I love NFTs. Who doesn’t simp for jpegs of ugly primates and minimalist pixel avatars I could whack together in MS Paint over the course of a few minutes? What’s that you say? Everyone? Well then.
I’m all about my tokens not being fungible, especially when it comes to needless crypto scams nestling their way into my favourite video games. With the world slowly but surely being doomed by capitalism and a growing climate crisis, I thought it was about time I lost myself in the realm of NFTs and how they can be adapted to some of the biggest games out there.
That, and because I absolutely, undeniably, indubitably hate both myself and where this medium is going. All aboard the monkey train before it derails and crashes into a mountain.
Final Fantasy 7
Square Enix rang in 2022 with a letter from CEO Yosuke Matsuda that talked about all things blockchain, metaverse, and NFTs - finishing itself off by declaring that games aren’t meant to be fun anymore, but ‘play to contribute’ experiences designed around profit and little more.
An ironic declaration, given Final Fantasy 7 is one of the company’s biggest games ever and focuses specifically on the consequences of corporate greed and environmental destruction. This message was culturally relevant when the original game launched back in ‘97, let alone the 2020 remake emerging in a landscape where cryptocurrency was beginning to surface in the mainstream. It’s comical to see its parent company indulge the blockchain.
Let’s face it, Shinra Corporation would go absolutely rigid for NFTs. Digital assets that are both capable of destroying the environment and earning an irrational amount of monetary value when hoarded by the global elite? I’m sure the JENOVA project had plenty of benefits, but she ain’t got nothing on a folder filled with tokens for Rufus and his mates.
The Sims
The majority of crypto-bros are basement dwelling losers who still live with their parents. You might call it the ideal male fantasy, and something that can be recreated with the utmost accuracy in The Sims. You can craft a spotty, neckbeard donning loser like an ancient Greek sculptor, ensuring they represent the dirt and grime of NFTs without missing a single beat.
There’s also the basement itself, the inner sanctum of primal JPEGs filled with dirty dishes, unkempt furniture, and lukewarm puddles of piss left behind by your crypto gamer. Ignore phone calls, deny every single piece of social interaction, and become a higher being. The parents of these people are likely already disappointed in them, but now they can achieve that milestone all over again. What a world we live in.
Civilization 6
Climate change is a thing in Civilization 6, especially in recent expansions that place a specific focus on humanity’s environmental impact on our planet. This game allows players to begin from nothing and advance towards the modern world with their eye on societal progress and cultural importance, yet our natural instincts lead us to make the same selfish mistakes again and again. Being nuked at the hands of others isn’t out of the question in your average game of Civilization, so the same can be said for the blockchain.
You’re busy making Neo-Tokyo the best it can be and suddenly it emerges that Gandhi has constructed a giant warehouse filled with graphics cards mining Bitcoin, while Napoleon has just bought a really sick NFT from Catherine the Great to hang in his gallery. You can’t trust any of these losers, so maybe nuclear annihilation is the preferred option before Hitler rolls up in a Tesla and talks about taking us to the moon.
Pokemon
Pokemon are just fancy NFTs when you think about it. Each one is unique, you keep it locked away, and it’s easy to catch one that looks exactly the same by just walking into some long grass. Your Pikachu ain’t shit, I got one just like it.
Shinies are extra rare NFTs, although even they feel more valuable and less comparable to garbage than everything flooding the internet right now. God forbid the world ever reaches a point where Pokemon is a slave to the blockchain, rolling out new generations with an element of artificial scarcity that completely ruins the magic of catching them all. If this ever happened I’d join Team Rocket and be stealing creatures left and right.
Any game with a monkey in it
Ape Escape? Yep. Super Monkey Ball? Totally. Peter Jackson’s King Kong: The Official Video Game Of The Movie? Absolutely. NFT owners love monkeys, so do celebrities with more money than sense and people with an awful taste in digital art. The games I listed above are better than all of those things, but they’d at least imitate the sick and twisted fantasy of owning an ape that belongs to you and only you.
NFTs are bad, and I hope global warming melts your PC into a pile of scrap metal that I can throw into the ocean. It will be fucked by then anyway so who cares about littering.