Shuji Utsumi, Sega’s co-CEO, comments in a new statement that there is no point in implementing blockchain technology if it doesn’t make games ‘fun’.
We’re at the stage of capitalist indoctrination where even the games we play have to generate a sellable artifact of some sort or another. The number of games I see on the app store where you pretend to buy and sell land using real money has kinda become ridiculous.
Or better yet, games where you get monopoly money for pretending to do a job in the game
Things I often find lacking in videos games: good storytelling, adjustable subtitle/UI size, immersive world with adequate pattern of life (eg background characters, random environment animations, …).
Things I don’t miss: NFTs, microtransactions, constant in-game awards/points collections.
He is right.
I have never been able to figure out the answer to this, so maybe someone here knows: exactly how does one implement blockchain technology into a game, and what’s the purpose of doing so? Like in terms of actual gameplay, what’s it supposed to achieve? Is there a valid reason you’d want to include it?
The most successful example for a blockchain game is “Axie Infinity” which is something of a Pokémon-like. It used blockchain technology to track the unique “Axies” (= Pokémons) which could be traded and sold. So the blockchain was used to do just that.
The big promise of games like “Axie Infinity” was “play-to-earn”, games which allowed players to earn money through playing the game, such as trading in “Axie Infinity”.Could this only be done with blockchain? No. All of that could technically also be achieved by other means.
So ultimately all of the talk about the blockchain was mostly PR and a way to distinguish the game. Nobody would have cared about it, if it had not had this feature. Which is very representative of all blockchain games.The talk of how blockchain technology would allow players to transfer items from one game to another; or create unique characters which could be transfered between games; etc. have always been pipe dreams, They would have required a level of cooperation between publishers and developers of games that was simply impossible to achieve.
As a footnote: The use of blockchain in “Axie Infinity” ultimately resulted in an in-game economy that was largely a pyramid scheme. The game is still there, but the economy imploded and most players only ever made cents, if they earned anything through the game at all.
That “play-to-earn” system ended up just being a means for people to exploit others in poorer counties to grind countless hours in the game for a pittance.
Capitalism wins again!
