Why there's no future for NFTs in games

 Bury those bitcoins

Recently news dropped of a major game publisher we all know and have some varying strong emotion towards, Sega- the Sonic guys- and their thoughts on what is largely a dead and buried topic now: NFTs. Well, actually the topic was blockchain games specifically but it was the allure of constant revenue generating computer generated tokens that put NFTs in the radar of gaming and led the avaricious towards blockchain integration. We've seen Ubisoft fall for that promise, former-Lionhead director Peter Molyneux abandon his vague morals to writhe in it's filth and even Square Enix seems primed to head down into that swamp judging from how they've positioned themselves with their NFT game coming out. But then there's Sega throwing down the gauntlet and saying 'No, we won't do that. Because it sounds boring.'

And to be absolutely fair that is a perfectly valid reason to not pursue NFT and Blockchain integration because they're right- every single conceptualisation for how Blockchain integration could influence gaming has resulted in play experiences that sound indistinguishable from jobs. It's always games about resource collection and managing market places and dedicating hours to grinding every single day in the pursuit of some vague payout- not to actually achieve anything, progress a story, enjoy yourself- but to generate a revenue. And, of course, the game creator's get to seep some of that revenue for themselves because of transaction fees, platform fees, asset rental fees, and whatever other bull they can conjure up to justify leeching from the players. It sounds good in the addled minds of marketing executives but for anyone who has actually played, developed or considered the basic aspects of what makes interactive media enjoyable... well, we see things a little differently.

But doesn't that headline ring a little strange with you? 'Giant video game corporation totally refuses money making decision because it doesn't think users will enjoy it?' As though that's a deciding factor that typically buzzes around the head of executives when it comes to making decisions? Because I feel like most of us have reached a point wherein we're certain the only thoughts that such executives have is "How can I squeeze more of a profit out of fans." I mean, isn't it literally the fiduciary duty of a CEO to generate profit in whatever way they can? I think that by digging just a little bit deeper we can actually find a more sound reason as to why NFTs and Blockchain make for poor bedmates with games and it's actually because the two have no future together. Lootcrates? Battle passes? Sweet nectar to the tongues of executives. NFTs? Blockchain? Deadly Nightshade droplets, sour and lethal in high doses.

The entire premise of the 'Blockchain future' is based around the proposition that people would be willing to invest to own pieces of the game that they like under the belief that they will generate revenue by playing around in that game. This belief, however, is undercut by core logical fallacies that generate utterly incompatible profitability margins with what reality dictates is possible. NFT marketplaces simply wish to fill the place of existing marketplaces you can already find for a few games, but the revenue and profit they generate is deeply dependent on the popularity of the game and willingness of it's audience to engage. Counter Strike is one of the most popular games in the world, even today, and it's knife skins are part of an economy entirely separate of the main game itself enabled through grey markets and third parties. Would such parties be privy to having the game makers cut into such operations and taking their own 'developers' cut? The culture of gaming is deeply resistant to developer over-interference, that alone is a battleground of ideology just waiting to be sparked. 

NFTs are a failing market, collapsing like a dwarf star at the end of it's final sputter, once valuable icons are shrivelling up to tenths of their original buying price and no one is buying because anyone with a brain is trying to sell right now. In fact, there's decent evidence to believe there was no genuine value in this market to begin with and any illusion to such was purely due to wash trading within the community- which makes a lot of sense when you consider the sort of people constantly going on about these pointlessly wastes of commodities were the one's who saw the financial value of one-day flipping them. If there's no intrinsic value and the extrinsic value is strictly insular, where would the multmillion dollar valuations have spawned from? Of course, what most sane people realised in a matter of minutes took the rest of the industrial world several years to cotton onto.

Yet there's one big smoking-gun reason why the NFT future is totally dead in the water before it even started, you ready for this? Because no one knows what the bloody things are! That is, outside of those dedicated money hungry wash traders we just talked about, desperately buying up their own product in a sad attempt to catch a bigger, richer fish with their bait. The amount of effort it takes to actually own one, creating a wallet with the right crypto platform, walking through the complex set-up process, trusting your bank to not cancel that shady as heck transaction- it's all beyond the headspace of your average silly punter. Which is precisely the problem when that same clueless punter is meant to be the target victi- I mean audience.

Take a look at the most profitable venue of gaming as it currently exists today, mobile gaming; why is that so popular? Is it the quality and replay value of the games? Not in the slightest. It's because they're easily accessible to even the most brain-addled rube out there. Simply download the app and run through the brightly coloured game as it plays through levels for you- as simple as gaming can get. And it scores a lot of revenue. Even a dedicated RPG maker like Bethesda will boast how their most successful game is technically Fallout Shelter, for how little it takes to maintain (and probably to develop in the first place) for the insane level of revenue it generates. (You'd think that'd be enough to earn an update or two but no...) You want money, you go for the easier access points, not the more complicated.

Grifts that are only accessible to the tech-savvy investor type still holds some potential of scoring the kind of victim one can sleep pretty soundly at night after stealing from, but it's nowhere near the grounds to launch a new platform worthy of scams. Even SEGA, who were once very excitable about the idea, have seen through the smoke and mirrors to a trend destined to die long before it makes anyone a genuine profit. Clap all you want for the developer that stood up and said what we're all thinking, but deep down there's not a single one of us who doesn't know this is yet another cold-hard business decision made by those who just want to see the gaming world as one of the coin bricks from Super Mario World. Their objectives may align with us today, but our goals will always be in other castles... I mixed up my Nintendo metaphors with Sega again, didn't I? (Dammit!)