"Everybody hates it."
For game developer Fred, the past two years have been a great time to look for a job. The “home economy” under the epidemic has made video games more popular than ever, but at the same time, by-products such as cryptocurrencies and NFTs have also entered the mainstream. Almost everyone is talking about related topics, but Fred is not only indifferent to NFTs, but also firmly opposed.
"The world is so cruel, there are always people trying to overcommodify something as pure and essential to the human experience as games."
Fred had been interviewing for a new studio founded by a veteran game developer, but he encountered an awkward moment during the interview: The interviewer told him that the development team would likely consider incorporating blockchain technology into the game. Fred said the studio didn't mention anything about it on its website, and if it did, he wouldn't have applied at all. In the last year alone, he has experienced this twice.
“They didn’t say it at the outset, but waited until about halfway through the phone interview to mention 'something that's controversial for some people,' which is the use of blockchain in games.”
Another time, a company emailed Fred after his interview with links to articles such as "Will Karl Marx Support the Existence of Blockchain?" ". Fred politely declined the job and said he would not consider joining any cryptocurrency-related projects. In response, the other’s CEO sent him an article touting why blockchain technology had a bright future, and asked him why he rejected cryptocurrencies in favor of the U.S. dollar.
In recent times, EA, Zynga, Behaviour Interactive and Ubisoft have all considered whether to use cryptocurrencies in their games. Developers of these companies revealed in interviews that the relevant decisions of the management have caused huge disputes within the companies. Many developers have pointed out that instead of adding more value to games, cryptocurrencies may threaten their motivations and how they make games.
"Play and Earn"
While Fred is clearly against cryptocurrencies, there are still gaming companies willing to hire him. However, Fred said that in addition to factors such as programs, treatment and benefits, he also considers their corporate culture and ethics when applying for jobs, and cryptocurrencies are a red flag. Today, Fred works at another company founded by a veteran developer and is not involved in any NFT-related projects.
Cryptocurrencies have been around for more than a decade, but it's only in the last year or two that many executives in the gaming industry seem to have taken a more serious interest in it. Ubisoft launched its own NFT platform, and several other companies announced they would support NFTs, but scrapped their original plans after strong backlash from players. Almost all players have united against NFTs, and in the opinion of many, the concept of "play-to-earn" has the potential to fundamentally change the intention of players to play the game.
Game companies such as Ubisoft have shown great interest in advancing NFTs
In a sense, the auction house in Diablo III was an early "play and earn" system that allowed players to buy and sell weapons and items for cash, but Blizzard's experiment was unsuccessful. Jay Wilson, a former Diablo 3 game director, said in 2017: "We were worried about these consequences, but the World of Warcraft auction house seems to validate the concept. Obviously, we made a mistake. some mistakes."
This interest among manufacturers, most of which was financially motivated, but also proceeded very cautiously, so there was something similar to what Fred experienced, where companies don't talk about it in public, privately. Li is another matter.
EA is one of the companies that tend to be outspoken about their plans in the cryptocurrency space. Square Enix, for example, has promised a big push for blockchain gaming in the future.
In early November last year, EA CEO Andrew Wilson called NFTs “part of the future of the gaming industry” during the company’s earnings call, and EA also mentioned “NFTs” and “blockchains” in numerous job advertisements. On December 9 last year, in EA's internal chat group, an employee asked the following question: "EA seems to have opened up jobs related to NTF. Is this consistent with EA's core commitment to environmental protection?"
Wilson responded: “While NFT-powered games are on the rise, most transactions at this stage are speculative—items have no utility and little connection to the player community, except that both parties believe that over time, their The value will continue to grow." Wilson said that this is not what EA wants. “In exploring NFTs, our aim is to provide players with items that are useful through the gaming experience, but also symbolize their status and their connection to the community. Similar to most other companies in the digital collectibles space than, we want to provide more value to players.”
As for environmental protection, Wilson said: "We've seen a lot of technological evolution that is reducing the environmental impact of blockchain." Like many game companies, EA is committed to protecting the environment by reducing carbon emissions, while most current cryptocurrency projects will It causes huge carbon emissions and harms the environment. The vast majority of cryptocurrencies use "Proof of Work" blockchains, which require a lot of energy to process transactions. To quell public criticism, companies such as Ubisoft have opted to use the more energy-efficient "Proof of Stake" blockchain.
Following Wilson's response, employees responded with a variety of emojis, including 28 Christmas trees, 56 thumbs up, 160 thumbs down, 96 confused faces, 115 stop signs... EA only allowed Employees use emoji to comment.
But Wilson's interest in NFTs appears to have waned over time. In February, he said on the company's earnings call that EA would gradually evaluate NFTs and that it "remains to be seen" whether the blockchain can be linked to collectible in-game items.
Employee's expressions are funny as Wilson responds to NFT questions
"There seems to be more disgust than I thought"
EA hopes to hire more employees who are familiar with cryptocurrencies, and mobile game giant Zynga announced in November last year that it had hired Matt Wolf as "VP of Blockchain". Zynga President Bennard King said the company decided to enter the field and hire Wolff in response to trends in the gaming industry.
"As far as I know, there are people inside Zynga who are deeply suspicious of cryptocurrencies and NFTs, and some people like them," said a Zynga employee who did not want to be named, "but games will eventually be taken off the shelves, stopped, and players will be at that time. The NFT in hand becomes worthless. Plus, given the structure of cryptocurrencies, mining cryptocurrencies can consume a lot of energy.”
In the chat group within Zynga, there is a channel dedicated to discussing cryptocurrencies. During a department-level staff meeting last December, Andrew Ince, Zynga's senior vice president of product, game design and data analytics, noted that the company had received "a lot of feedback on NFTs, and a lot of people were happy, but there was some quite a bit of feedback. negative".
"NFT games, or games based on blockchain technology, are developing rapidly," Ince said. "Some companies enter the NFT space for speculation, which is probably not sustainable. But for games, it may be It can be as transformative as in-app purchases. So it’s necessary for us to invest resources in research and development.”
Some speculate that Zynga will immediately add NFTs to games such as FarmVille, but according to Ince, Zynga prefers to develop new games around NFTs and blockchain technology, and then find ways to make such games more popular. Ince also acknowledged that the environmental impact of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin does exist, but he quickly changed the subject, saying that the technology is advancing rapidly and people should not be overly concerned about it.
“Listening to his tone, I realized that there seem to be more colleagues who are disgusted with NFTs than I thought,” a source said.
Zynga spokesman Kenny Johnston said the company could not publicly and share details of internal meetings, so it would not comment on Ince's remarks. “We are building a team to explore how to lay out in this space in a way that prioritizes the player community. Overall, the employee mentality is positive and our growth in the NFT space has not resulted in employee turnover.”
On January 10 this year, publisher Take-Two announced that it would acquire Zynga for $12.7 billion. At the Zynga all-hands meeting shortly afterward, neither company executives nor employees talked about the NFT project. Interestingly, however, the attitudes of both parties towards NFTs tend to be the same. Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick has said that he is a big believer in NFTs and also called on players to be patient with NFTs.
At least for now, Zynga has not added blockchain gameplay to its signature game "FarmVille"
"Everybody hates it"
Dead by Daylight has been one of the most popular multiplayer games of the past few years, and Canadian developer Behaviour Interactive has often added horror characters linked to other brands to the game. In September last year, Behaviour announced that the character Nailhead from the "Haunted Ghosts" series will be added to the game. However, in October, another cooperation project officially announced by the studio has caused widespread criticism from players. The partner is Boss. Protocol, a company that claims to "use blockchain to empower brands and unleash their full potential".
According to Behaviour, through the collaboration, they plan to turn the character model in Dead by Daylight into an NFT that can be used to unlock game content. Dead by Daylight players are concerned that this means NFTs in the game, and have spoken out against it. Due to backlash from players, Behaviour was quick to announce: "There is no blockchain technology in Dead by Daylight, and there never will be."
But Behaviour's partnership with Boss Protocol continues. This is frustrating both players and many developers inside the studio.
"Everyone hated it," said a former Behaviour developer. "We didn't know it beforehand."
To quell the unrest, Behaviour executives expressed their opposition to NFTs during an all-hands meeting in December last year. Just a few hours after that meeting ended, GSC Game World, the developer of Stalker 2, also announced the cancellation of the NFT plan, citing strong opposition from players.
Behaviour is reluctant to express its position publicly, and companies such as Ubisoft have announced that they not only support blockchain projects, but are also actively developing their own technologies. In January 2022, a Behaviour employee asked company executives to share more details at a meeting.
"First of all, let's be clear, we did not make NFTs, and we will not be in the future," replied Maria Claude-Bennard, Marketing Communications Director at Behaviour, "We didn't even express any position in the media or on social media, despite our All competitors have done this, like Ubisoft and a lot of others. That's what I'm trying to say, there won't be any NFTs in our games now and in the future."
"She reiterated our position in her own words," said Stephen Ross, Behaviour's head of public relations. "Behaviour has publicly shared this position with several media outlets last fall, and we fully understand the concerns of the player community about NFTs. There is absolutely no blockchain technology in Murder, nor will it ever be. We do not sell NFTs.”
Ross noted that "the studio's stance has remained the same to this day," however, Behaviour isn't pulling out of the NFT project for Elms.
"Dead by Daylight" seems to want to use new characters to try to add blockchain elements, but players don't buy it
"Abusive and personal attacks are not allowed"
Game developers rarely speak to the media, but more and more developers are starting to speak out publicly on the topic of cryptocurrencies. For example, when the British publisher Team17 announced the "Bugs of War" NFT project, many employees publicly expressed their opposition, and also disclosed to the media other issues within the company in terms of compensation and working conditions. According to an earlier report by Bloomberg, on Ubisoft's internal social platform, employees made hundreds of negative comments about the company's NFT plans.
With the rise of the cryptocurrency craze, many gaming projects using cryptocurrencies have attracted huge investments. Some companies even buy games that are in the R&D stage outright and then add cryptocurrency to the game.
Not long ago, Gala Games announced the new work "GRIT" and described it as a new tactical competitive game in the background of the western frontier of the United States. The trailer released by Gala is almost identical to the trailer for GRIT when it was first revealed in April 2021, the only difference being the text "Gala Games is coming soon" in the title.
According to the original plan, "GRIT" will be launched on the Steam store in the early access version at the end of January this year, but the development team suddenly announced that the release date will be postponed. After reaching a cooperation with Gala, the development team issued a statement on the Discord server of “GRIT”, saying that “abusive and personal attacks are not allowed” and that players are not encouraged to make NFT or cryptocurrency-related remarks when talking about the game- This of course makes people curious about the topic.
"At this stage, it's too early to pay too much attention to whether we will add NFTs to the game." The "GRIT" development team said, "We haven't released any information on that topic, if you follow some of the practices of other games. All kinds of speculation, that is obviously not constructive. Please don't try to guess what we think, we are implementing the plan and will post here in due course."
"GRIT" is a western-themed "chicken-eating" game. What is the connection with NFT?
"Businessmen love NFTs because they feel that adding NFTs to the game is not a lot of work and then they can make a lot of money. That's the way they want to live." One works for a major game publisher of developers said, "But I can tell you that almost all developers don't want to do this, we are particularly disgusted... Those who are chasing NFT projects seem to see the benefits of NFTs only one-sidedly and forget that everyone hates it ."
"You work so hard to earn a gamer's trust, that's one of the hardest things in the world. You can't just sell a bunch of pictures and ruin your trust in you, it's not worth it. There are many things in life that are more important than The ups and downs of money are more important. Certain experiences are priceless and don’t need money to prove value.”
"I will understand later"
Previously, Ubisoft's executive in charge of the NFT project said: "Players still don't understand what a digital secondary market can bring them, which is really beneficial, but they don't understand it yet." In other words, Ubisoft I think players don't understand how cool NFTs are, but they will in the future.
"In their opinion, if we disagree with them, it's because we're stupid," said Mark Ruschel, Ubisoft's senior game designer and Ubisoft Paris union representative. Will continue to use this kind of technology.”
Matt Wolf, vice president of blockchain at Zynga, said the company hopes to hire a “token economic designer,” but the company will allow employees to drop out of NFT projects in the future. Wolfe acknowledged that those interested in cryptocurrency offerings may be more focused on revenue than gameplay. "We don't want to give players something they don't want, so we don't take it for granted that they want a super-deep experience."
It's an honest assessment of Zynga's own ambitions in this space, acknowledging the tension between its financial goals and developers and players that will likely continue to play out for some time to come. Gamers may not like encryption, but gaming executives are curious about it, and the curiosity isn't going away.
"These comments are so irritating, they want to change the nature of the game," one developer said. "We play games to kill time and have fun, but some people think that people play games no longer for the purpose of playing games. The fun turns into making money...if you want to monetize your playtime, you'll find that the actual monetary value of playing the game is almost worthless."