A common thread connecting my utter dislike of blockchain and AI is the sheer inhumanity of it all. Followers of these techbro reasons are so focused on technology, profits and market forces without being aware of their effects and consequences, that at times it feels like they’ve completely disconnected from the human experience.
We’ve covered this to death for the last few years, from failed NFT experiments to the looming specter of AI-generated artbut toToday I wanted to draw your attention to one of the most extraordinary things I’ve ever seen printed in the name of future technology.
This great feature on NFT and crypto gaming, mainly focuses on Minecraft servers and Axe Infinity (worm)is by Neirin Gray Desai, and you should definitely read the whole thing again rest of the world for a great – if incredibly bleak – look at the markets surrounding Play to Earn games.
But there is one section that really stands out and made me stop reading:
Mikhai Kossar, chartered accountant and member of Wolves DAO, a group that advises NFT gaming projects in the early stages of their development, said rest of the world that some players will always go where they can make more money. “They’ll play Pac-Man when they can earn more,” he said.
According to Kossar, NFT rental mechanisms are important in play-to-earn games to keep them accessible to poorer players. “You have people who have money but don’t have time to play the game and on the other hand you have people who have no money but have time,” he said.
However, he sees a future where guild ownership and management could upend the model of wealthy Western players running guilds in low-income countries. “Filipinos could band together to buy assets and then rent them out to themselves and make money that way,” he said.
But he also envisions NFT games that could exploit the wealth gap between players to offer a different experience. “With the cheap labor of a developing country, you could use people in the Philippines as NPCs (“non-playable characters”), real NPCs in your game,” Kossar said. They could “just populate the world, maybe do whatever job you want or just go back and forth, fish, tell stories, be a shopkeeper, anything really is possible.”
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Let me be very clear here if I say that I wish only the worst for everyone involved in this group.
