#oneaday Day 1064: YNFT?

Yet another NFT controversy erupted today, this time with the announcement that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, a game that has been hotly anticipated by its incredibly loyal (until today) fanbase, will be inexplicably making use of NFTs to allow "lucky" people to be "in the game" as "MetaHumans". In other words, paying exorbitant amounts of space money on an unnecessary blockchain to get themselves in the game as an NPC.

You know, the sort of thing Kickstarters offer as a reward. (Although Kickstarter perhaps isn't the best example, what with them wanting to move to the blockchain, too.)

I don't understand this. After Ubisoft's announcement of NFTs got such a negative reception — even with YouTube's Dislike count being removed — that they had to Private their announcement video; after the Twitter account for the late Stan Lee was bombarded with negative comments after the current operators started shilling NFTs; after Peter Molyneux's new game was mocked for the stupid idea it is… why are people still pushing for this "play to earn" crap?

Well, at least part of it is, of course, down to money. Peter Molyneux's new game may well be a fucking stupid idea, but it's sold $40 million of NFTs so far. This does not, however, mean that the game will be a success; it means that cryptobros have jumped on the game believing it to be the next big "opportunity" and have "invested" in it in the hope of offloading their badly rendered low-poly take on London will net them a profit when some gullible fuckwit buys it off them.

As for Ubisoft and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.'s use of NFTs, it's just baffling, since they offer no real case for how the use of the tech is in any way beneficial or desirable. The cosmetics that Ubisoft are distributing as NFTs are the same sort of thing you've been able to get for Counter-Strike and Team Fortress on Steam for years — and those games have never needed to fuck around with cryptocurrency. (In fact, Valve won't allow games with crypto/NFT components on the platform — a rare instance of them actually being clear about something in their guidelines.)

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.'s astroturfing "metaverse" account even claims that they agree that NFTs shoehorned into games are dumb, and that the sole reason they're doing this is to build a firm foundation for modders to work on. This is, of course, bollocks, since modding games dates back to the metaphorical Dark Ages and has never required any sort of "decentralisation" or other such buzzwords in order to work. All you need is some modding tools — either provided by the developer themselves or developed by the community — and you're away. How do NFTs fit into all that? S.T.A.L.K.E.R.'s PR people don't seem to be able to explain.

This is a fad, make no mistake, and I'm sure it will eventually die, just like shit like "Online Pass" did — remember that? Unfortunately, while we're in the middle of all this nonsense it's rather discouraging — but take heart from the fact that the only people who seem to think this is a good idea are the people who were already making stupid decisions at the upper levels of triple-A publishing corporations.

We'll get through this. And if gaming does decide to become one big crypto blockchain party… well, there's plenty of retro platforms still waiting for you to explore their libraries!