Both the video and your response have given me a lot of food for thought.
The video is a rejection of the current narrative surrounding NFTs and P2E as the future of games, from someone that knows the industry inside and out. On this, I have a lot of sympathy, seeing a lot of the rhetoric surrounding music & blockchain and questionable basis that a lot of funding has been raised.
I think there are three key areas that he draws attention to that are worth highlighting:
Business model - The narrative around NFTs is essentially one that moves revenue generation away from platforms & publishers and instead to NFT creators and users. Taking the functional challenges to one side, which Christopher explains in great detail in the video, there is a fundamental problem in that the proposed route forwards would significantly reduce a platform’s ability to make money. From a business incentives point of view, this seems illogical as a direction for publishers to move themselves towards. A counter to this could be that it’ll happen anyway and publishers need to adapt, with a likely move being moving down-the-chain into the NFT sales function.
Impact on the industry - However, if publishers are forced to move in that way then it changes what they are. Instead of competing around making the best games, they are competing around making the most effective NFTs. This feels like significant regression for the entire industry, and is likely the reason for such an impassioned response from the game dev community around this growing narrative. Put simply, the Games industry has been through a golden era, resulting in it being the most valuable entertainment sector in the world, and ultimately, many incredible games. A lot of people read NFTs as a threat to that.
Longer term impact on the quality - Reduced/changed business model for publishers, and a refocus on direction for investment and development, will lead to a strategic shift away from quality of games. Unlike other industries, the Games industry has a lot of historical examples of these impacts. “Free to Play” brought with it a model of shipping sub par products, often still in a relatively beta state, with pay-to-play mechanics designed to improve the product for users. This has improved over time, which is evidence towards NFTs not being a complete fool’s errand, but it is understandably a cause for concern. Real Money Transactions (RMT) have also caused great issues in the gaming community. Taking WoW for example, the current instances of WoW Classic are basically a lost cause where going on the black market and paying $/£ for resources is an expectation to compete at any reasonable level. This is an entire economy that the publisher is not part of, which reduces the enjoyment of the game for everyone, with no discernible advantage in terms of investment in the underlying game. Those not engaged within the black market economy, out of principal, or because they can’t afford to, are at a huge disadvantage to those that are. And players that do pay for RMTs are essentially engaged in a competition of who can spend the most money. Neither is good for the game.
The above is really just focussed on the NFT commentary, though there are elements of P2E within the RMT aspects. P2E looks in its current form like putting turbochargers on the farming bot mechanics that have plagued gaming economies since the the old Runescape days. It’s completely understandable that any game dev looking at this narrative will be thinking “what the fuck, no”.
I’m not sure about the “pro gaming” comparison. The best competitive games do a good job of balancing their buff/nerf iterations so that they reach an intended outcome across all levels of play. Furthermore, I’d argue that the professional gaming scene has developed to be a significant net benefit for the wider community, through bringing in investment, raising awareness, and giving career opportunities to players who are good enough. This is a world away from P2E grinders that are selling resources to richer players that can’t be arsed to do it themselves, causing inflation in the overall economy and resulting in RMT as a requirement to play.
With that all said, I completely agree that it is important to base all of this within the overall context of where development of blockchain x entertainment is, and how much further it has to go. The ridiculous valuations around projects right now are an understandable distraction, and the ponzi-grift elements don’t help. But every new thing needs to have time to find its role, as long as that doesn’t cause long term damage.
To your first point, yes, I didn't directly address Chris' position around business model and loss of earnings but I did indirectly.
Let's say, for example, that Ronald McDonald enters Chris' game with a large collection of burger NFTs which he earned for his deranged 10-a-day burger habit, and starts wreaking havoc on the players in Chrisland. At this stage, he's a free-to-play player that hasn't paid Chris anything.
And that would be awful, but Boomzap already ship free-to-play games with in-app purchases. I can play the first location in 'Cathy's Crafts' without paying Chris a thing and that hasn't ruined his business model.
Freemium and free-to-play are new models that would be impossible without mobile which allow Boomzap to build games for new audiences and experiment with new models. Game designers have learned how to use free-to-play mechanisms to onboard players through them experiencing the game with some limits. I imagine it'd take quite some effort to make a business case for developing a blockchain game where only players capture value created by other players and not the developer. Chris seems to be saying that this is the only plausible outcome for blockchain games. I'm sure there are more people who've played Fortnite and have never paid Epic than people who have. This does not seem to be a problem for Epic.
And Chris IS the designer, so he can still develop PC games for PC gamers that do not want to play mobile free-to-play games. He can also ship mobile games with some free-to-play elements, which he has. He could even try incorporating NFT items that have relevance beyond his own game world to see if it helps him attract players from other games. Nothing is lost, he's gained a new tool, a new medium, and access to a much larger audience—so, I maintain that this point is overstated.
Impact on the industry seems like the same point but at scale. Again, it seems overstated. I don't see people clamouring for NFT games because most people, still, play games for fun and, unless they are fun, NFTs won't gain traction.
You can already see the types of players that are drawn to Axie, Decentraland, and The Sandbox. Unless these games become fun they won't attract the people that Chris already serves. I'm sure a lot of game developers said that mobile games were a threat to console games—but time and time again we're shown that market cannibalisation is too simplistic a model for technology and gaming.
The same counter addresses your point around quality. Quality, here, is subjective. Mobile games, arguably, have demonstrated both immense quality and very low quality, some often resembling casino games. Neither are problematic for people who want to design games for an audience that doesn't care about mobile-casino games. Someone sitting on a train paying Candy Crush on their way to work has more in common with someone playing the slots in vegas than someone hopping onto a Runescape server to catch up with their friends of 10 years for an evening of quests.
In the same time, console games gave gone from strength to strength (Sony, Nintendo), as have PC games (Steam). Some of the oldest MMOs have grown a lot better and a lot larger.
Your pro gaming point is my point exactly. You could imagine the same sentence said 5 years from now: "The best competitive [or NFT] games do a good job of balancing their buff/nerf[/mint/burn] iterations so that they can reach an intended outcome across all levels of play. Furthermore, I’d argue that the professional gaming scene [and the blockchain gaming scene have] developed to be a significant net benefit for the wider community, through bringing in investment, raising awareness, and giving career opportunities to players who are good [or dedicated] enough."
P2E is ridiculous, but all things start out looking ridiculous until they start working. Hanging out on MSN for fun with your friends seemed odd and weird and now we do it in Discord and call it work (Hang-to-Earn? H2E?).
So, I recognise the angst but I think it's overstated—it's a static view of a dynamic world.
I'm reminded of Hem from "Who Moved My Cheese?" by Dr. Spencer Johnson. And, though I sympathise, I assume many, including Chris, will slowly reverse their stance over the coming years as the technology is deployed across society and we learn what works and what doesn't.
Both the video and your response have given me a lot of food for thought.
The video is a rejection of the current narrative surrounding NFTs and P2E as the future of games, from someone that knows the industry inside and out. On this, I have a lot of sympathy, seeing a lot of the rhetoric surrounding music & blockchain and questionable basis that a lot of funding has been raised.
I think there are three key areas that he draws attention to that are worth highlighting:
Business model - The narrative around NFTs is essentially one that moves revenue generation away from platforms & publishers and instead to NFT creators and users. Taking the functional challenges to one side, which Christopher explains in great detail in the video, there is a fundamental problem in that the proposed route forwards would significantly reduce a platform’s ability to make money. From a business incentives point of view, this seems illogical as a direction for publishers to move themselves towards. A counter to this could be that it’ll happen anyway and publishers need to adapt, with a likely move being moving down-the-chain into the NFT sales function.
Impact on the industry - However, if publishers are forced to move in that way then it changes what they are. Instead of competing around making the best games, they are competing around making the most effective NFTs. This feels like significant regression for the entire industry, and is likely the reason for such an impassioned response from the game dev community around this growing narrative. Put simply, the Games industry has been through a golden era, resulting in it being the most valuable entertainment sector in the world, and ultimately, many incredible games. A lot of people read NFTs as a threat to that.
Longer term impact on the quality - Reduced/changed business model for publishers, and a refocus on direction for investment and development, will lead to a strategic shift away from quality of games. Unlike other industries, the Games industry has a lot of historical examples of these impacts. “Free to Play” brought with it a model of shipping sub par products, often still in a relatively beta state, with pay-to-play mechanics designed to improve the product for users. This has improved over time, which is evidence towards NFTs not being a complete fool’s errand, but it is understandably a cause for concern. Real Money Transactions (RMT) have also caused great issues in the gaming community. Taking WoW for example, the current instances of WoW Classic are basically a lost cause where going on the black market and paying $/£ for resources is an expectation to compete at any reasonable level. This is an entire economy that the publisher is not part of, which reduces the enjoyment of the game for everyone, with no discernible advantage in terms of investment in the underlying game. Those not engaged within the black market economy, out of principal, or because they can’t afford to, are at a huge disadvantage to those that are. And players that do pay for RMTs are essentially engaged in a competition of who can spend the most money. Neither is good for the game.
The above is really just focussed on the NFT commentary, though there are elements of P2E within the RMT aspects. P2E looks in its current form like putting turbochargers on the farming bot mechanics that have plagued gaming economies since the the old Runescape days. It’s completely understandable that any game dev looking at this narrative will be thinking “what the fuck, no”.
I’m not sure about the “pro gaming” comparison. The best competitive games do a good job of balancing their buff/nerf iterations so that they reach an intended outcome across all levels of play. Furthermore, I’d argue that the professional gaming scene has developed to be a significant net benefit for the wider community, through bringing in investment, raising awareness, and giving career opportunities to players who are good enough. This is a world away from P2E grinders that are selling resources to richer players that can’t be arsed to do it themselves, causing inflation in the overall economy and resulting in RMT as a requirement to play.
With that all said, I completely agree that it is important to base all of this within the overall context of where development of blockchain x entertainment is, and how much further it has to go. The ridiculous valuations around projects right now are an understandable distraction, and the ponzi-grift elements don’t help. But every new thing needs to have time to find its role, as long as that doesn’t cause long term damage.
To your first point, yes, I didn't directly address Chris' position around business model and loss of earnings but I did indirectly.
Let's say, for example, that Ronald McDonald enters Chris' game with a large collection of burger NFTs which he earned for his deranged 10-a-day burger habit, and starts wreaking havoc on the players in Chrisland. At this stage, he's a free-to-play player that hasn't paid Chris anything.
And that would be awful, but Boomzap already ship free-to-play games with in-app purchases. I can play the first location in 'Cathy's Crafts' without paying Chris a thing and that hasn't ruined his business model.
Freemium and free-to-play are new models that would be impossible without mobile which allow Boomzap to build games for new audiences and experiment with new models. Game designers have learned how to use free-to-play mechanisms to onboard players through them experiencing the game with some limits. I imagine it'd take quite some effort to make a business case for developing a blockchain game where only players capture value created by other players and not the developer. Chris seems to be saying that this is the only plausible outcome for blockchain games. I'm sure there are more people who've played Fortnite and have never paid Epic than people who have. This does not seem to be a problem for Epic.
And Chris IS the designer, so he can still develop PC games for PC gamers that do not want to play mobile free-to-play games. He can also ship mobile games with some free-to-play elements, which he has. He could even try incorporating NFT items that have relevance beyond his own game world to see if it helps him attract players from other games. Nothing is lost, he's gained a new tool, a new medium, and access to a much larger audience—so, I maintain that this point is overstated.
Impact on the industry seems like the same point but at scale. Again, it seems overstated. I don't see people clamouring for NFT games because most people, still, play games for fun and, unless they are fun, NFTs won't gain traction.
You can already see the types of players that are drawn to Axie, Decentraland, and The Sandbox. Unless these games become fun they won't attract the people that Chris already serves. I'm sure a lot of game developers said that mobile games were a threat to console games—but time and time again we're shown that market cannibalisation is too simplistic a model for technology and gaming.
The same counter addresses your point around quality. Quality, here, is subjective. Mobile games, arguably, have demonstrated both immense quality and very low quality, some often resembling casino games. Neither are problematic for people who want to design games for an audience that doesn't care about mobile-casino games. Someone sitting on a train paying Candy Crush on their way to work has more in common with someone playing the slots in vegas than someone hopping onto a Runescape server to catch up with their friends of 10 years for an evening of quests.
In the same time, console games gave gone from strength to strength (Sony, Nintendo), as have PC games (Steam). Some of the oldest MMOs have grown a lot better and a lot larger.
Your pro gaming point is my point exactly. You could imagine the same sentence said 5 years from now: "The best competitive [or NFT] games do a good job of balancing their buff/nerf[/mint/burn] iterations so that they can reach an intended outcome across all levels of play. Furthermore, I’d argue that the professional gaming scene [and the blockchain gaming scene have] developed to be a significant net benefit for the wider community, through bringing in investment, raising awareness, and giving career opportunities to players who are good [or dedicated] enough."
P2E is ridiculous, but all things start out looking ridiculous until they start working. Hanging out on MSN for fun with your friends seemed odd and weird and now we do it in Discord and call it work (Hang-to-Earn? H2E?).
So, I recognise the angst but I think it's overstated—it's a static view of a dynamic world.
I'm reminded of Hem from "Who Moved My Cheese?" by Dr. Spencer Johnson. And, though I sympathise, I assume many, including Chris, will slowly reverse their stance over the coming years as the technology is deployed across society and we learn what works and what doesn't.