Video games are fun, because the moment we all feel things are going reasonably well, business executives in the industry come up with a new, exciting way to make it all terrible. If you’re not microtransactioning to wear a costume, you’re paying actual money to advance in a basketball game you already paid actual money for. What a time to be alive!
Opponents of NFTs say they’re bad for the environment, trick consumers into using them as financial investment, create massive scam opportunities, and make people have the ugliest fucking profile avatars possible. Proponents, however, say NFTs make them a lot of money off idiots. You can see both sides of the argument.
Naturally, as the game industry is run on squeezing every last drop out of customers until they fall to the ground like withered husks, some companies are considering or even promoting NFTs. And you can tell gamers around the world are ready for NFTs, because every time a video game celebrity announces a team-up with some company called shit like, Funds4FunKids, that person gets ratioed into the fucking Stone Age.
Executives feel that NFTs may give players a new opportunity to own and sell collectible items across games as well as potentially making money by just playing! Has this type of gameplay led to in-game economy collapses? Why, yes it has! Finally, a video game that’s just a desk job that doesn’t pay well. NFTs: Not just bad, but also a dumb kind of bad.
But while executives are looking for things that could improve the consumer experience by ruining the consumer experience, I’ve come up with a list of five things I would still want in a game more than NFTs.
5. Games That Take Eight MinutesTo Load And Then Even More Time To Load Again
I may not have much time to play you, Guilty Gear, but I’m glad you use that all up by taking forever to load. Sure, there’s a fan patch that helps make it go faster, but why would I want to speed up the wait to play a fighting game, a genre specifically made for quick sessions? Yeah, it may be frustrating to wait forever to play - especially on modern technology largely sold as eliminating load times - but it could be worse! At least you’re not crushing yourself as you try to break even with a virtual character you rented from a friend, even as that character’s real-world value plummets.
4. Games That Stop You Every Three Steps for Another Tutorial Lesson
Pokemon Legends: Arceus is fun! Especially once you’re allowed to walk a yard without someone taking ten minutes to explain the world to you and how to play in it. It’s all necessary information! You need all of it to get the full experience! But wouldn’t you just love to get out into those lovely fields and start catching monsters? Sure you would. But before that, we need to take you through crafting and outfits. It can be incredibly frustrating to feel like a game is breaking the immersion while simultaneously holding your hand. At the same time, a developer caring enough to hold your hand through complicated gameplay is better than a developer who will definitely shut down their website and Discord and completely disappear after everyone gets scammed with their useless digital receipts.
3. In-Game Code To Make My Console Scratch My Disc
I mostly buy digital, but sometimes it’s oddly cheaper to go physical! And while physical media can’t last forever, it’s important to care for those discs so I can always play some of my favorite games. That’s why it would sure be bad if every game was intentionally programmed to make the console just scratch the shit out of the disc. Not even repairable. Not even making it skip. Just making that disc pop out of the drive looking like it had seen the face of god and been unworthy.
I’d really feel like I wasted money on the game when I can’t play it. On the other hand, at least I got to play it once so it’s infinitely more fun than an NFT which would also be a waste of money.
2. The Jokes in Borderlands 3
This one is tough. We’ve faced a lot of hard times in the industry. There are a lot of important issues we must talk about. The primary one being the jokes in Borderlands 3. The first two Borderlands were good games with bad writing. That’s fine. They had Cage the Elephant songs we all liked. But the jokes in Borderlands 3 feel like a punishment from someone who was kicked off a college improv team for saying the word “cum” too many times in scenes. Still. Think about it. What if you still had those jokes and kept having CL4P-TR4P push spending Earth dollars on space bucks to make your shitty neon green gun exclusive to you? Ooof.
1. Literally Anything Else
Retcon Mario to be dead the whole time? Great. Love it. Turn Halo: Infinite into a match-three game? Probably coming around the bend. Turn Final Fantasy 7 into a battle royale game? Already exists. All of these sound like bad ideas - and they could be if done wrong! But none of them involve making fans download a crypto wallet, sign up for a service, and then hope to god that they don’t see their entire collection disappear into the void despite the fact that the blockchain is supposed to prevent that. A controller that punches me in the dick every time I fail a mission? Better than NFTs. A video game character both played by and designed to look like the ex you let down the most? Still not an in-game gun a triple-A publisher is pretending will be an heirloom for your children.