The internet is a whirlwind of conversations, even a brief exposure can make you all just shut up, but does any of it matter? Does the chorus of social media critics really? to do something? This is the biggest insecurity of the internet. Self-aware social media users diagnose each other with poster disease (opens in new tab) and sarcastically cheer “we did it, Reddit” to express that no, posting to the web didn’t save the day.
Are publishers backing away from NFTs because they don’t see value in them, or because they’re mercilessly mocked online every time they talk about them?
Internet trolls have certainly been the cause few things, however, good and bad. The furore over loot boxes was at least partly responsible for attracting the attention of politicians, leading to the continued decline of the practice today. We made them change an ugly Sonic movie to a boring Sonic movie. It is also interesting where the absence of the Internet crowd was felt. If CS:GO keys and the Steam Community Market met the kind of resistance that Valve saw when it tried to add paid mods to Steam, how would things be different today?
That brings me to the question I want to pose here. Are game publishers backing away from NFTs because they don’t see value in them, or because they’re mercilessly mocked and insulted online every time they talk about them?
As an example, in late 2021, Discord CEO Jason Citron teased NFT integration for the chat app, and thousands of people responded by saying “no thanks” in a variety of less-than-polite tones; the most common responses suggested canceling Discord Nitro subscriptions. Two days and thousands of comments later, Citron said the screenshot was just an “internal concept” that the company had no plans to implement, and that it would share more soon. He has yet to share more, though maybe he’s just biding his time.
Stalker studio GSC Game World, Worms developer Team17 and voice actor Troy Baker have also pulled out of involvement in NFT projects after being shouted down online. After suggesting that NFTs are the “future” of gaming in 2021, EA CEO Andrew Wilson later clarified (after much internet uproar) that he was just talking about collecting in general. Back in April, Blizzard president Mike Ybarra said that “no one is doing NFTs” at the studio in response to an Activision Blizzard survey designed to gauge public interest in them; I guess the company got its answer.
Ubisoft is one of the few big companies that actually got around to it. Not afraid comments such as (opens in new tab) “This remains the stupidest and most pointless thing in the damn world,” the publisher teased in a brief attempt at irreplaceable goodies in Ghost Recon Breakpoint. Today, those NFTs are worthless, Breakpoint is no longer being updated, and Ubisoft now says that this was all just a research project that shouldn’t be taken too seriously.
Every NFT guy looks at video games and thinks “what if you could have Mario’s hat” and others say,January 2, 2022
Perhaps the internet’s anti-NFT rhetoric is simply pushing mainstream gaming companies toward a view of NFTs they would have treated anyway; Curious but cautious, especially after all the scams and thefts we’ve seen over the past few years, the volatility of cryptocurrency markets, and the lack of mainstream interest in actually buying them. Ubisoft is probably telling the truth when it says it’s just a tease.
There are also many NFT proponents online, and not all traditional game publishers have been dissuaded. Among the all-rounders was Square Enix, which made a somewhat quiet announcement in November (opens in new tab) Symbiogenesis, a “digital collectible art project” created not for Square Enix, but for Web3 fans. Smells like half-assedness from Ubisoft.
SQUARE ENIX is doing NFT SHIT FUCK pic.twitter.com/Mmfxes4MNmApril 28, 2021
How is it that I exclusively hear about their merits from meme-brained financial gurus and unhinged stars like Tom Brady?
Amid common complaints that they are environmentally expensive and more or less stupid, I think NFTs inspire so much dislike on social media because they seem to ruin something that is actually people. to do wish. In this age of mass production, uniformity is everywhere, and what began on assembly lines has been almost perfected by computers that can duplicate data almost instantaneously. From that perspective, the scarcity and uniqueness of NFTs can be seen as subversive; They push against the current of history. It feels something could somehow be cool about it. But not like this. While individual NFTs are unique, the obvious goal of corporations is to do what they’ve always done and mass produce that uniqueness. Most NFTs are just another type of mass plastic token or commemorative coin like the ones sold on TV at 2am. They do not contain anything good about handmade, unique items; all they do is imbue the concept with the highbrow snobbery of an art collector and Beanie Baby-style financial speculation. What is a “Web3 fan” if not a fan of buying and owning things? Isn’t this about art?
Most of the time I think it’s just a fad, but every now and then I’ll come across some passionate Web3 believer preaching and start to wonder if I’m losing it. Do you? Do you want to earn money playing video games? That thought makes me want to turn off my monitor forever, but I guess I also said iPads were a stupid idea and then Apple sold 300,000 of them on the first day. But then, iPads are real things, and none of them feel real. Remember the NFT guy who claimed to have burned a painting of Frida Kahlo? Or when Seth Green’s monkey was stolen and then he asked for it back like it was a kidnapped child. Why didn’t anyone say “just kidding”? If NFTs are truly a transformative technology, how is it that I only hear about their merits from meme-brained financial gurus and unhinged stars like Tom Brady?
I think the NFT terror of the internet has taken its toll on mainstream game publishers; Even if it’s not, maybe making fun of things online is something we do for each other to remind us all of reality and validate the overwhelming feeling that it’s all so stupid. And I think that’s beautiful.
To make this clear. i want nothing to do with any crypto project even if there is a dog in your blockchain “game”. Take your planet-burning scam somewhere else.August 12, 2022
