew, not exactly a 'recipe for success', now is it?

So there you have 'The Walking Dead Empires', an apparently officially backed Walking Dead branded pre-sale monetised, NFT MMORPG which, even if it were real, would be destined to be brushed over and written off in a matter of minutes after launch. Games as polished and flashy as 'New Worlds' and 'Halo: Infinite' are struggling for attention against the grain of the industry, and then don't even charge over $50,000 real-world dollars for their best gear, so what hope does this pre-bloated corpse of a project hold? Still, at least Robert Kirkman can rest easy at night in the knowledge that selling the rights of his franchise to AMC has gone so far out of control that literal officially-sanctioned scams are sporting it's name. Ain't is just the dream to be so successful you can let your work be used for whatever kind of scummy grift imaginable and not care? That man's living the life...