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Crypto and blockchain are quite unpopular in the gaming space. Whenever a company mentions that it is exploring NFTs in its games, it usually receives an immediate negative response. With current trends and sentiments, crypto apparently still has a long way to go before it becomes widely accepted. In the “How to talk about NFTs without making everyone mad at you” discussion at this year’s GamesBeat Summit Next 2022, our panelists discuss how to navigate the path to adoption.
Moderator Mattie Fairchild, Senior Director of crypto marketing and developer relationships at Manticore Games, asks, “How do you navigate that road? Brooks, you talked about breaking down power structures, that sounds threatening, that sounds like people are really mad at you.”
“Well, that’s it,” replied Brooks Brown, CEO of Consortium9. “It’s one of the reasons I think a lot of the play so far within crypto has really not been about using it as it is, but instead finding ways to reach an audience within a very small space. hyper-monetize the group – monetize them as heavily as possible. The joke is that I am here on stage talking about crypto and NFTs. Dean, who invited me over to talk, the first time he ever heard me talk about it, I was the one who sarcastically and sardonically asked why, and gave shit to a lot of people.”
“That shift in me was about understanding the underlying technology, breaking it down and moving it,” Brown continued. “And when we start talking about what we can move with, the power we can give players and how we can set it up, the important thing is also to understand how those things are in the machine that we are building . Crypto is not something that builds a whole machine. Crypto is part of a bigger machine.”
Value does not have to be monetary
Players have usually rejected all NFT additions to popular games. As previously mentioned by Brooks Brown, many of the current NFT offerings are there to monetize a group of players. Much like owning a collectible, the hope is that your NFT will soar in money. Outside of the crypto world, however, gamers are not that interested in a fancy trinket. Players want something they can use.
“Brooks and I are in this together,” said James Wing, Business Development Principle at… NC partners. “What NCSoft is now involved in is figuring out what exactly is possible. Just like we’ve done with any other technology like AI, free to play, many other things, and then figure out how this gives value back to the player. If you take something nice and then just make it about money, it won’t necessarily be a better experience for the player. I mean, there are games that talk about that, and that can be a separate conversation. But right now we’re in the blockchain stage of figuring out, okay, how exactly is this going to work, and why, and how is it going to change and improve the emotional response a player has to the content?”
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