The shriveled corpse of Atari has inflicted a new blight upon the land – NFT loot boxes. They’re NFTs (terrible) that behave like loot boxes (also terrible). God is dead.
Let’s grit our teeth and have an excruciating time looking at this horrible blasphemy, shall we?
The new video on NFTs from Folding Ideas is a must-watch. Its loooong, but it is so good at explaining what you need to know about NFTs.
This was sad but informative, thank you Sterling, hope things get better.
So Steph. With NFTs in Lootboxes. There is Now even more reason to legislate them as gambling as you get a prize with a history of being traded for hard money.
My grandkids will be “you burned the planet for WHAT??” We are making boomers look good.
You know, when I said the game industry couldn’t get any worse after everything that came out about Activision, I did not mean it to be taken as a challenge.
in 2018, Devolver Digital had a whole fucking E3 press conference where they jokingly introduced Loot Box Coin. Atari really looked at that and took it completely seriously.
The obsession to push NFTs as an acceptable grift is so relentless, there hasn’t been a Jimquisition yet about Troy Baker promoting horrible horrible AI-generated vocal NFTs, not only scamming voice actors, including Troy himself, but also give creeps and stalkers the opportunity to make certain voices say things the actors would never do and without their knowledge or consent.
“It’s just cosmetic!!” The catch phrase of idiots who threw their money at digital nothingness… We need to be careful and not just assume these will fail because NFT’s are fucking stupid..
you know, i was losing all hope but then i heard “the future is sterling” and suddenly my optimism was revived
In these awful times, at least Commander Sterling brings me joy.
NFT Lootboxes:
“Whoa! This is worthless!”
“It’s less than worthless, my boy!”
Tiny point, but any time someone says some NFTs are “more rare than others” it really shows what a farce it all is. The whole purpose of NFTs, allegedly, is that they’re *unique*. One of a kind. Every NFT should be just as “rare” as any other. But then that’s the point, isn’t it? It’s all artificial scarcity. It’s a brilliant pyramid scheme because the ones at the top of it don’t even have to supply an actual fucking product. Even CutCo at least has to supply actual fucking knives
This is kinda genius: they now can skip the part of making, marketing and selling a game and jump straight to selling loot boxes… suckers will suck and these “GFTs” will be sold out (if not already happened)
So, there’s one thing I wanted to say about this.
If they insist that NFTs have value, they can no longer deny that lootboxes are gambling.
If they insist that lootboxes are not gambling, they have to admit that NFTs have no value at all.
They have willingly placed themselves in a Catch 22 situation.
Some of us consider artificial scarcity just generally a counterproductive thing to push. For the NFT crowd, though, artificial scarcity is now not only acceptable, it’s actually a *selling point.* I guess it makes the whole concept of property a little bit more blatant: it’s not about having a thing, or being able to enjoy a thing, it’s about preventing other people from being able to have or enjoy a thing. The two sides aren’t as distinct when the thing in question is limited, but I was naive enough to assume that for non-limited things everyone would think “great, now we can all have it” instead of “so now let’s invent a way to artificially limit the supply so only some of us can have it.” Because inequality is the product being sold.
“You need to get in on NFTs now! They’ll revolutionize everything!”
“How?”
“… you just don’t get it. Have fun staying poor.”
– any conversation with an NFT shill
“NFTs aren’t something that happened for us. They are something that happened to us”. That is a quote that is gonna stand the test of time. That is a quote that deserves to go wide.