NFT expert imagines a hopeful future where poor people serve as 'real-life NPCs' in games

pcgamer.com:

Efforts to integrate NFTs into videogames have been largely unsuccessful for a few reasons, but essentially it can be boiled down to two primary points: 

And that's without even considering the environmental damage caused by NFTs. But as seen in a new Rest of World(opens in new tab) report, that's not preventing NFT evangelists from coming up with even worse ideas for the future.

The bulk of the story by the nonprofit journalism organization is about a Minecraft-based NFT game called Critterz(opens in new tab), which enjoyed enough success in its early days that some players began hiring others to help build their in-game ownings in exchange for a cut of the profits. One such high roller, who goes by the name Big Chief, had «his team»—made up mainly of kids in the Philippines—collect building materials for a casino, which he then paid «professional Minecraft builders» $10,000 to actually create.

«I have a lot of kids that play for me, and they play because they want to make extra money in a country that’s really just locking them down,» Big Chief explained. People in the Philippines were willing to play the game this way, he added, because «they were able to earn just enough where it was worth their while.»

It wasn't just play, though. Big Chief said members of his play-to-earn guild were required to put in eight hours a day, the equivalent of a full-time job, in order to recover the costs of NFT purchases—the digital «plots of land»—and maximize revenues as quickly as possible. Still, he said was «annoyed» by the suggestion that his exploitation of disadvantaged people in poor countries was, you know, exploitation.

«I couldn’t tell you what the hourly rate comes to, but I could tell you that people make very little