No, the NFT backlash is not just like free-to-play backlash | This Week in Business

gamesindustry.biz:

Brendan Sinclair

Managing Editor

Friday 4th February 2022

This Week in Business is our weekly recap column, a collection of stats and quotes from recent stories presented with a dash of opinion (sometimes more than a dash) and intended to shed light on various trends. Check back every Friday for a new entry.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. We're talking about NFTs again and I'm so sorry. There was other big news this week, but you can check out the pieces we ran by Chris Dring and Rob Fahey for more discussion on that. Or listen to our podcast for a few more of our takes on it and the absurd pace of consolidation right now.

But there's an argument I want to address here, something that I've seen tossed around by a number of people within the industry. It's the idea that the pushback we're seeing against NFTs and blockchain in games is just like the pushback we saw over microtransactions and free-to-play.

QUOTE | "Whether free-to-play, downloadable content (DLC), the transition to full digital downloads, subscription gaming services, the concept of season/battle passes, etc. - these all went through the murky phase that play-to-earn is going through right now. Gamers liked these concepts from the get-go, but it took time for the industry and players to get on a similar wavelength. It's a learning and discovery process on both sides." - In releasing survey results saying more than half of Xbox, PlayStation, and PC gamers were actually interested in earning NFTs through gameplay a couple weeks ago, Interpret analyst Jesse Divnich serves as my evidence that I'm not just building a strawman over here.

The part of this argument that works is that gamers do have a long and well-documented history of reacting negatively to industry changes.