Ubisoft tried to peddle its NFTs via Quartz, which went about as well as you’d expect them to. In an attempt to alleviate some of the pain sustained in the behind, one company exec continues to defend the unnecessary inclusion into games with the most convincing argument ever – that gamers just don’t get the benefits of NFTs.
That’s basically what Nicolas Pouard, Ubisoft VP of Strategic Innovations Lab said in an interview with Australian financial comparison site Finder. He places emphasis on the “digital secondary market”, claiming that Ubisoft is looking at the “end game”. And said end game is the tired argument of reselling items once they’re done playing the game, which makes as much sense as bringing assets across games and IPs.
But what Pouard fails to understand is that gamers aren’t looking at a game for the “end game”, but the game itself. It’s not like the vast majority of Counter Strike: Global Offensive players play the game primarily for the skin economy instead of the competitive shooter itself. And when development budgets are finite, the last thing gamers want is for developers to waste them on things players don’t want, rather than things that they do want like fun gameplay.
As for the claim that gamers “don’t get it”, at this point most gamers already do get why some publishers are so keen on NFTs. And it’s the one thing that said publishers will never admit to – the fact that they get a cut each time an NFT gets sold. This would allow publishers to earn money without having to spend resources on making things that players actually want in their games. To say that gamers don’t get it is disingenuous if not simply dishonest.
(Source: Finder)
