Ethereum founder still believes NFT games can succeed
Ethereum co-founder and crypto developer Vitalik Buterin believes NFT games can succeed if developers put fun first and monetization second.
When it comes to NFTs in video games, the topic is still very taboo, but Ethereum co-founder and crypto developer Vitalik Buterin still has faith that it can work. The conversation has led to many companies either shying away or digging in their heels to implement NFTs in video games while the public largely rejects the idea. According to Buterin, the problem is that NFT game developers have simply not prioritized fun over financialization and ownership yet.
Vitalik Buterin shared this in a recent interview with Wired where he discussed the launch of The Merge upgrade to Ethereum and cryptocurrency transactions. It has been considered a big move for Ethereum and cryptocurrency as a whole, but when asked about the state of NFTs and their implementation, Buterin has some thoughts on why it has failed and what it could do better.
Source: Ubisoft
According to Buterin, the problem with many NFTs is that they have no value beyond ownership. They do nothing. The only thing most NFT art holders can do with them is claim ownership of them. For games, Buterin believes the problem has manifested itself in monetization rather than fun. He believes that current developers thought the idea of ownership was enough to make an NFT popular, and it clearly doesn’t work.
“Games like Axie Infinity were very successful last year, but then Axie Infinity got hacked,” Buterin said. “Even apart from that, it hasn’t really been able to recover. The reason for that, in my view, is that the people who designed these first-generation NFT games approached it with the attitude that the monetization aspect itself was enough to make the game fun. But that’s clearly not enough and a successful NFT game or monetization game itself has to be fun even without the monetization aspect.Whoever first figures out how to make a blockchain game that is a fun game, there are projects like going to win.”
In fact, groups like Ubisoft have put ownership of in-game assets front and center above any other value in gaming NFTs so far. It will be interesting to see if any game captures the magic that Buterin feels is possible. Stay tuned as we continue to cover the crypto and NFT space for further updates.
