NFT Gaming Psycho advocates turning human players into NPCs

A common thread that connects my complete distaste for all things blockchain and AI is the sheer inhumanity of it all. Proponents of these techbro causes are so focused on technology, profit and market forces, while remaining oblivious to their effects and consequences, that at times it feels as if they have become completely disconnected from the human experience.

We’ve covered this to death over the past couple of years, from failed NFT experiments to the looming specter of AI-generated artbut today I wanted to draw your attention to one of the most extraordinary things I have ever seen committed to printing in the name of future technology.

This amazing feature on NFT and crypto games, focused mostly on Minecraft servers and Axie Infinity (womp), is by Neirin Gray Desai, and you definitely should read the whole case The rest of the world what a great – if also incredibly bleak – look at the markets surrounding ‘play to earn’ games.

But there is one section that really stands out and made me stop in my tracks reading it:

Mikhai Kossar, a chartered accountant and member of Wolves DAO, a group that consults with NFT gaming projects in the early stages of their development, told The rest of the world that some players will always go where they can make more money. “They will play Pac-Man if they can earn more,” he said.

According to Kossar, NFT rental mechanisms in games to make money are important to keep them accessible to poorer players. “You have people who have money but don’t have time to play the game, and on the other hand you have people who don’t have money but have time,” he said.

However, he sees a future where guild ownership and management can upgrade the model of wealthy Western players managing those in low-income countries. “Filipinos could band together to buy some assets and then rent them out to themselves and make money that way,” he said.

But he also envisions NFT games that can exploit the wealth gap between players to deliver a different experience. “With cheap labor in a developing country, you can use people in the Philippines as NPCs (“non-playable characters”), real NPCs in your game,” Kossar said. They could “just populate the world, maybe do a random job or just go back and forth, fish, tell stories, a shopkeeper, anything is really possible.”

Let me be very clear here when I say that I wish nothing but the worst for everyone involved in this group.