Early in the year, the news about how a Ubisoft executive put the blame on gamers after the company’s NFT game failed spectacular made headlines; now, the sentiment might be changing
Gaming NFTs: some love it, others hate it
After debuting Ubisoft Quartz, the Ubisoft company had high hopes for the product, but unfortunately, it did not go according to plan. The unfortunate situation ended with Ubisoft’s VP of Strategic Innovations Lab, Nicholas Pouard saying the following, “I think gamers don’t get what a digital secondary market can bring to them.” Ubisoft caught a considerable amount of heat for the comments by Pouard, and unfortunately, the company wasn’t alone.
For the most part, game developers have been hesitant to announce or move forward with their NFT or blockchain game plans. Many studios with NFT games ready or almost ready to go chose to shelve their plans to avoid the wrath of game developers and, more importantly, gamers.
From the look of things, the gaming community has no problem with new studios and creators releasing NFT games; the problem lies when established studios try to enter or progress in the NFT gaming ecosystem.
The backlash is worse when traditional studios try to embed NFT functionalities into existing popular games. Honestly, if a company wants to venture into the NFT space, it’s a better business practice to embed the functionality into your most popular games.
Throughout this piece, we’ll take a deeper look into how the trend of gaming apathy might be changing.
Gaming programmers’ pledge bears unimpressive fruits
A cohort of developers affiliated with Minecraft and a host of other games debuted an online pledge and guide to raise awareness about the potential dangers of cryptocurrencies, NFTs, and their technologies.
On May 2, a collective that includes developers from Mojang Studios, the maker of Minecraft, and other gaming studios known as Climate Replay did something ordinary, but the response to their ordinary action is why this piece exists.
Climate Replay’s Pledge wants to ensure that all implementations of digital ownership achieve the following:
What came of Climate Replay’s Pledge?
A week after debuting the pledge, it has unfortunately garnered a measly 72 signatures, and a representative of Climate Replay added that five companies have signed up to the pledge. Climate Replay is currently in the process of verifying the signatures on its pledge.
Cory Scheviak, co-author of the “pledge,” shared the following “I am very happy with the engagement, the pledge is not a time-limited thing, and as the guide will spread around the game industry, I expect even more productive conversation around the real issues raised within the guide.”
Sebastien Borget, COO and co-founder of The Sandbox, shares a different sentiment on this topic, “Every single studio I know of—from the largest, top company to the smallest—will have a product, if not many involving blockchain.”
