The internet is a whirlwind of talk — even a brief exposition can make you want everyone to shut up — but does any of it matter? Actually the chorus of social media critics Do Nothing? This is the Internet’s biggest insecurity. Self-aware social media users diagnose each other with the poster disease and sarcastically clap “we did it, Reddit” to express that, no, posting it on the internet didn’t save the day.
Are publishers turning away from NFTs because they don’t see the value in them or because they are ruthlessly mocked online every time they mention them?
Internet mobs have certainly caused Some things, however, for better or for worse. The rage over loot boxes has been at least partially responsible for attracting the attention of politicians, leading to the continued decline of the practice today. We convinced them to change the bad Sonic movie into boring Sonic movie. I also wonder where the absence of an internet mob felt: if CS:GO keys and the Steam Community Market had met the kind of resistance Valve saw when trying to add paid mods to Steam, how would things have changed? Today?
Which brings me to the question I want to ask here: Are game publishers walking away from NFTs because they don’t see the value in them, or because they’re being ruthlessly mocked and harangued online whenever they mention them?
For example, in late 2021, Discord CEO Jason Citron teased NFT integration for the chat app, and thousands responded to say “no thanks” in a range of less polite tones; the most shared 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 he would be sharing soon. He’s 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 dropped involvement with NFT projects after being yelled at online. After suggesting that NFTs are “the future” of gaming in 2021, EA CEO Andrew Wilson later clarified (after a lot of internet shit talk) that he was only talking about collectability in general. In April, Blizzard president Mike Ybarra said “no one is doing NFTs” at the studio in response to an Activision Blizzard poll designed to gauge public interest in them—I guess the company got its answer.
Ubisoft is one of the few major companies that has actually gotten to execution. Undaunted by comments like “this remains the dumbest and most useless thing in the damn world,” the editor gave a quick shot at non-fungible goodies in Ghost Recon Breakpoint. Today those NFTs are useless, Breakpoint is no longer being updated, and Ubisoft now says it was all just a research project, not to be taken too seriously.
Every NFT guy watches video games and thinks “what if you could own Mario’s hat” and everyone else goes “are you fucking dumb and stoned?”January 2, 2022
Perhaps the internet’s anti-NFT rhetoric is just nudging traditional gaming companies towards the NFT perspective they would have taken anyway: curious but cautious, especially after all the scams and thefts seen over the past couple of years, the volatility of the cryptocurrency markets and the general lack of interest in actually buying them. Ubisoft may be telling the truth when it says it was just kidding: if it was really all in on profiting from NFTs, would it have started with weapon skins for one of its less popular games?
There are also many pro-NFT commentators online, and not all mainstream game publishers have been dissuaded. Among the most bullish was Square Enix, which in November rather quietly announced Symbiogenesis, a “digital collectible art project” made not for Square Enix fans, but for “Web3 fans.” It reeks of Ubisoft lightheartedness.
SQUARE ENIX IS DOING NFT SHIT FUCK pic.twitter.com/Mmfxes4MNmApril 28, 2021
How come I’ve only heard of their virtues from meme-brained financial gurus and uncool celebrities like Tom Brady?
Beyond the common complaints that they are costly to the environment and more or less stupid, I think NFTs inspire so much revulsion on social media because they seem to corrupt something that people actually Do Want. Consistency is everywhere in this age of mass production, and what started on assembly lines has been nearly perfected by computers, which can duplicate data almost instantaneously. From that perspective, the scarcity and uniqueness of NFTs could be seen as subversive: they are pushing against the tide of history. It looks like something I could be cool about this, somehow. But not like this. While individual NFTs are unique, the obvious goal of companies is to do what they always do and mass produce that uniqueness. Most NFTs are just another type of mass-produced plastic tchotchke, or commemorative gold coin like the ones sold on TV at 2am. There’s nothing good about handmade and one-of-a-kind items; all they do is radiate the concept with high-end art collector snobbery 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 once in a while I come across the preaching of some passionate Web3 advocate and start to wonder if I’m missing out. I Do you want to make money playing video games? The thought makes me want to turn off my monitor forever, but I guess I also said iPads were a dumb idea, and then Apple sold 300,000 of them on day one. But then, iPads are real things and none of this feels real. Remember that NFT guy who claimed he burned a Frida Kahlo drawing? Or when Seth Green’s monkey was stolen and he demanded its return like a kidnapped child? Why didn’t anyone say “I’m kidding?” If NFTs are actually a transformative technology, how come I hear about their virtues exclusively from meme-brained financial gurus and uncool celebrities like Tom Brady?
I think the internet’s NFT bullying has had an effect on traditional game publishers – if we all shrugged, they’d be trying out a lot more NFT weapon skins by now. Even if it doesn’t, maybe making fun of things online is something we do for each other, to remind each other of all that is real and validate the overwhelming feeling that it’s all very silly. And I think it’s beautiful.
To clarify: I want nothing to do with any crypto project, even if your blockchain “game” contains a pettable dog. Peddle your planet-burning scam somewhere else.August 12, 2022
#Good #job #internet #bullied #NFTs #traditional #gaming
