Remember when Phil Spencer took the stage at the Xbox show last weekend and proudly announced Microsoft’s debut NFT line? “Many people still do not understand it: Commander-in-Chiefs can spend several slurps on a single Spartan,” he said, and we cried tears of joy. Elsewhere, Geoff Keighley announced Keighleycoin, the most hyped cryptocurrency to date, and the Wholesome Games debuted Grinchain, a revolutionary new blockchain driven solely by open-mouthed smiles.
Our wildest dreams and hopes had come true: the first Web3 E3 had come.
Ok, no – none of that happened. Phil Spencer did not hawk a single NFT, Geoff Keighley did not name a cryptocurrency after himself and the Wholesome Games produced real smiles instead of using them to keep a ledger of monkey transactions. This “non-E3” was a strange, scattered year, but at least one thing seemed consistent across every show and announcement: No one had a single thing to say about Web3, except Stormgate’s developers who explicitly said No NFTs (opens in new tab). Not even Hideo Kojima, who talked about Microsoft’s cool cloud servers.
If the man behind «Transfarring (opens in new tab)“is not hyped about your new technology … well, you may have a problem.
For most of a year now, NFT and crypto investors have been making big claims about how these technologies are the future of gaming and the internet as a whole. They want to change the way games are created so that objects can travel seamlessly between virtual worlds. They want to change Why we play games, for what girls will play to relax when they can play to earn? They want to change the very face of economics as we know it, free money from the tyranny of banks and governments and put our economic destinies into Right hands: Reddit’s.
The big talk has so far preceded any real evidence that these things have happened. The NFT games that exist are either infertile retreads of Second Life exclusively populated by true believers, or they are simply ways to paint for cryptocurrency with the light skin of a video game applied on top. These cryptocurrencies make the worst mobile gacha games look like XCOM by comparison, and they are starting to fall apart.
One of the highest profiles, Axie Infinity, began to fall apart as soon as the cryptocurrency markets stopped moving towards the moon. (A high-profile hack did not help Axie’s image, but the same goes for virtually all crypto projects, from Bored Appe Yacht Club to Crypto.com.) NFT trades as a whole are no longer flourishing – they are no longer flourishing. dead yet, but I feel pretty good about Tyler’s January forecast that NFTs will almost be forgotten by the end of 2022.
Just a few months ago, executives in charge of video game publishers such as Sega, Square Enix and EA called games to make money “the future of our industry.” But apparently none of them believed strongly enough in that future to show it last weekend, the time period that was historically designated to show the future of games.
Maybe they’re all just too scared to go first. Are they waiting to see Ubisoft’s next NFT collection first? To be trend followers, not trendsetters? Ubisoft said it would add NFTs to other games after the small Ghost Recon Breakpoint experiment, but considering how few players actually cared the first time, it’s just as easy to imagine Ubisoft quietly canceling those plans. When Ubisoft makes its own livestream later this summer, I do not expect a single mention of NFTs or cryptocurrencies or play-to-earn. This whole flim-flam bubble loses its luster, big time.
If it had been a personal E3 convention this year, I expect it would have been a circus of blockchain technology booths spread between Sony and Microsoft and Capcom. Until now, it has not mattered that the big companies have stayed away from blockchain nonsense – venture capital money has flowed like wine into these projects, thanks to both techbro believers and investors with moonlit dollar signs in their eyes. But that money does not last forever. A recession is on the way. Technological stocks and crypto markets have already been hit hard. If E3 really is a personal event in 2023, as promised, I suspect that only a few hardened blockchain survivors will have stands on the show floor that hyper up their revolutionary technology.
And the only ones who buy it will be others who hyper up own blockchain technology. There will be a lot of talk about synergy and cross-campaign opportunities. But the further we go without a single major game publisher standing on a press conference stage and introducing a blockchain-driven game, the more likely it seems that the hype has already peaked, and the clearer it is that play-to-earn is a grief . “Play” was just bait all the time.
Not a single game publisher talked about NFTs or the blockchain at this year’s weird E3; there were not even sponsored segments from crypto companies. With the complete and utter lack of interest from the gaming industry as a whole, I think it’s safe for all of us to recalibrate.
From now on, when we see posts like the one below – posts that have made us ask ourselves: “Am I crazy? What insight do those I do not have to be so sure? ” – should we feel confident that there really is only one right and correct answer:
lol.
completely dying pic.twitter.com/za0KEszTyiJune 6, 2022
