Ubisoft was the first AAA company to dip its toe into NFTs with its Quartz marketplace and Digits currency. Predictably, fans met the first run of NFTs, a selection of three items in Ghost Recon Breakpoint, with contempt. Not to be deterred, Ubisoft execs spoke in a recent interview of how gamers just don’t grasp the concept of NFTs and don’t understand how beneficial they’ll be to the industry.
Why Does Ubisoft Think We Don’t Understand NFTs?
First, here’s why companies are pushing NFTs. An NFT can be configured to automatically payout a royalty on all secondary sales. Imagine if every item sold on the Final Fantasy 14 market board gave a cut of real money (obfuscated through a cryptocurrency of course), to Square Enix. That’s what Ubisoft and other companies pushing NFTs want this to end up as. It’ll start with cosmetics, but eventually, there’ll be no more cash store and no more loot boxes. Instead, every transaction in a game will be a microtransaction. Even the most basic items will have a real-world value.
The above is why this is being pushed so hard despite overwhelmingly negative sentiment. Nicolas Pouard, VP at Ubisoft Strategic Innovations Lab, and Didier Genevois, Ubisoft Blockchain Technical Director, commented about their perception of the negative reaction to Ubisoft’s NFTs in a (softball) interview with Finder.
In the interview, Pouard stated:
“Well, it was a reaction we were expecting. We know it’s not an easy concept to grasp. But Quartz is really just a first step that should lead to something bigger. Something that will be more easily understood by our players. That’s the way we think about it and why we will keep experimenting. We will keep releasing features and services around this first initiative. And our belief is that, piece by piece, the puzzle will be revealed and understood by our players. We hope they will better understand the value we offer them.”
He goes on to say:
“I think gamers don’t get what a digital secondary market can bring to them. For now, because of the current situation and context of NFTs, gamers really believe it’s first destroying the planet, and second just a tool for speculation. But what we [at Ubisoft] are seeing first is the end game. The end game is about giving players the opportunity to resell their items once they’re finished with them or they’re finished playing the game itself.
So, it’s really, for them. It’s really beneficial. But they don’t get it for now.
Also, this is part of a paradigm shift in gaming. Moving from one economic system to another is not easy to handle. There are a lot of habits you need to go against and a lot of your ingrained mindset you have to shift. It takes time. We know that.”
As it was with microtransactions, these talking heads always highlight “customer choice” and “player opportunity” when trying to shove a new method of monetization down our throats. “Play-to-earn” is the current industry buzzword, but who plays games to make money outside of streaming and esports? The people making the decisions at higher levels are so detached from the product they’re selling that they see the negative reaction to NFTs as a misunderstanding, that gamers are too dumb to comprehend what they are. No, it’s just that not everyone wants to turn every single facet of their lives into some sort of economic challenge. Most of us work 40+ hours a week, and after taking care of errands, family time, etc., the majority of people don’t want to then sit down in their free time so they can grind away to earn some cosmetic item in a game so they can make pocket change by selling it.
