Reggie Fils-Aimé Is A Big Believer In Blockchain And "Play To Own"

He is after all a businessman

Gotta hate it when people you once respected fall in line for the crypto scam… but i guess money makers will latch onto anything they can make easy money off of even if its just a leaching from its customers method of wealth production

Not really familiar with this Blockchain, but am right in saying you buy someone's progress/creation in a game?

Isn't that like buying a finished colouring book?

The only things I can imagine wanting to sell after beating a game are all the consumables and crafting materials I never used.

In his one example he gives I can’t fault the transaction. He has designed a thing and people may want to purchase it. Using blockchain from my understanding makes the transaction unique and so Reggie would no longer have the island and would have to rebuild from scratch.

However, there is still the environmental impact and it seems wholly unnecessary to incorporate these new systems that don’t really do anything new other than create new money streams.

It’s also naive to think that this new tech wouldn’t be used in far less consumer friendly ways just like DLC, micro transactions and loot boxes have all demonstrated.

Lastly, there is the example of that Pokémon rip-off that was big in the Philippines. The article I read outlined an ecosystem with landlords and workers and it was truly terrifying. It’s still a hard pass.

I’m old school so I don’t like this. But then again I have an issue with games being digital only, micro transactions and paid DLC (especially if it’s day one) - That said if I don’t like it I just don’t buy it. Simple

Reading those quotes I don't think it means that he believes in blockchain/NFTs as such, at least not in their current guise. I think he moreso meant than he'd like to for players to have the option to monetize their digital games once they stop playing, similar to how we trade in physical games once we're done playing them...

Or maybe I'm just trying to rationalise it too much.

But why do you need blockchain to "own" and sell digital items within games?

Surely this can be done with current technology (i.e. "ownership" tied to a user account on a server), but game developers/publishers are vehemently against selling "owned" data in this context.

What is the difference?

Reggie I wish ya all the best but I'm glad you're not the president of Nintendo of America anymore

You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain. Reggie was corrupted by the industry.

Stop trying to monetise everything. Games are meant to be enjoyed.

"I bet I'd have some takers here today if I wanted to sell my Animal Crossing island."
Yes, because he is Reggie and he can sell this virtual island to someone based on his name. Others wouldn't be so lucky.
What exactly would be the point of buying something like that anyway? Doesn't that defeat the whole purpose of playing a game?
What is next? Selling save stats?

I can’t really envision Nintendo, whose already slow enough to adopt industry standards, going for something as obtuse as the blockchain. I somehow doubt that crypto bros align with their demographic.

He's still using his body, so I suppose he can't sell that yet.
...
Can I buy his Ready?

It was said that you would destroy the Sith, not join them! Bring balance to the force, not leave it in darkness 😭

I get what he is saying, but there should be a limit on what should and should not be done. As an example, I myself have invested decades into an online game (don't play it anymore, but still pop in once in a while). Originally started it in the alpha stage in '96, played regularly and became well known over the years following till I got tired of the company running it. Being an online subscription based game, obviously I would love to recoup that back if I could.

Yet, the blockchain concept in general is not something I want to bother with, nor would want companies have another tool to nickle and dime us even more than what they already do. In the end I would say we are better off without it.

I don't agree with you Reggie, but I don't revile you or respect you less for having a different opinion than me on a heated subject.

God.... dammit.... welp, there goes 20+ years of respect

Not gonna "cancel" Reggie or anything but I am aware that he is a businessman first and foremost. Just because I like Reggie as the funny "Body Is Ready" meme man, doesn't mean he's suddenly gained enough respect from me to think he holds an unflawed view on the state of our industry.

I get his point and his take on Blockchain tech, it is the most correct one tbh.
However, said system could also be made without blockchain tech at all, just look at Steam's marketplace for once, there you can buy and sell items from games and also cards.

I get the idea, that rewarding the player for creation encourages a stronger community. Alot of what makes Roblox successful right now is that you can make decent money, or perhaps even a living off of it. But I think repackaging micro-transactions as a sort of means of an investment strategy is more often than not, a smarmy marketing tactic, made to be appear to be a get-rich-quick scam and in some ways hurts or grossly restructures the community. Especially when some of these games have children as both the buyer and the vendor.

“My body is an NFT” - reggie fils-NFT

Always disliked him, and this is just icing on the Dubious Food (BotW ref)

Well, that's a bummer.

It's important to make a distinction between blockchain and NFT. Blockchains are just a technology that powers NFTs, and I'm sure there are other applications for them too. But even so, I don't see blockchains as a good thing. There are other, more environmentally friendly and more private alternatives to do similar things.

Besides, I don't really like this kind of monetization. I think playing games should be fun first and foremost, not a way to make money (although competitive players and streamers have shown that it is possible). It's okay to sell tools and digital assets, but user-generated gameplay elements... Nah, I don't see it. Mario Maker wouldn't be very popular if you had to buy the stages.

Yikes. Respect dropping for this man word by word. I'm more than happy never touching a Nintendo game again if it means I never have to touch a game ruined by NFT nonsense.

My body was not ready for this.

Well that the final nail in the coffin for me, he has talked ***** every since he left nintendo. I'll just put him in with tencent, EA, ubisoft, etc

And it's loveley to see that he sees blockchain a way of rich/popular people selling stuff to us minions, what a jerk!

Better headline: “Another gaming CEO shows they don’t understand blockchain”

To sell an Animal Crossing island you would need an (1) in-game implementation that supported that and (2) a storefront that allowed players to buy and sell existing save files. That’s it. You don’t need a public, distributed, and irreversible accounting system that has a ton of overhead (electricity and transaction costs).

Unfortunately I can't type a one word response to articles. If I could, that word would be "bruh".

What he’s talking about has been possible and done for years already. If the likes of Reggie, SquareEnix and Ubisoft want to introduce the blockchain it will only be to benefit themselves not players.

He was always a salesman first. People did memes and stuff, but in the end he was just an american salesman that happened to enter the videogame industry. I always enjoyed how Geoff made him question that he couldn't answer.

Love seeing all these comments asking why you need blockchain to do all this. I agree with them all. The value of the item to the gamer—if there was anyone who wanted to OWN someone else’s AC island (why would you!?)—isn’t in the fact that it’s been minted to the blockchain anyway.

The blockchain is quickly becoming an opaque majority tyranny of the digital age. I'm unsure if I see its decentralized nature as a blessing.

Blockchain isn't as simple as he is potraying there. It'll be open to abuse, hugely.

NO NO NO

Reggie, you are simply wrong. Blockchains being used as he describes it, can only be bad for the end-consumer. Who will be able to sell their Animal Crossing Island? VIPs like Reggie. Not the average player.
And who will be willing to buy such stuff? The people that are already described as "whales" by the publishers. People who spent way too much money on unnessecary stuff e.g. cosmetics via microtransactions.
NFTs are a scam. Nothing else.

Let’s just say I’m happy He no longer works for Nintendo.

Reggie is dead to me as of this moment.

It's a big fat no to all things crypto and blockchain, and it stays that way. NO.

@kenyowa You DO know that Reggie is no longer working for Nintendo anymore, and Nintendo as a company hasn't dabbled with blockchain/NFT AT ALL so far? Not saying they nevver will, and Nintendo got their own sh*t that can be criticized, but that comment really makes no sense xD

Oh not you too, Reggie. 😞

I always like it when people tell me who they are.
Now i know who he is.

That's hilarious. Never respected this guy in the first place.

I simply disagree. I have no idea why anyone would want to buy someone's save data for a game essentially. I bought the game. I plan to play the game. Why in the world would I buy a finished save file for said game?

I respect you Reggie but not even you can't make this nonsense sound appealing.

It's a good point, Mr. Reggie! He understand what the potential use of blockchains and NFTs can bring to the videogame industry, he just have a vision that 95% of people (and gamers, mostly) simply don't have at the moment.

There are great advantages and potential in "play to earn" and "play to own" models, people don't understand this because it's a complex argument that also requires a vision of the future, but in my opinion it's a step forward for the digital space, especially for videogames.

There will be no "play to own" VS "play for fun", it will be a "play for fun" that just rewards the player with things (NFTs, tokens) you actually own and eventually, after you finish a game, can share or sell them to other players.

This situation reminds me of 2006-2008 when very few people thought digital keyboards would replace physical keyboards on phones/smartphones. Why? Touch keyboards won't work, it's not as easy, it won't be precise, it will took a lot of screen space etc etc. The same could be said about digital App Stores, Social Networks and so on!

@PBandSmelly Oh no, someone has a different opinion than you and suddenly you write them off. Come on, please be better than that

@Blizzia That's all it took for someone to be dead to you? Jeez. Careful of the real world out there, where there are many people with opinions and desires that are different than yours. Kinda bummer to see you direct your hate so needlessly, but you do you

@Xiovanni Because a blockchain, through the famous smartcontracts, acts as a notary and is able to certify 100% and forever the transfer of ownership of an object (an in-game item, for example) unequivocally. This is thanks to distributed, decentralized, immutable, public registers of which no one (nation, government or other entity) has direct control. See it as a sovereign, global, public domain registry.

Modern day slaves will farm bells and rare critters

@ItsATM What do you mean that's all it took? Dude just endorsed blockchain technology, a technology that is basically useless because we already have smarter better systems.

A technology that's basically the #1 way to scam nowadays.

It doesn't matter if he went "it needs to make sense for the player" because it won't, at any point, ever, make sense for the player.

Businesses wouldn't waste money making something useful for the player, that'd be dumb as hell in their eyes. They'd make it for their own gain and profit. Which means the tech is useless.

Reggie pledges fealty to the grift.

Booooooooooo!

Love Reggie but he absolutely has capitalism brain rot. Not everything needs to be monetized. What ever happened to “the game is fun”?

@CharlieGirl
You beat me to it lol.

Well, I’m now glad he is not the president of Nintendo of America, because that is not something I would like to see in Animal Crossing or any other Nintendo property.

There goes all respect I had for Reggie. This is a terrible idea and pointlessly destructive to the environment. It takes the joy out of games and turns them into tools for profit. Literally NOBODY but greedy corporations and people who are heavily invested in NFTs because they want to get rich quick are in favor of NFT and blockchain in video games.

@Xiovanni It could seems the same thing, but actually it differs from a technical/legal point of view.

1) With current technology (centralized server owned by a company, for example Nintendo):

Pokemon "Pikachu" with ID:xyz is an asset embedded in the game Pokemon XY, asset is a property of Nintendo who grants rights to Xiovanni to use it in that game at Nintendo discretion, Copyright Nintendo.

2) With blockchain technology it becames:

Pokemon "Pikachu" with ID:xyz is an asset embedded in the game Pokemon XY, asset is property of Xiovanni, Copyright Nintendo.

So, being that Pikachu your property you can do with it, in the digital space, the same you can do with your jeans or favourite shoes in the real world.

Wasn’t he against crypto crap not too long ago? Now he is fantasizing about these scenarios? If this garbage makes it into games I’m out.

This guys has been a CEO for many many years and will never not think in a way of making more money. He may not be evil like some CEOs seem to be, but in the end, its all about money. Don't make any of these people your heroes.

@LoveRose_428 I'm no crypto fan by any means, but to be fair, he explicitly details that he's on board with the concept, not necessarily the way it's currently being implemented.
In the article itself, he says it has to be something for the player's benefit and not a means of money making for the developers.

Obviously feel free to have you're opinion, but just for the record

@Blizzia Not everything about blockchain is a scam. The most negative voices are the loudest, as usual. Lots of good, practical use cases for crypto and blockchain

Former corporate president is excited about money-making opportunity.

Also, water is wet.

@Minfinity

Exactly, the concept (a solution to applying ownership to digital assets in a way similar to physical assets) is fascinating. But forget digital assets within a game for asec, what about us players finally being able to sell digital games we no longer play? If digital games were sold as NFTs themselves, that would be possible.

Yes, there are some NFT models that we've seen companies adopt to sell NFTs in a flawed or scummy manner. Yes, the environmental impact isn't positive either and needs to be further addressed. But there are technologies being developed to mitigate this.

There are negatives surrounding blockchain and NFTs but there is a potential for aspects of this technology to be used in a positive manner. And like with anything, just because there are regretful negatives and potential for abuse shouldn't mean we need to take an exclusive approach where we throw the baby out with the bathwater.

@MrGawain Suddenly I'm thinking of the Comic Book Man.
"The bathroom is for paying customers." "What can I buy for 75 cents?" "This Hamburgler Adventures..."

In a way people have been doing that already.
I know I've seen PlayStation memory cards listed on ebay with the content of the cards emphasized as the "product".

People have tried to sell Pokemon carts as well with an emphasis on the save data present.

I also like to own my games

By buying them

I also like to be able to sell games that i bought

By selling them to someone

Wow, it's hilarious how quickly Reggie just threw his reputation out the window.

This is why you don't act like a famous person is your friend or worship them. He got turned into Mr. Funny "Body is Ready" Meme Man but none of us know Reggie on a personal level. He was president of a company, and of course he's going to care about making money more than anything. We also dont know what his views truly are but this has made it clear as day that he's no different that any other greedy business man.

@BTB20 @Bunkerneath i've just been uneasy and expecting something since he "retired"

The thing about all this is to sell something, someone needs to want to buy it. With video games these things are pretty much infinite so that just takes away all value

It’s really quite disturbing how 99% of the people commenting are so vehemently opposed to something they clearly know nothing about and assuming this is the same thing as useless NFT pictures of monkeys. There are so many potentially good uses for blockchain technology in gaming compared to NFTs as we currently know them which are almost always a scam. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to resell your DLC when you’re done with it just like your game cartridge? What if I wanted to quit Pokemon Go tomorrow but I still have raid passes I paid for on my account that will just go to waste in the current system? This has the potential to give a little bit of real value to microtransactions instead of it being an immediate and permanent digital loss. Of course some companies will use blockchain in nefarious ways but that doesn’t mean it’s all bad. Just like microtransactions, some can be fair and some are a scam. It’s the same thing with any physical good except where there are ways to return, resell, reuse and/or recycle those goods. Buyer beware.

@Pupuplatter And you could sell the DLC you own too with the help of blockchain! Blockchain has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the value of your physical game.

@Xiovanni I don't know how exactly Nintendo could handle this situation itself, but I know there are blockchains specialized in storing files of any type (images, videos, audios etc) using a distributed system similar to bit-torrent, where NFTs can be linked permanently to some data, for example jpg files.

So there is already a way to link NFT property to specific data. Blockchains are evolving daily, with time they will cover even more use cases.

Here's something that would make sense for the player: you exchange money for a game. Then you own the game. The End

Gamers can correctly recognize NFTs for what they are because we've seen it all before: glorified microtransactions, now with artificial scarcity. And on top of that crypto is threatening to make PCs unaffordable for the rest of all time. Great

@Dingelhopper

A bit harsh dontcha think? He acknowledged that there are positive aspects to the concept; the technology behind blockchain. He is not condoning the scummy practices of of companies that have abused it.

Seriously, would being able to sell your digital game be a bad thing inherently? Shouldn't you be able to sell it since you bought it in the first place?

Do people really like this 🤡

His Animal Crossing example makes sense, but it's also an example of exactly what I don't want in my games- extrinsic motivation. Games are best enjoyed when the motivation is simply to enjoy the game. Animal Crossing is fun and relaxing in and of itself. There may be a small motivation to create a cool island so that I can show it to others, but for the most part I'm just enjoying it because it's fun.

If you can sell your island for real money, then there becomes an extrinsic motivation to play so you can make some cash. You're no longer playing to have fun, you're playing to make money. And at that point, why play? There are better ways to make money and better ways to have fun.

As much as we all loved Reggie and his memes in the day, he was also a business suit and this statement here just proves it.

A - blockchain technology does not magically unlock the ability to do this, the ability has been there all along. Blockchain just gives and unstable, decentralised and environmentally disastrous optional way to do it. Reggie you clearly have no idea how development works.

B - nobody wants to sell their island! It has no value outside the enjoyment you got from making it. Just buying an island someone else built takes away THE ENTIRE GAME. Reggie you clearly have no idea how game design works.

This is just the most un-Nintendo thinking. It’s just gross money grabbing. It’s business talk, monetising everything and i want no part of it. For shame Reggie. For shame!

@Aawill91 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g

NFTs are a scheme to sell a scam. They add nothing that cant be done already.

Can I pay a child a pittance to play games and get loads of items and then sell them to adults to make money, all the while doing nothing! It just sounds very very wrong xx

@Aawill91 I remember a decade ago where publishers were trying to stop the resell of physical games, there’s no way they will facilitate consumers eating into their full price sales by enabling us to undercut their prices reselling digital games.

@Kid_Sickarus

Maybe but the idea behind this technology is that if you resell an NFTs the original creator gets a cut regardless of how many times the digital asset (game) is sold. So, it may give publishers an added incentive to make their games NFTs since they can endlessly make some change from every resale. If publishers never stopped game stores from reselling used copies of their physical games (of which publishers receive no cut from), then why would they get in the way of customer resales of their digital games when they can get a cut?

I am pretty sure Animal Crossing fans would want to build their own island, and investors would be the only one that wants Reggie’s. 😉

@NinChocolate he's the only one who gets that it needs to be fun

sigh Somebody send the asteroid already.

Uggggg no. It's a money grab scheme when it comes to video games. Blockchain is a tool, and they are trying to figure out a way to use this tool to extract more money from our wallet.

Legacy Ruined speedrun WR achieved!

@Ogbert Again, NFTs does not equal blockchain. They are two different things. NFTs bad, blockchain good (when not used in conjunction with NFTs)

@Aawill91 Blockchain is the insecure, environmentally damaging (even PoS) technology that hosts it all. Crypto currency is the zero-sum ponzi scheme. NFT is the product used to sell it all.

It's all bad. I'm fully aware they are all different components, but they are all very interlinked and to look at one on it's own is to ignore the bigger image. The bottom line is it's all claiming to solve a problem that doesn't exist, and even then not doing that properly. Decentralisation isn't not done because there is not way to do it already, it's not done because it's unstable by design and that is not desirable.

Maybe its for the better that he left. No nft's and blockchains, please!