NFTs (None Fungible Token) are a unique non-interchangeable units of data stored on a blockchain (a form of digital ledger), which effectively allow users to own, buy and sell digital goods such as in-game items or artwork.

During EA’s third quarter earnings call on Tuesday, Andrew Wilson, CEO of Electronic Arts (EA) acknowledged that NFTs are currently driving a lot of outside investment in the games industry. However, he compared the current rise of NFTs and investments to previous investments for 3D AR and VR in the video game industry.

Andrew Wilson during EA’s third quarter earnings call;

“The way I look at this is, collectabilty is really built on four key metrics,”. “That’s around high-quality content, it’s around scarcity, it’s around proof of authenticity, and it’s around a group of people that find value in that content.

“We’ve seen that happen in the real world and we’ve seen that happen in the virtual world with certain things that happened in and around our games for some number of years.

“And I believe that collectability will continue to be an important part of our industry and the games and the experiences that we offer our players.

“Whether that’s part of NFTs and the blockchain, well that remains to be seen. And I think the way we think about it is, we want to deliver the best possible player experience we can. And so, we’ll evaluate that over time, but right now it’s not something that we’re driving hard against.”

Andrew Wilson also said this during the second earnings call back in November;

“The play to earn or the NFT conversation is still really, really early”, before adding: “I do think it will be an important part of our – of the future of our industry on a go-forward basis.”

Since the earning calls, a few notable gaming companies have started selling NFTs, companies like Konami and Ubisoft, while Square Enix merely expressed interest in the whole NFT universe. With that being said, these companies have come under fire for producing or even expressing interest in these NFTs due to the NFT format’s high carbon footprint and what many perceive to be cynical implementation.

Earlier on Tuesday, the publishers behind Worms, TeamU17 decided to pass on entering the NFT space because of the backlash from its business partners and fans. Other companies have shown more Resistance to the backlash of game companies dipping their hands into the NFT space, going as far one Ubisoft executive recently claiming players just “don’t get it”

Andrew Wilson also addressed  Battlefield 2042’s disappointing launch day during the earning’s call on tuesday, saying He backed developer DICE to turn things around and claimed to believe the game “Will do well over the course of time”.

The post FIFA publisher EA is not currently focused on NFTs, says Andrew Wilson first appeared on Get2Gaming.

NTF’s are bad. Bold statements only today. An NTF, or “none Fungible token” is often misconstrued as crypto bros spending way too much money on Jpegs of monkeys. The reality is actually that its crypto bros spending way too much money on a receipt that *says* They own the JPEG of a monkey but that has no legal backing behind it. Combine that with a bunch of issues revolving around the environment, and NFTS have got a severe amount of backlash in the last few months.

But what if I told you it was worse?

There is a small amount of people who are generally apathetic to the whole thing. Sure, there aren’t many who take this view, NFTs are widely hated, but there are some. So let me explain exactly why you should care, and why this matters.

So what exactly is the “block chain”

The Blockchain is essentially a list of text entries, a copy of which is on every computer on  the network. This means that older entries cannot be altered, as the other users will have copies of the accurate data. This means the Data involved is decentralized, and no single entity can take control of it like a bank or government.

New Entries (known as blocks) are added to the list (chain) using a mechanism. Though there are many of these, the most popular chains (bitcoin and etherium)  utalise Proof of Work.

Using this system, each computer on the network tries to solve a Cryptographic puzzle (hence cryptocurrency), with the first one that solves the puzzle adding an entry to the lis and getting a coin as a reward. To solve the puzzle quicker you use GPUs that are found on graphics cards. This can be a very intense process, so doing so uses an insane amount of electricity and reduces the lifespan of the cards involved. Furthermore, puzzles get more complicated over time, increasing the costs.

Etherium is promising to move to a “proof of stake” system (which they have been saying for around a decade at this point but whatever). The principle is the same but rather than ever computer solving puzzles its decided by lottery. The more you stake, the more likely you are to be selected. This lowers the environmental impact, but really it just goes to show its just ritch people getting richer.

“Green Chains”

Some blockchains claim to be eco friendly and “Green”, such as the one Ubisoft have been using for their Quartz NFT’s, however all this really seems to do is bundle up and store transaction numbers, then dump them on the (deicdedly not green) etherium chain. Sure, its a bit better than it was, but its still not great.

NFT’s

So that brings us back to NFT’s. Again, all these really are is a digital receipt that says you own a piece of media, but actually that is pretty much meaningless outside of crypto bros who go for this stuff. notably, though, despite using the block chain, NFT’s are not decentralised. People could change the location that your NFT links to and suddenly all you have is a receipt that leads to nothing.

Further more, according to their very own inventor… NTF’s are a scam. Its a pyramid scheme.

So how does this effect gamers?

NFT implementation so far has been… shit to say the least, and that isnt even the biggest issue when it comes to NFT’s. Sure, its bad. Its really fucking bad, but thats not why gamers should be opposed to this tech on principle.

Remember when I mentioned that you need GPU’s to mine cryptocurrency, to solve puzzles. Yeah, thats the issue. That is one of the many reasons the PS5, for example. Has been so hard to find. Because there has been a parts shortage caused, in no small part, by the people running these farms buying up the parts to go into their farms.

Overall, NFT’s are bad. Really bad. Monumentally bad. And its not going to get better unless we really fight back. So far a couple of companies have budged, GCS gamescape have scrapped plans for NFT integration in stalker 2, Sega have rolled back plans for their integration, and Geoff Keighley of the game awards explicitly banned their inclusion in the show. But we need this to keep up. These days, lootboxes are a still present but mitigated problem in the industry due to this kind of backlash, but we also now have to put up with microtransactions in full price games. Lets make sure NFT’s are not here to stay.

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The post Why NFT’s are bad for gaming and everything else first appeared on Get2Gaming.

Sonic Frontiers, or as I lovingly call it, Sonic Odyssey meets Sonic of the Colossus, was originally pegged for a 2021 launch (according to an investor QnA with SEGA). Luckily, the folks at SonicStadium have confirmed that Sonic Frontiers is now planned to release around holiday season 2022, mainly to allow time to improve the game’s quality.

“Not only for this title, but during the development phase, we have been steadily conducting analysis to improve the quality of the title before release, such as introducing game testing based on external evaluations, and I have a feeling that it will become a good game and have high expectations for it” – SEGA response in QnA.

Sonic Boom: Fire and Ice (surprisingly NOT a Game of Thrones crossover) has also been delayed for the same reason.

While there’s no gameplay available yet, SEGA has promised that Sonic Frontiers should be taking the Sonic franchise in a new drastically different direction from past titles. Considering the trailer (psst, right here) seems to promise a vast world of nature and ancient ruins (ala Breath of the Wild), it would be interesting to see how the game handles traversal and parkour platforming with a character known for being bouncy and speedy.

Compared to SEGA’s announcement of interest in NFTs, I’d say the delay info is good news! For the blessedly uninitiated: NFTs are essentially fancy-shmancy receipts for digital art, not giving you ownership, but essentially saying “oh, but consider this: I might own it! Therefore, give me 69 billion quid if you want to use it”. For a more in-depth explanation on the concept, have a look at Patrick Macintyre’s blog on Ubisoft’s NFT announcement and the analysis video on NFTs (Nasty F****** Things) from Jim Sterling.

Going back to SEGA specifically, they have been trying out ‘various experiments and we have already started many different studies and considerations but nothing is decided at this point regards P2E (play-to-earn)’. SEGA also noted the large-scale unpopularity of NFTs, so hopefully they’ll come to their senses sooner or later. I mean, SEGA. Honey. Baby. It’s okay, you’ve been out of the console game too long, we all make widdle itsy bitsy mistakerooneys, just don’t forget to take your meds next time (UwU).

In other news, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 developer GSC Game World has announced plans to avoid NFTs shortly after announcing plans to incorporate them, due to fan backlash.

Product Poems:

Sonic Mania, plus a fun art book! Knuckles and Knuckles, a bauble head, look!

Dying Light implies Living Darkness… Sleep paralysis weird, yo.

There was once an AMIIBO called Bowser, called Lucas to talk about flowers. With a hand-each from Lottie, Tom Nook’s favorite totty, they said “let’s give these buds a shower”.

There was once a young woman named Barbie, one day she got bit by a zombie! But she didn’t turn, for soon she would learn, she had no brains- “oh, harder Harvey”!

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The post Sonic Frontiers Release Delay + Mild Roasting first appeared on Get2Gaming.

NFTs have been a bit of a hot button issue in the past year. Those in favour of them claim that they allow people to own and make money off of Digital art. On the other side, many are at best skeptical of the Idea, given its undeniably large carbon footprint and that the idea of owning Digital art is questionable given that any piece of Art can be Saved in a form that is functionally identical to the “original” NFT.

With this in mind, it probably wasn’t a huge surprise that the announcement of the “Quartz NFT ” Promotion Ubisoft are/were planning to add into Ghost recon: Breakpoint got such a negative response. It was so bad that the announcement has been delisted on youtube. Even with youtube no-longer showing the Dislike number publicly (By the way, there are plugins to re-enable that if you want to), VGC was able to determine that the announcement video had a whopping 90% dislike ratio.

Ubisoft is planning to give away the first 3 NFT Items to players that have logged a large number of hours in the game, with their aim being to make players into “stakeholders” and sees the NFT’s as a way to reward players. Ubisoft also claim their NFT’s are also more environmentally friendly than others, due to them using a different blockchain based on Tezos.

NFT’s are a very contentious topic in the video game space. Aside from the issues with the technology already, Video Games, especially online ones which seem to be the target of NTF integration most of the time, are transient. Eventually the servers of any given game will be taken offline, and with them any NFT’s from the game will be lost. Alongside this, many industry professionals have denounced the tech, Geoff Keighley has explicitly rejected the notion of involving NFT’s in the game awards, Phil Spence has talked negatively of them, and Steam has explicitly banned blockchain games from its store.

Despite this, some game companies are looking more into NFT’s. Neopets, Sega and GameStop have started selling or have looked into selling them. Ubisoft trying to get into space seems almost like a desperate attempt to get Ghost Recount Breakpoint to be notable after a dismal launch. However if this is the companies gamble to get the game back, I am pretty sure its not going to work.

You can buy plenty of games which are not Ghost Recon: Breakpoint at go2games.com

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The post Ubisoft Delists Quartz NFT Announcement Video first appeared on Get2Gaming.