What a powerful speech from Mark Venturelli, Rogue Snail’s CEO (the studio now developing Relic Hunters Legends)!

We’ve been covering NFTs’ gaming industry events quite often (we might have missed the MMO announced for PC by former Ninja Gaiden boss Tomonobu Itagaki, which is going to be NFT-centric and is called Warrior), so we’ve kept half an eye on blockchain technology for the last good 10-11 months. Some favour the technology (SEGA, Square Enix) and some are against it (Itch.io, Warren Spector).

Venturelli gave a speech at the International Games Festival in Brazil entitled The Future of Game Design, but he was mainly against the NFTs, and some of the event’s sponsors did not take kindly to that. He then gave an interview to PCGamer. He said, “It was a bit of a gimmick. I start, ‘Hey, this talk is about the future of gaming’. And then I start talking about it, and I say, ‘Well, actually, fooled you!’ This talk is not about the future of game design because I start talking about all the trends I’ve seen in my 15 years in the industry, and now we have new trends, let’s talk about them. That’s when I scratch the name of the talk and say, ‘Why NFTs are a nightmare.’

I’ve heard that the sponsors got mad. They tried to break into the talk while I was talking, but the organization would not let them. That doesn’t surprise me because the organization, not at a single point did they censor me, did they stop me from putting what I wanted on the slides. I gave them access to the slides before the talk. There was never any intention on their side to shut me up or anything like that.”

He thinks it is a somewhat naive suggestion that in-game items can be of real value to players once they switch to another game because larger groups will crowd out one-person sellers: ” This is such a naive proposition. The expectation versus reality here is so bizarrely far apart because what’s going to happen is that organized groups will operate and scale with ever-diminishing margins and just push out everybody else because that’s what happens. If you play EVE Online, Runescape, or any other game that simulates economy, that’s what happens. Organized groups are going to fucking crush you. If you naively play a game and have fun—imagine that—then you want to sell your stuff. Your stuff will not be worth anything. It’s going to be worth fractions of a cent, but what you give in return for that fraction of a cent is that you’re completely powerless now. Your fantasy, your ability to be impactful in the world as an individual, is gone because now it is controlled by these guys.”

It’s dark but realistic.

Source: WCCFTech