Mario Kart 8
Nintendo
On barest surface level, NFTs and video games seem like a good match. The idea that you can own, truly own, a digital item in a game, has some sort of base appeal, so much so that an entire industry is springing up around the concept.
And yet, digging into this even two inches, it unravels quickly, with the concept of NFTs antithetical to everything that makes gaming, gaming, and many of the actual good elements of the idea already having existed in games for years now.
NFTs, or Non-Fungible Tokens, are hard to parse for most people, but the basics are as follows. Computing is used to make a unique token. That token is used to be a link to something, in the case of most NFTs, an image. Then that token is sold, with the person who owns it, owning the “original” of that image in a verifiable way. Then it can be resold for more, and so on, and so forth. A barebones explanation, perhaps, but that’s the base framework.
The problem, with both NFTs and cryptocurrency, is that it takes a tremendous amount of energy to make these tokens. So on the production side, this creates a massive environmental impact the vast majority of the time. And then on the supply side, the entire market often feels together like it’s held together with scotch tape, and based on wild speculation to make prices soar or crash.
Inserting all of this into video games is a road to chaos. It’s already started, and though blockchain gaming is still very, very new, battle lines are being drawn. Ubisoft has indicated they are interested in pursuing NFT opportunities (Ubisoft has never met a video game concept they wouldn’t try). Steam has banned blockchain games and NFTs, while the Epic Game Store hasn’t ruled them out yet.
An attempt to describe how NFTs might work in mainstream video game was laid out recently in a Bloomberg article covering the phenomenon. And the description of an NFT-based Mario Kart instantly went viral as everyone tried to figure out just what the hell they were reading. You really just have to see it in its entirety:
Mario Kart 8
Nintendo
“Imagine being able to earn money by playing Mario Kart, that indefatigable Nintendo spinoff series from the pre-internet Super Mario. You wouldn’t have to be all that good at it. You wouldn’t have to play it 24/7. Because, in this mind experiment, you get to be Mario for as long as you like. You get to be him because you own him.
Because your Mario is an NFT, he’s impossible to duplicate. You and you alone own him. And because you own Mario, your go-kart is always better and faster than the ones piloted by other familiar faces in the Mushroom Kingdom like Luigi, Toad and Princess Peach. So off you go, earning the kingdom’s digital money – Mariocoins, let’s call them.
Given market economics, you might have to pay more for NFT Mario than for, say, NFT Peach. But then you’d also earn more, because here in the Mushroom Kingdom, Mario is the fastest player. When you step out of the game and back into your day job, you still own Mario. When you start playing again, Mario is there, waiting for …….