But now, there’s a new prey in town and I can once again hear the ominous sound of wings flapping. What if you got an NFT every time you bought a movie ticket? What if instead of emojis, people could express themselves with their NFTs?! What if instead of in-game gear, gamers earned NFTs they can use in every game they own??! A well-timed buzzword does not a good idea make.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I think blockchain tech is incredibly exciting. I think that Web3.0 could change the internet for the better and offer groundbreaking potential in solving a range of real-life problems. For example, the energy sector exploring the use of distributed blockchain tech to revive old power grids could genuinely help a lot of people. And as much as I dislike the NFT scene as it is today, I still think that NFTs are an exciting frontier for digital artists to connect with their consumers. In contrast, you’d be hard-pressed to convince me that integrating NFTs in video games is a “pro-consumer” move. That sounds about as pro-consumer as EA Games and Ubisoft’s predatory approach to game design. And guess who the biggest proponents of NFT gaming are?

“Play-to-earn” has joined the chat

Every pro-NFT gaming argument boils down to this: by giving players true ownership of their in-game items, we can finally give game-assets “true value” through NFTs and reward gamers for the time they spend in-game. So now, gamers can invest more into their games than just their time. It’s a win-win!

And here’s why I think that’s a load of shit. Experiences, art, and games already have “true value”. That’s why we pay for them. That’s why gamers wear merch of their favorite characters. That’s why we cosplay or get game-related tattoos. Trying to assign objective value to something that already carries so much emotional value just cheapens the whole experience. It’s feeding the fire that’s ravaging the gaming industry today. That’s obvious to anyone who actually cares about games. The idea of in-game assets needing monetary value is something only a non-gamer would come up with. There’s nothing pro-consumer about a AAA game publisher exploiting smart contract royalties to make a pretty penny off that NFT skin you supposedly “own”.

“Play-to-earn” is really just “Pay-to-win” with extra steps. By letting people trade their in-game assets with real money, you’re bringing real-world inequalities into a world where everyone should be equal. That’s why black-market account-trading for MMOs has always been frowned upon. That’s why gamers hate microtransactions. That’s why even popular games with microtransactions stick strictly to cosmetics. Money and games don’t mix well. As a community, gamers have already agreed a while ago that “pay-to-win” is a gross monetization model and a shitty way to make a game. But the recently game-crazed marketers and crypto-circlejerks missed that memo, and so, here we are. 

At its core, blockchain is about trust. And will actual gamers ever trust the wave of predatory game developers adopting an already predatory trend to make even more predatory games? Hell no. Why would I want to spend a fortune on an in-game NFT when it could 404 the second you pull the plug on your game servers?

No one can actually explain how NFTs make games better.

Here’s the issue: every “NFT meets Video Games” idea I’ve ever heard has sounded more like a business plan than a game. In fact, they seem expressly designed to actively suck the fun out of games. And there’s a reason for that: at its core, the hype around NFTs is really just hype around money, and there’s nothing new or original about money’s ability to make people lose their shit.

Ever wonder why the current assortment of NFT games out there all basically play like lootbox games minus the game? It’s because when real money is at the core of your gameplay mechanic, that’s called gambling. Just look at the most popular ones out there: Axie Infinity and Crypto Kitties. These literally require you to buy-in by purchasing one of their overpriced NFTs before they’ll even let you see the inside the casin– I mean game. And once you do, what ensues is basically Neopets without the endearing fun. In other words, current NFT games appeal to NFT enthusiasts, not gamers.

Of course, cosmetics are another easy way to integrate NFTs into a game (as we have seen in the case of the very-poorly received Ubisoft Quartz and Rainbow-Six Siege NFT debacle). But apart from the few gamers who were already into NFTs, the whole thing resulted in much more hate than hype.

So let’s summarize. If it’s not fun, then it’s not a good game. And NFTs tend to suck the fun out of every game they touch. Do you see what I’m getting at?

No thanks. Maybe later?

It’s easy to see how we ended up here. Companies fling around numbers like “3.24 billion gamers across the globe” and “300 billion dollar industry”, and everyone in the world who used to make fun of nerds just last week are now fighting for a sip of their Mountain Dew. And there’s nothing wrong with companies pretending to suddenly like video games. The more representation, the better. But could they at least try to pretend better?

I’m not saying that the idea of NFTs in games has absolutely zero merit. From an advertiser’s standpoint, it could open up a brand new alley of branded gaming content. But as a gamer, I don’t see a place for them in the current gaming landscape apart from cosmetic items in non-narrative multiplayer games like Fortnite. Who knows? Maybe Gaming NFTs will end up being an exciting new frontier for gaming. It could empower gamers and improve our play experience. But so far, there still hasn’t been a proposal out there that actually integrates the tech with the gaming experience in a way that offers any kind of advantage over what’s already out there. And in this age of insanity where jpegs of slightly-differently-colored rocks are sold for millions, it’s easy to forget that a tech’s purpose cannot just be to justify its own existence.

If NFTs were to ever add any actual value to the gaming experience, it will need to be completely divorced from the words “money” and “true value”. But until someone comes up with that elevator pitch, let’s keep our NFTs in our Metamask.

— Jay