The gaming industry’s business leaders recently proposed a new vision: NFTs and the blockchain.
However, not everyone in our industry’s C-suites is ecstatic about the new flesh just yet. According to Axios, Microsoft’s head of gaming, Phil Spencer expressed concern about the potential for them to be “exploitive,” saying that he believes that there is a lot of experimentation and speculation going on, and some of the creative he sees today feels more exploitive than entertaining.
Spencer goes on to clarify and soften the negative tone of his statement, indicating an openness to blockchain integration in games and stating that he does not believe that every NFT game must be exploitive. He simply believes that they are on their way to figuring it out.
This quest to understand NFTs may conflict with our larger journey here on Spaceship Earth, where the thermostat is constantly being messed with.
Aside from the ethical implications of this technology, these executive-level statements read more like steps in the complex courtship dance between companies and their investors than concrete plans for our industry. No one seems to have a compelling description of how this technology will make video games better in any practical way, whether they choose to project the idea that going all-in on NFT gaming to capitalize on the excitement of the buzzwords, or take a more noncommittal, circumspect approach like Spencer.
There’s a lot of buzz right now about NFT games as a “vision of the future,” but they could go the way of 3D TVs, Steam Machines, or the first wave of VR in the 1990s. All of those futuristic visions were ultimately doomed to fail.
The winds of history will continue to buffet you and me without much input from us. We can voice our opinions and vote with our wallets, but things will eventually take their course. But I have a $64,000 png of a cartoon chimpanzee to sell you if you think NFT games are going to redefine our industry in the next decade.