In a quite astonishing interview Nicolas Pouard, VP at Ubisoft’s Strategic Innovations Lab and the man behind Quartz, and Didier Genevois, Ubisoft’s Blockchain Technical Director, have repeatedly stated that gamers are not intelligent enough to understand NFTs and Ubisoft’s decision to build a platform around them.
The interview on Finder begins with the discussion of the negative reaction to Quartz, Ubisoft’s NFT scheme. “Well, it was a reaction we were expecting. We know it’s not an easy concept to grasp,” said Pouard. He then goes to explain they will continue to push forward with the venture and that “our belief is that, piece by piece, the puzzle will be revealed and understood by our players. We hope they will better understand the value we offer them.”
He is then asked about the benefits of a scheme such as Quartz and states “I think gamers don’t get what a digital secondary market can bring to them,” following that up with “It’s really beneficial. But they don’t get it for now.”
“The end game is about giving players the opportunity to resell their items once they’re finished with them or they’re finished playing the game itself,” he adds. This is just moments after explaining to us that gamers are mistaken and just see NFTs as “just a tool for speculation.”
Remind us Nicolas, what word could be used to describe the process of buying something with the hope of reselling it at a later date for profit?
He also doesn’t mention is that Ubisoft will take a cut of every sale, so they continue to make money even after the initial sale of the item.
Of course the game has to have built in support for your Quartz NFT to be of any use. At present you cannot transfer items between games, and even if you could it would make no sense. Eivor shouldn’t be wearing a combat jacket from a Tom Clancy game. The entire value of your purchase currently relies on the game being active and a willingness to add items from other games, and even other companies entirely – that’s not likely to happen outside of promo-filled titles like Fortnite.
Despite the overwhelmingly negative reaction and also stating very clearly “the players are always right,” the duo explain how Ubisoft is going to continue to push ahead with their plans. Thankfully they do state that “at no point will we force our players to use Quartz and Digits.”
Quick note to Ubisoft: The negative response is because we gamers do not want NFTs in games, not that we’re all stupid. Your comments are, frankly, very insulting.
Source: Finder
max
I think Mssrs. Pouard and Genevois got it all wrong: gamers aren’t stupid ENOUGH to “understand” NFT (ie be fooled by their bs).
At the same time they are too stupid to undestand gamers. Which is weird since they work at a gaming company. But of course at least Mssr. Genevois has to say that, just look at his title: unless he touts this, he is completely irrelevant.
If they really were sincere in their claims about the “end game”, they would make it possible for gamers to resell or gift their old digital purchases once someone is done with the game, not some in-game junk with no real value. But that is unlikely to happen, isn’t it? This hasn’t anything to do with me, it is all about them. When I am bored with a game, they can get additional money from someone buying stuff that I collected in-game. That person still have to buy the game, win-win-win for them, not so much for anyone else (and we are not supposed to see that)?
Since they like to insult me (and the rest of he gaming community), and spend company resources on a project that few seems to want (making the games more expensive in the process) I guess they don’t want me as a customer any more. Bye Ubi. Loved the Rabbids series on the Wii, the rest? Meh…
KippDynamite
Very well said!
Starman
Even if someone was all on board with NFT’s, the fact they would need developer support and games to be compatible and likely servers to still be on for said games, I really don’t see how this would be a good idea for anyone but ubisoft.
Also on the PC version of PUBG you can already sell in game items on the marketplace for real cash. No need for this NFT guff to enable these transactions to be possible.
KippDynamite
I think they’re too stupid to understand people.
And even if they had a brilliant idea and we really just didn’t “get it,” it is still their failing for being unable to demonstrate why we should want their thing.