There was no scenario in which I was the target audience for Real realBut I would never assume that it could never have had an audience. Of course, I could be firmly in mind that the addition of John Smedley to a spiritual suite for a series to which I have never really had an emotional attachment is the control of the cruise so as not to really care, but I imagine that it could have made an idea with a certain contingent of faithful fans … until you know, he started to talk about the idea that there will be two parallel versions Blocchain for the blockchain game and integration and one without.
Now, this line alone has clearly triggered the “No thank you” button in MMO veterinarians “and our own readers, so I don’t need to explain anyone who reads this and regularly comments that blockchain and P2E games are bad and should feel bad. But Johnny The Smedley Engine is hardly the first person who tried to do the routine “We will have two versions of our game, and one will be free from the blockchain”. And it literally never works. It didn’t work for Legends of AriaIt didn’t work for Ravendawnit does not work for Frontier of the day before Or TrivialIt will not work here, and it will not work in the future. Because it’s stupid.
First and foremost, because I found myself somehow in the position of the person who explains vocally why the blockchain and the NFT and P2E are bad, I think there is an important article to read beforehand: the one where I went deep on Frontier of the day before. This game does not advertise that it will have an “innocent” version alongside the crypto version (although it has been a bit since Eve online is this innocent version). But the reason you should read is that he breaks down the basic concept of what blockchain specifically Offers an MMO in general.
In short? It offers financial incentive. It is Really that. This does not facilitate creativity in a way that cannot be better facilitated by other means, and you must already know because if that were not the case and the blockchain had in fact really unique use that did not return the assets, People would have used them now.
I’m not casual here. This technology was floating in the form implemented since 2008. It is a long time for something to be there without anyone having found a version which “does not sell things to people”. A function, you can note, which does not even require the blockchain. For example, Warframe To a process to add skins and accessories generated by players to the game, no necessary blockchain. In fact, SOE / Daybreak helped to send the appointment to these systems, that John Smedley, as a former president of SOE / Daybreak, knows very well. He even mentioned this studio program of players in his field. The blockchain is not necessary for any of these things.
But we are not only talking about how the blockchain has no advantage in offering video games; We have already done this dance. No, we are talking about the idea of running two separated Versions of the game. And there again, I order you to make an additional reading, in particular of our limited limit column almost finished Gachapwned, which struck its main thesis and discussion point by noting that Gacha is not only a business model but an integral part of the game.
It is the problem of having two versions of the game. It is not that you will direct a Gacha Blockchain, a set of words so cursed that I would feel bad to speak them if I was not certain that someone else had already. This is rather the point that you cannot just remove the Gacha and have a purely better game on the other side. Gacha is not only a business model, but an essential part of how the game is designed from zero, to count.
If your Crypto blockchain waste is part of the game, then it is an essential part of the game. The version that does not have it will feel less accordingly because a central element of the game itself has been torn off and replaced by, well, nothing. On the other hand, if it is No a fundamental part of the game and can be easily excised, the version of the game that has It will be better like a competent game that has a gross financial program grafted in addition. None of these options are good!
And again, the fact that financial incentive is the only unique thing that the blockchain version has to offer means that any interaction with this part of the game will be filtered through this objective. Even in the best case where the integration of the blockchain is just united on the side, the result is that potential players will see and know what you are doing. You try to sell them the same game they are already playing, but with cryptographic money waste, because it is … literally what you do. It is not a subtext; It’s just text.
Players will not see this and will think that designers have faith in their product as a fun game; They will think that designers trust their money mastery program, or at least are ready to simulate it long enough to keep cryptographic investors long enough to see it. And that doesn’t attract people in the game! Even if you can really increase P2E with zero faults and have the entire intention to support this version of the game, you started by telling the players that you are looking for all possible means to sneak money from their wallets. It does not promote confidence!
But in addition to all that, there is another problem. Executing an MMO of all kinds is difficult. Running two East doubling hard.
To a certain extent, of course, the blockchain is managed. But it is only a certain measure. Much of the management must still be managed on the human side, which is in which the article above all above. Execute two completely separated versions of an MMORPG, even less a new First, double your workload and expenses when it is possible – even likely – That one version will never get a kind of basic player.
And to be clear, it’s not just speculative. When you look at the real bases of the financial patterns explicitly based on the blockchain posing as games, no one really plays these things. It is like having an MLM convention where everyone tries to peddle their scams to people who try to mow a scam. You don’t have players; You have potential marketing specialists, which does not attract other normal people to come and play because this is not what the machine is designed to do.
I said more than once that the functionalities of launching a game demonstrate the priorities of the designer. This does not mean that the launch features demonstrate the only Something the designer wants in the game; Rather, this means that launch features demonstrate what the designer considers non -negotiable for the game in a launch state. Promising to get started with a blockchain version before you have made a solid case to play the game Any other capacity serves as a fairly clear indicator of what is not negotiable for the studio, and it is not something that talks about the real priorities at stake.
Obviously, it is not an evaluation of a new game which has just been announced and which could very well modify the course long before arriving to the point of worrying about one of these absurdities of promised blockchain. But it is always worth emphasizing that when the developers promise “we have made blockchain part of the game, but it is completely optional”, that is to say … not really a good sign. It is not even really better than making it not optional. The net effect is identical.
Sometimes you know exactly what’s going on with the MMO genre, and sometimes everything you have, are waves of patch informing you that something, somewhere, has probably been changed. The main journalist Eliot Lefebvre likes to analyze these types of notes and also vague elements of the genre as a whole. The power of this analysis can be adjusted in certain circumstances.
