FUNNY MONEY
The whole world has gone mad for NFTs, and it’s only going to get worse...
Most of us would prefer not to think about NFTs, but these days it’s unavoidable. Non-Fungible Tokens have invaded the world of video games, and our news feeds are polluted with breathless prose describing how the blockchain will make our hobby so, so much better.
NFTs are supposedly an iron- clad, fool-proof means of asserting the ownership of digital goods. But that’s simply not true – intellectual property gets stolen for use as NFTs all the time. Every day one reads social media posts from angry artists who’ve had works pilfered from their online image galleries, only to be melted down into crypto, pumped, and dumped. The exchanges that trade in NFTs are sluggish and indifferent when it comes to enforcing the rights of artists, so theft and fraud proliferate.
This is not an abstract threat – NFT content theft has struck close to home. None other than Daniel Hindes, a former editor of this very magazine, has fallen victim to this cruel crime du jour. Hindes is now an independent game developer, and he recently discovered that the key art for his game Wildfire had been filched by an entrepreneur with very sticky fingers.
In the end he was able to get the stolen art taken down, but it was still an affront, an insult, a violation – and something that normal, law-abiding people just shouldn’t have to deal with.
Aside from facilitating pyramid schemes built on theft, NFTs also consume vast amounts of electricity, and for this sin alone many are calling for the controversial technology to be banned outright. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 was originally going to use NFTs, until a massive public outcry forced GSC Game World to abandon the initiative.
The abrupt 180° turn proved two things. One: ordinary consumers can affect positive change when they speak up. And Two: the game never needed NFTs in the first place – it was all a gimmick.
Ubisoft has been quite shameless in implementing NFTs, via their new ‘Quartz’ platform. In a recent interview, Ubisoft founder Yves Guillemot said that he didn’t understand what the fuss was all about. The French businessman pointed out that NFTs are just another new technology, like micro-transactions or loot crates.
In a sense, he’s right. NFTs are indeed just like micro-transactions and loot crates – they suck. They’re predatory, they’re tawdry, and they’re completely superfluous to a quality video game experience.
This ridiculous trend has once again proved Chris Roberts to be the greatest game designer of all time. We’re now on the cusp of the 10th anniversary of the announcement of Star Citizen, a game that can never disappoint its backers because it will never be released.
Star Citizen is a game of unparalleled innovation. When other games offered micro-transactions, Chris Roberts pioneered macro-transactions, giving his fans the opportunity to spend thousands of dollars on in-game items. But after all these years, most of the spaceships he’s sold have not been implemented in-game. They exist only as concept art – jpegs. These jpegs of spaceships are only released for sale in strictly limited tranches, and there’s a thriving grey market for the resale of said jpegs. In a sense, Chris Roberts invented the NFT! No wonder people have sunk over half a billion dollars into Star Citizen.
In contrast, Peter Molyneux has only grossed US$54 Million or so from his new NFT-based online game, which seems to be some sort of cross between Second Life and Populous. Like Roberts, Molyneux understands that actually delivering a game can only lead to fan disappointment, which is why he never finished making Godus. This was very compassionate of him, but until he can sell half a billion dollars worth of goblin jpegs he will never truly be a first-rate game designer.
These money grubbing schemes may seem to be the height of lunacy, but as bad as things are, it can always get worse. There are some alarmists out there who say that soon absolutely everything will be on the blockchain, linked to an insidious social credit system. Publish a tweet saying that Bill Gates’s pink jumpers look hideous and the title deed to your house will be automatically revoked. Hopefully things won’t get that bad...
Hate them or loathe them, NFTs aren’t going anywhere, because the world economy is in a very parlous state. Inflation has returned, and depending on how you measure it, we’re already experiencing hyper-inflation. The more money they print, the more desperate punters will be driven to invest what little dosh they have in jpegs of monkeys.