Q.
There were some spectacular U-turns during 2022 as gaming companies climbed aboard the NFT hype train, before jumping off again before the next stop. What went wrong for them?
James Kaye, Big Games Machine: One of the most glaring issues with these cases is the need for more transparency and lingering concerns over play-to-win mechanics, questionable green credentials and whether devs are building crypto mechanics into their games or the other way around. Few of these companies took the time to consult with their audiences and lay out a clear plan for a concept meant to appeal to their communities. The recent collapse of FTX has further peed on the NFT/Web3/crypto games bonfire.
Stefano Petrullo, Renaissance: I am not surprised at all. Our industry is always eager to jump on new monetisation opportunities, but I never saw any real value in this for the player - the ultimate judge of what works and what doesn’t. Without going into detail, we have been asked to jump on the bandwagon of promoting NFT, Web 3.0 and Metaverse stuff from the beginning and the money those companies offered to hire our services was significant: I spoke with my team, we looked at it, and we simply do not want to get involved as we do not see the light at the end of the tunnel at this stage. ‘NFT’ as a term just screams negativity at the moment - it will be meaningless for the games industry for a long time and, whilst I respect the possibilities it may offer in the future with a different global landscape, there is no space for it at the moment.
Julia Herd, Five in a Boat: People who work in the games industry - and tech in general - need to pay more attention to the way they communicate. The use of buzzwords and jargon alienates players because they’re opaque and leave room for negative perception. Consumers in general are suspicious of brands that tell them they need something they don’t even understand. The industry has done a terrible job of explaining things such as NFTs, and
in 2022 it relied so heavily on phrases such as “Web3 enablement” and “blockchain compatibility” which mean precisely zero to almost everyone in its player base. Whenever a company announced its “NFT strategy” to a largely unaware and disinterested community it was muddled and really came across as what it was - chasing revenue opportunities. And that’s totally fine if the player benefits. But largely they did not, and foisting digital items on players without demonstrating clear benefits was the problem. Of course, a lot of this revenue hunt was prompted by companies seeking to replace declining post-pandemic revenues and the regulatory threat to loot boxes, and this meant that NFTs were hurried out too quickly with a lack of understanding of how to maximise their full potential. But NFTs aren’t going away - they will become pre-eminent; it’s just that developers won’t call them NFTs. They will just become the standard for digital items that sit on technology platforms that aren’t called anything they aren’t already called and accepted.
Mike Hendrixen, Vertigo 6: One potential reason for the mismatch between gaming and NFTs is that NFTs are not necessarily a core component of most games. While some games may incorporate NFTs as a way to represent in-game items or rewards, they are not a necessary element of gameplay in the same way that graphics or controls are. As a result, NFTs may not be relevant or appealing to all gamers. Additionally, the use of NFTs in gaming is still a relatively new and emerging concept, and it is not yet clear how widely they will be adopted or how they will be integrated into different types of games. It is possible that there may be some challenges or limitations in using NFTs in gaming, which could contribute to a mismatch between the two.
Alex Verry, Embracer Freemode: It’s reassuring, as it shows that the gaming public
“Consumers in general are suspicious of brands that tell them they need something
they don’t even understand.” Julia Herd Five in a Boat
42 | MCV/DEVELOP January 2023
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