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EA Calls NFT and 'Play-to-Earn' Games 'the Future of Our Industry' (pcgamer.com) 113

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
EA CEO Andrew Wilson called NFT and "play-to-earn" games the "the future of our industry," but added that "it's still early to figure out how that's going to work," when asked about the topic during the company's earnings call this week. From a report: "I think that in the context of the games we create and the live services that we offer, collectible digital content is going to play a meaningful part in our future," Wilson said. "So, it's still early to tell, but I think we're in a really good position, and we should expect us to kind of think more innovatively and creatively about that on a go-forward basis." EA has yet to officially step into the NFT and "play-to-earn," or blockchain space that's been growing in the past few years. "Play-to-earn" games often require players pay an up-front cost through cryptocurrency to play the game and collect unique, in-game items. Those items can then increase in value and be sold to other players. It's common for players to also have input on the game's development as their monetary stake in it increases the game's overall value. Recent EA job listings include "NFT" and "blockchain" in the descriptions, suggesting that the company is at least aware of the genre's surge in popularity. A post for a senior director of the company's competitive gaming brand reads, "We set the pace for EA's investment in gaming subscriptions, our PC storefront and platform, competitive gaming (including FIFA, Apex Legends, and Madden NFL), as well as new business opportunities, including fantasy sports, blockchain and NFTs, and more."
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EA Calls NFT and 'Play-to-Earn' Games 'the Future of Our Industry' More

EA Calls NFT and 'Play-to-Earn' Games 'the Future of Our Industry'

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  • So if EA is for it... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by IWantMoreSpamPlease ( 571972 ) on Thursday November 04, 2021 @09:49AM (#61957045) Homepage Journal

    Does that mean we should be against it?

    • Yes, by default

    • Re:So if EA is for it... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by RitchCraft ( 6454710 ) on Thursday November 04, 2021 @09:55AM (#61957073)
      I have not fired up an EA game in years. Doesn't look like I'll be doing it in the future either. I've considered it a dead company for quite a while now.

      • You're not missing anything. If you played FIFA 1996 you'll realise it's the same as FIFA 2021, and FIFA 2020, and FIFA 2019, and FIFA 2018 ... *censored to prevent boredom* ... and FIFA 1997.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • No doubt you have fired up a game by a studio which has since been bought and then closed by EA though.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Agripa ( 139780 )

        I have not fired up an EA game in years. Doesn't look like I'll be doing it in the future either. I've considered it a dead company for quite a while now.

        The last EA game I bought was Archon. Not long after they were revealed to be scum, and nothing has changed since.

    • Re:So if EA is for it... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Thursday November 04, 2021 @09:58AM (#61957081)

      Yes, by default, and because it's probably just another scheme to milk their customers for every dime they can.

      Seriously, at this point, the only reason EA still makes games (or, rather, attach new numbers to the same game every year, repackage and sell it) is that they haven't found a way yet to get people to just hand over their money for nothing.

        • Yes, I play games for fun. My spare time is valuable, because I could just as well sell that time for money. And I dare say more money than any game could possibly allow me to earn.

          I never got the idea of "grinding". Why the hell would I do that? I already paid for the game, either give me fun (you know? Fun? The original reason people played games?) or I have no use for your "game". I don't need a second job where I get to pay for the privilege of being allowed to do it.

          • Define "grinding." Earning progressively more powerful weapons and fighting bigger bad guys could be characterized that way.

            From the summary, "play to earn" is this but with an intermediate step which is a currency that you earn by playing, and then spend. If that currency is fungible for real money, that spoils it for me.

            • To me its a balance, yes a little bit repetitiveness, to get that bit of better gear is ok, a game can't be 100%, edge of seat challenging, all the time. I need a bit of down time just chill, but when 99% is repetitive, all in order to get an ever decreasing benefit, then it you should stop, the game makers are just feeding an addiction. Put it this way if you look back at a game and ask yourself, was that fun, if the answer isn't yes, then you probably shouldn't be playing.

              Also if a game sells you somethi

            • Grind is anything I should be doing despite not wanting to do it with the promise of something I want to do later. Cut out that part and let me do what I want to do now.

      • When they talk about them is being digital collectibles. That's what they're hoping to get going. They're hoping to use it to increase the collectibility and tangibility of DLCs that they sell people.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by doug141 ( 863552 )

        they haven't found a way yet to get people to just hand over their money for nothing.

        Sure they have. Loot boxes.

    • Yes, DO NOT WANT!

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by vlad30 ( 44644 )
        Stopped gaming 20 plus years ago used to be nice and fun now when I see someone gaming they are usually aggressive when you interrupt them even though the games can now be paused. I see this a just another reason to stay away.

    • I'm surprised EA is doing this,I went through their list of released software and didn't find anything related to video games.

    • Does that mean we should be against it?

      Well:
      Steam announced they are against it.
      So naturally Epic Games is it. (Despite being against it up until Steam said they were).
      EA is also for it.

      That's 2x Evil for, and 1x Good against. You can chose who to side with.

      • Looks like I accidentally the word "for". Epic Games is for it.

      • That's 2x Evil for, and 1x Evil against. You can chose who to side with.

        FTFY

        • You fixed nothing with your assertion that Valve is evil. All you did was display ignorance.

          • How are they not? All they do is make money and make more ways to make money these days. Just like EA, just like epic. Here's a little tip for you though, if you think a company isn't evil and doesn't have anything other then their bottom line as the primary interest, they are either very new and soon will do or you are wrong. No company is your friend.

  • Bunch of hacks (Score:5, Insightful)

    by skam240 ( 789197 ) on Thursday November 04, 2021 @09:52AM (#61957061)

    This coming from the company that runs into the ground every studio they purchase and even managed to lose the place Sim City had for a lot of people to Finnish indie developers https://store.steampowered.com... [steampowered.com] .

    Go away EA. Sell all your properties to other studios and just go away and die. No one wants your shitty ideas.

    • EA is where franchises and studios go to die. As soon as you hear a beloved franchise getting hoovered up by EA, simply drop it. Enjoy what you had, hope that it's still not tethered to some always-online scam (because they will terminate that before the ink is dry on the contract) and play that. Hope for some indie developer to pick up the idea and head over there.

    • Re:Bunch of hacks (Score:4, Informative)

      by mindwhip ( 894744 ) on Thursday November 04, 2021 @10:08AM (#61957109)

      I played Cities Skylines to death when it first came out but eventually moved onto other games at some point after the first DLC. I want to play it again however at this time the $80-$160 additional cost, depending on how much of the purely cosmetic stuff you skip, to get the 'complete' game when most of the DLC has been out for over 2 years is putting me off, and having watched some youtube videos it would seem like I was playing half a game without them.

      Saying that, it's nowhere near as bad as some EA games like Sims 4 where you are talking $700+ to get all the DLC packs.

      • it's nowhere near as bad as some EA games like Sims 4 where you are talking $700+ to get all the DLC packs.

        OK but isn't that like buying one of every single item at Target?

        I don't mind racing games that offer a decent number of cars and tracks for a decent price, and don't mind if they have 700 other cars I could spend money on, or freely ignore - so long as there's no pressure to buy them. (I only race with people I personally know, mainly my son, which cuts down on having to keep up with the masses

      • to get the 'complete' game when most of the DLC has been out for over 2 years is putting me off

        The expansions (DLCs are classified separately as the cosmetic only bullshit) are regularly discounted to next to nothing, and the steam workshop with literally hundreds of thousands of assets and mods makes the cosmetic stuff irrelevant.

        Throw them in your Steam watchlist and just wait. The only one I paid full price for was Park Life and that only because I bought all the others for $5 and didn't want to miss out on the one which just came out.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by skam240 ( 789197 )

        Stuff like that I just drop on my steam wishlist and then pick it up when it goes on a nice deal.

  • Thankfully Steam banned this practice (Score:3)

    by sinij ( 911942 ) on Thursday November 04, 2021 @09:52AM (#61957067)
    I don't know why large game publishers insisting on making gaming as intolerable as possible, but thankfully Steam already banned this practice on their distribution platform.

  • This is lockboxes all over again. (Score:3)

    by Chas ( 5144 ) on Thursday November 04, 2021 @10:10AM (#61957113) Homepage Journal

    It's just a form of gambling.

    • Basically pyramid gambling. Because people will buy and sell those things until the last one can't find a dupe anymore to sell it to, most likely before EA pulls the plug on the servers and the whole shit becomes a worthless collection of bits.

      That's when the next season starts...

      • To me this is what "metaverse" really means - in the early phases it means in-game actions have some tie to the real world, like pay to play. And then gradually, the links back to the real world matter less and less, until people actually care about the "in-game" credits more than real money anyways, because that's where they spend their time and it gives them power there. So "meta" is about this gradual transition in importance from the real to the virtual.

        Like how Covid and Work from Home turned all

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Chas ( 5144 )

        Pretty much.
        This is "We're closing the game. All the shit you "collected" is now worthless." writ large.

  • Rake in the money (Score:3)

    by bradley13 ( 1118935 ) on Thursday November 04, 2021 @10:10AM (#61957117) Homepage

    Let's be honest here: companies like EA are looking for ways to maximize their income. By making games more and more casino-like, they are tapping into people's desire to gamble, FOMO, hope of hitting it big, etc.. All of which has diddly squat to do with making an enjoyable game.

    Yet another reason to continue avoiding EA games. I'm happy to pay fora good game, to pay for major updates and additional content. Buying in-game NFTs? Hard pass.

  • "Play-to-earn" games often require players pay an up-front cost through cryptocurrency to play the game and collect unique, in-game items. Those items can then increase in value and be sold to other players.

    If I want to be generous, I would call this multi-level marketing akin to Amway. Buy our shit, then try to recover your losses by finding other dupes.

    If I'm less generous, I just call it the Pyramid Scheme that it is.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sinij ( 911942 )
      Gambling, pyramid schemes, I think the next logical step is outright fraud. Oh wait, that what Kickstarter is for.
    • To me it just sounds like a clear contradiction in terms: "Play-to-earn" games often require players pay an up-front cost through cryptocurrency"

      So which is it? Am I earning in-game credits by playing the game? Or paying a up-front cost through cryptocurrency, which is clearly NOT earned by playing since "up-front" means I didn't play yet?

  • The last decent thing EA put out was (Score:4, Insightful)

    by neilo_1701D ( 2765337 ) on Thursday November 04, 2021 @10:28AM (#61957159)

    Deluxe Paint III on the Amiga. Awesome program. I even bought it.

    Everything else... meh.

    • I'd argue NHL 95 on Sega Genesis.

      I recently bought that setup to play with my son, reliving, in a manner, many college nights.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Pascoea ( 968200 )

        I'd argue NHL 95 on Sega Genesis.

        This, for sure. Many hours spent in front of that one. Just introduced by two boys to it the other weekend, on a RetroPie. Good stuff.

    • That's a lot [wikipedia.org] of history [wikipedia.org] to denounce. [wikipedia.org]

    • Maxis was owned by EA when they put out SimCity 4... which was, and remains, the pinnacle of city building sims. Some are arguably better in their base version, but the level of (all free) expansion with 4 is completely unparalleled. Imagine a large city tile that's just a single hyperdetailed airport, or shipping port, or military base... I released an addon just of dozens of lots to make taxiway, ramp lines, ramp roads, and various other tiny details for airports. Models of virtually every commercial plan

    • Deluxe Paint III on the Amiga. Awesome program. I even bought it.

      Everything else... meh.

      DPaint IV was better (Animated Brushes/Light Table), but yeah.

  • Well fuck EA. But it might be time to take a closer look at Axie Infinity.

  • If this is the future of gaming (Score:5, Insightful)

    by wakeboarder ( 2695839 ) on Thursday November 04, 2021 @10:45AM (#61957191)

    then I'm done playing games.

    The 80's and 90's were the golden age of gaming where people created games so they could be fun. Now they create games to extract every cent out of those who play them, or engineer the games so they turn people into zombies do nothing but play the game. Business people should not create games.

    • Agree. I lost interest in most gaming when just about everything became a first person shooter, how many reskinned versions of the same game does one need?

      Older arcade games were meant to be quicker to play and more fun.

      • So you agree because you have no idea what you're talking about? Not everything is a first person shooter, there are now more creative indie games available than ever before, and more choice than ever before.

        It's like music. No modern music isn't shit, just stop listening to what is shoved down your throat by marketing from a major conglomerate and you will find excellent stuff in any media / entertainment form. Don't like Comic book movies? Go to an indie film festival too. Don't like Bud Light, drink a cr

        • People change, tastes change. That is all. I stopped gaming so much and got a life.

          • That's fine. Then say you lost interest in general rather than trying to blame your lack of interest on a non-existent problem in that industry you don't like.

            As for "got a life". If you weren't able to balance life and leisure then you were the problem. Having an active life and enjoying video games are only mutually exclusive for jobless basement dwelling virgins.

            • Why are you always an asshole?

              I was agreeing with the OP's point, "The 80's and 90's were the golden age of gaming where people created games so they could be fun". And somewhere after the OP's idea of "the golden age", PC gaming was dominated by first person shooters. Sure, I played other games too, like racing games, and MMPOGs, and on consoles. I'm from the first generation of people that had computer games, had Pong when it was new, and at some point I found most new games to be rehashes of things I

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by skam240 ( 789197 )

            I stopped gaming so much and got a life.

            Eh, you probably "waste" time doing other things. I know plenty of people who don't "waste their time with video games" but sit on their asses for hours on end watching pro sports. I mean, at least my hobby requires me to think!

    • Memory is a very lenient judge...

      Don't you remember all the movie-based games, the ones that were, to put it mildly, utter and total shit, pressed out when a movie came along, with crappy gameplay, sold entirely on the "ohhh, it's playing the movie!" angle, usually to clueless parents who knew their kids liked the movie so they bought the game for christmas and birthdays?

      The 80s and 90s also had a flood of utter garbage. Just like today. The difference is mostly who you have to turn to. Back then, you had t

    • Don't be silly. This is the future of EA. EA hasn't produced a "game" in a decade. The golden age of gaming isn't dead in the slightest. It's very much here now with lots of fun games and more choice than ever before with the overwhelming majority not out to screw you.

      You literally just Google "Games -EA" and you will end up with mostly fun games. Throw in a "-Ubisoft" in and only fun games are left ;-)

      • The thing that makes me mad is EA has bought up some of the good franchises of games that used to be fun and so those games won't get an update.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jythie ( 914043 )
      Eh, I think people tend to compare the best of one era with whatever they do not like from another. Thinking back to the 80s and 90s, the vast majority of what came out were crappy cash grabs with a few gems thrown into the mix. Today.. most games are crappy cash grabs but occasionally something comes out that 10 years from now people will be talking about how awesome it was when games like that came out compared to the garbage of that future today.

    • I gave up on AAA games years ago. Thank goodness for indie developers.

      By that, I mean the real indie developers consisting of a few people running out of their basements, not "small" studios with a couple hundred employees.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by antdude ( 79039 )

      Don't play their games then. There are plenty of games that won't be doing this.

      • EA isn't the only ones who are incorporating NFTs into games.

        Also the title of the post was more about making a point against EA then it was of what I'd actually do.

  • Good news then, I don't have to worry about NFTs catching on or having lasting value. EA will figure out a way to poison the pool such that NFTs won't be just a waste of money, but a toxic waste of money.

  • customer satisfaction and corporate success...

    Cable companies seem to make more money as they tick off their customers more, no reason it should not keep working just as well for EA.

  • So, gold farming is official now, with pay vector from gold farmer to EA.

    Fucketh thee.

  • EA has yet to officially step into the NFT and "play-to-earn," or blockchain space that's been growing in the past few years. "Play-to-earn" games often require players pay an up-front cost through cryptocurrency to play the game and collect unique, in-game items.

    And this is it. Pay crypto and sucker others to purchase. Meanwhile, someone could decompile the game and make a detached version where people can have an unlimited number of premium-crypto skins without the crypto fuss. Pyramid scheme style, plu

    • What do you mean "could"? You're looking at something that is traded using crypto currency which will have a real life monetary value.

      I give the whole shit 2 months before it's used for money laundering and 3 before someone hacked it and ran off with a couple millions.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Sigma 7 ( 266129 )

        What do you mean "could"?

        From my post, the only instance of the word "could":

        someone could decompile

        Basically, reverse engineer the software using the cryptocurrency. The replacement software doesn't need authentication.

        Example 1: A game like No Man's Sky uses some cryptocurrency to determine ownership of star systems. Meanwhile, No Man's Sky is first to claim, and they're discardable in case the player has too many of them (plus they're autodestroyed when a spoiler happens.)

        Example 2: A game like Star Cha

  • I'm about to have a stroke from the amount of saltiness in these replies. This is just a way to own gaming content that you don't actually own today (well, if it's implemented right, but it's EA, so I find that unlikely).

    For EA, it would be making their FIFA cards actually ownable by people. Today, you don't own these digital assets, you don't own those FIFA cards, EA does. This would be a way to say, hey, I own this card and I can sell it to someone else (of course, EA would get a percentage of each resal

    • What you just described is a basically a way for EA to sell imaginary property repeatedly for some fraction of its worth. I get that this is a reflection of some subset of what gamers want, but to me (and the other commenters with salty replies) it's a blatant greedy cash grab.

      • Is this really any different than, say, physical trading cards? What's the intrinsic value of a trading card? It's basically just a small piece of cardboard. They only have value because of what people assign to them.

        I would ask, how is this any greedier than their current system? At least this way gamers get ownership and can resell, which isn't the case today.

    • It's less salt, it's more making fun of the dupes that fall for this scam.

      • How is it a scam? These are pretty much like baseball cards, and it's a stretch to call those a scam.

        • Let's see... you first have to pay up front, then you can "play" (personally I'd rather consider it work, but I'm not doing semantics now), and you can hope to get something rare so you can sell it to someone else who considers it valuable, provided that enough people play the game, because the value immediately goes to 0 when EA decides to pull the plug on the servers because there ain't enough people to warrant continued service.

          But the difference to baseball cards is probably that the chewing gum company

          • If you're saying it's more of a scam cause it's EA vs it's NFTs, I can see that. Not sure I'd trust EA not to fuck something like this up.

            Nearly anything in a collectible sense has an upfront cost. I can't play Magic: The Gathering without buying cards. The "hope you can get something rare" is no different from getting the holofoil Charizard card. I don't think you can look at this purely as an investment, it's more "we have a game, but we can now add ownership to the things you can get in-game".

            It depend

  • It seems like EA's corporate motto must be "First Be Evil"

    This is why I quit Blizzard gaming.

    • I thought it was "challenged by everything", or is that already the past? I honestly couldn't be bothered to keep up.

    • Is this like Epic's motto "Be First Evil"? After all they announced they were all in on NFT a month ago. Incidentally 2 weeks after they announced they wouldn't touch it, but yet curiously a day after Valve said they wouldn't support any NFT content in Steam... I wonder if that is a coincidence.

  • Last games I've played multiplayer were Quake deathmatches many years ago, and I prefer my games to be solitary without 11 year old from 3 states away logging into the server and screaming "i wIlL cOm3 tO uR hOuWzE n rApE uR wHoLe fAmIlY u fG!" when he loses, or throw a baby temper tantrum (with the sounds of a splintering apart controller in the background), and accuse me of using a bot because I just happen to be better than the little tyke.

    And I don't need gambling addiction blockchain synergy in

    • Last games I've played multiplayer were Quake deathmatches many years ago, and I prefer my games to be solitary without 11 year old from 3 states away logging into the server and screaming ....Let the newer generations deal with the shit show that is the 'gaming' scene today.

      Same. To EA's chagrin, undoubtedly, I'm more than happy to play through all four Mass Effect games for the rest of eternity. This is extra nice because I don't need a high end GPU to do so. Titanfall 2 had a nice single player campaign, and shifting away from EA, the Civilization games are also a fun way to lose several hours without realizing.

      On a tangentially related note, part of me thinks there's a worthwhile group of people here on Slashdot where some of the old LAN party games could be resurrected for

      • Gog.com

        Really, that's just about all the PC gaming there is if you want quality.

        It's pretty much l00tb0x turdles beyond that stretch. :-\

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by G00F ( 241765 )

          GOG is overran with the same things in fact
          Many games have DRM (dispite them claiming to be DRM free)
          So much DLC content!
          And so many games are old, they existed pre steam/online DRM\
          And many are just terrible or small indy shop style games that might be ok for what they are, but want something that can be played more than a few hour or played with friends, GOG isn't it either.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by skam240 ( 789197 )

      I'm a board gamer myself and all but honestly most modern video games don't have the problems you describe. I mean, if you're a strategy gamer (which you being a board gamer implies) there are tons of good PC strategy games without the problems you describe. I know because I have no tolerance for what you describe meanwhile I happily play these games.

  • Of what happens when "Gaming Companies" becomes "Companies that make Games", going from games being their primary reason for existing, to making money for people that know fuck all about (shareholders) being the prime reason.

  • 'the Future of Our Industry'

    Which industry, exactly, would that be? Because it's certainly not gaming. Maybe it's gambling, or digital jobbing or a strange version of e-sports-for-hire or just an outright scam.

    Somewhere along the line we forgot that games are meant to relax and entertain us.

  • Existing games published by EA grant them total control over digital assets utilized in their games. NFTs grant control of the asset to whoever holds the digital signature. Unless EA plans to launch their own subchain with peculiarly draconian governance, NFTs would grant more control to gamers over digital property.

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