Can Blockchain Gaming Be Good? A Nintendo legend from the 90s weighs in
In the early 1990s, gaming industry executive Tony Harman was on a long flight to Kyoto, Japan. After publishing a report that questioned the widely accepted dogma that only Japanese studios could make good games, it spread from his American office to the Japanese headquarters.
Though he didn’t know it then – Harman was on his way to a date with destiny. When he arrived in Japan, he had only one place to go: Nintendo’s global headquarters, for a meeting with the man behind the legend: Shigeru Miyamoto – one of the creators of the Italian plumber Mario.
But what was Harman doing at Nintendo HQ? His mission was to convince the bigwigs of the Japanese gaming giant to do something they had never done before: give someone else the keys to one of their heavily guarded IPs. Donkey Kong, to be precise. Harman recalled the exact words he told Nintendo in an interview with nft now: “If you give me a Western developer, […] one of the Nintendo characters, and the same budget as a Japanese company, I will make you a number one hit.”
With those words echoing through the halls of Nintendo’s Minami-ku headquarters came the start of a bittersweet chain of events. And at the end of it all, Web3, where Harman wants to use his vision today.
The state of blockchain gaming in Web3
For the cynical mainstream gamer, there is no trend in gaming more deserving of derision than the nascent blockchain gaming movement. The very concept of play-to-earn (P2E) games has quickly changed from an ideal worth working towards to what some would describe as a chore.
Even blockchain game developers have grown tired of the models popularized by titles such as Axie Infinity. But that can be a good thing – and it attracts exactly the kind of people Web3 needs in its early stages: committed builders with a proven track record.
With so much at stake, the blockchain gaming space shouldn’t have to wait for a newcomer to break onto the scene à la Axie or Flappy Bird. The task of bringing blockchain games in a new light rests on the shoulders of those who have delivered triple-A games to the mainstream audience.
But what does this “experience” entail? Surprisingly, understanding requires an immersion in the game’s history.
Travel to Nintendo HQ
Let’s cut back to Harman. Why would he want Nintendo to let a third party western studio access one of their closely guarded IPs? Simply put, he believed tailoring a game from the ground up for the American market would be more effective than simply localizing one of Nintendo’s in-house titles. With much of Nintendo’s storytelling focused on Japanese folklore and culture, it was only inevitable that crucial nuances of their stories would end up getting lost in translation. From a more practical point of view, it would also go a long way in helping the brand further establish itself in Western markets – or so Harman claimed.
When Nintendo’s top executives reluctantly agreed to that request, Harman began assembling his team, starting with British game development studio Rare. At the time, the studio was best known for titles such as Battletoads and licensed works based on characters such as Spider-Man and Freddy Kreuger. Now it had access to video game royalty: Donkey Kong, the character that arguably started Nintendo’s rapid rise to fame in the 1980s.
To say they made the most of that opportunity would be an understatement. The resulting play from Harman’s lane was Donkey Kong Country, arguably the game of the year from 1994, and one of the Super Nintendo’s most beloved games of all time. Rare also eventually went on to develop some of the most beloved titles for Nintendo’s subsequent platform, the N64 — Golden eye, Perfectly darkand Conker’s Bad Fur Day still has a solid place in today’s zeitgeist.
As for Harman, he seemed to be leading yet another groundbreaking project for Nintendo. “I wanted to go to the next level. So I made the first 3D game on a Nintendo console which was a success. It was Star FoxHarman said.
Reality bites
Now let’s take a barrel roll into 2022. What can Harman come up with today? After becoming involved in the development of the first Grand Theft Autohe kept up his innovative streak by leading projects such as Decomposition and APB – the latter of which was praised by game content creators”Fortnite for Fortnite” — or a game whose ideas flew a little too close to the sun for a gaming population that simply wasn’t ready yet. In Harman’s words, it was “ten years too early”.
Unfortunately, given the trajectory the gaming industry began to take in the early 2010s, Harman began to burn out. “I became very, very frustrated with the industry because of free-to-play primarily. You expect small game developers to have Harvard MBA business analytics to make a successful game because only one to three percent of [the audience] are paying users,” he said. “You need all these analytics to figure out who they are and how to get that much money out of them, and it distorts the whole monetization of the game.”
It wasn’t until recently that Harman felt like jumping back into the fire – a decision largely spurred by the evolving NFT market and infrastructure, and a long-standing love of user-generated content (UGC). Enter Unioverse, the latest project from Harman-led outfit Random Games. It’s a decentralized sci-fi series that gives away a treasure trove of high-quality 3D assets to its collectors. The plan? Giving collectors the same opportunities Harman had throughout his career to make great games. No questions asked.
Of course, all you need to do to get in on the action is buy a Unioverse figure NFT outright. After that, you’ll have free access to Unioverse’s planned lineup of video games, as well as the ability to develop your own titles using Unioverse resources, which Harman stressed will be “given away” to holders of the initial collection to use as they wish. “We’re giving away our character models, all the textures, all the rigging, all the animation goes into it [Unioverse holders]and [we] ask them what else they need and help build those assets,” Harman said.
All of this is in the service of further developing the Unioverse IP. While the Unioverse team will receive a cut of a holder’s profits, each NFT’s underlying smart contract will ensure that players do not lose out on any of their own earnings. “We only create content for our community. “We don’t have any transactions in the game on purpose because we don’t want to pay Google or Apple’s team anything,” Harman said. “So none of the money is spun out of the system. Our early backers will hopefully get the increased value of the characters and they will make all the money from the distribution of the characters.”
The writing on the wall
In some ways, the entry of Harman and other game industry veterans into Web3 can be seen as a way to escape some of the biggest problems plaguing the current game industry. Especially the ways large companies structure how people behind the scenes are compensated.
Although Harman proudly tells the origin of Donkey Kong Country as one of his most cherished career highlights, he also noted the reality he faced after such a feat. Despite spearheading the launch and development of one of Nintendo’s most beloved games, Harman faced a pay cut at the end of the fiscal year due to how Nintendo as a company saw less revenue overall that year. “My salary went down that year because they said the company’s success was not as good. It just wasn’t fair to my team. I walked into a meeting [learning this] while you watch Donkey Kong Country [fly off the shelves.]”
For Harman, starting a franchise in a decentralized way is the clearest way to ensure that subsequent creators and project managers don’t suffer the same fate. “If you look at Stan Lee, if he would have made literally just a five percent commission on all his work in his lifetime, he would have died with a lot more than a few million dollars,” Harman said. And the key lies in smart contracts – perhaps one of the most revolutionary features offered to creators building using NFT platforms. “Smart contracts are the right thing to do. You should be able to participate proportionally to your success,” Harman said.
If anything, that simple reality alone should be enough to steer even the most jaded gamer against giving blockchain gaming a shot. Games are also art, and the artists behind these works deserve fair compensation for their work.
