Ethereum cofounder still believes NFT games can succeed

When it comes to NFTs in video games, the subject is still very much taboo, but Ethereum cofounder and crypto developer Vitalik Buterin still holds out faith that it can work. The conversation has led many companies to either shy away or dig in their heels on implementing NFTs in video games while the audience largely rejects the idea. According to Buterin, the issue is that NFT game developers simply haven’t prioritized fun over financialization and ownership yet.

Vitalik Buterin shared this take in a recent interview with Wired in which he discussed the launch of The Merge upgrade to Ethereum and cryptocurrency transactions. It’s been toted as a big move for Ethereum and cryptocurrency as a whole, but when asked about the state of NFTs and their implementation, Buterin has some thoughts on why it has failed and what it can do better.

According to Buterin, the issue with many NFTs is that they have no value beyond ownership. They don’t do anything. The only thing most NFT art holders can do with them is claim that they own them. For games, Buterin believes the issue has manifested in monetization over fun. He believes that current developers believed the idea of ownership was enough to make an NFT popular and that’s clearly not working.

“Games like Axie Infinity were really successful last year, but then Axie Infinity got hacked,” Buterin said. “Even aside from that, it hasn’t really been able to recover. The reason for that in my view is that the people who designed these first-generation NFT games approached it with the attitude that the financialization aspect by itself was enough to make the game fun. But that’s clearly not enough, and a successful NFT or play-to-earn game itself needs to be fun even without the monetization aspect. Whoever figures out how to make a blockchain game that is a fun game first, those are the kinds of projects that are going to win.”

Indeed, groups like Ubisoft have put ownership of in-game assets front and center over any other value in gaming NFTs so far. It will be interesting to see if any game captures the magic that Buterin feels is possible. Stay tuned as we continue to cover the crypto and NFT space for further updates.