Bloomberg wealth today has an important feature called “Into the Metaverse: Where Crypto, Gaming and Capitalism Collide”. It’s as critical and informative as you’d expect from a finance website, but there is a section that will haunt me and now you for the rest of the week.
The story evangelizes the people who quit their jobs and risk everything on video games that use NFTs, and speaks ardently about the potential of NFTs and crypto, while almost entirely neglecting to mention things such as how polluting the blockchain is or how the whole thing is
a huge damn scam (apart from the single, dismissive line “in the crypto world it is also seen as a rite of passage in order to be cheated in one place or another ”).
To find out why NFTs are going to be so great for video games, writers Charlie Wells and Misyrlena Egkolfopoulou need to bring you closer to the potential future of NFT video games Mario kart as an an example:
Imagine making money from Mario Kart, that relentless Nintendo spin-off series from the pre-internet Super Mario. You don’t have to be that good at it. You wouldn’t have to play it around the clock. Because in this thought experiment you can be Mario as long as you want. You will be him because you own him.
Since your Mario is an NFT, it is impossible to duplicate. You and you alone own it. And because you own Mario, your go-kart will always be better and faster than those driven by other familiar faces in the Mushroom Kingdom like Luigi, Toad and Princess Peach. So let’s go make the kingdom’s digital money – mariocoins, let’s call them.
Given the market economy, you may have to pay more for NFT Mario than, for example, NFT Peach. But then you also earn more, because here in the Mushroom Kingdom, Mario is the fastest player. If you quit the game and go back to your job, you will still own Mario. When you start playing again, Mario will be there waiting for you. Waiting to earn you mariocoins.
You can sell Mario to another player if you want. If you’ve played Mario right, it may now be worth more than it was when you bought it. Maybe you’ve shown how lucrative Mario can be. Maybe more people want to play Mario Kart. Perhaps mariocoin has risen in value because everyone is talking about it on social media.
This, in short, is what GameFi evangelists are trying to build.
I want to turn to dust and blow away in the wind.
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