Easy Allies Podcast #292 - November 12, 2021

Is anyone else experiencing this issue, when I download the audio file. It downloads without an extension(.mp3). I have to rename it to have it open on music player.

Druobo

NFTs and Crypto are always hard to discuss, because clearly defenders of them have a personal investment with them, which instantly ruins any trust you can have in what the party has to say about them. Besides that, Crypto has already created a worldwide GPU and PC parts shortage, which should be enough to inspire ire from any respectable gamer. The kicker though is that there's basically no reasonable argument for them, besides people trying to get rich quick together. Find a better way to make money please.

MBUN

Genuinely curious how you imagine a scenario where NFTs go away. How do you see it happening? They’ve been around for over 3 years, and the huge attention from earlier this year brought thousands of new people into the space (and made millions more at least aware of the term ‘NFT’). Artists with local communities now have global ones. Some NFT cartoon animal jpegs have gone on to become the seeds of full on brands, with lines of merch and deals with the world’s biggest talent agencies and Hollywood studios. Access has been getting easier for non-crypto people, and awareness has been spreading like wildfire. I can see a world where the insanely high dollar sales slow down in favor of more widely accessible and cheaper priced NFTs, but the technology is still just getting started, and as long as internet access exists, I just don’t think there’s any chance of NFTs as a whole just disappearing or dying out. Many of the current projects may go to 0 (which makes sense— it seems like there are hundreds of new ones every day!), but the ones that are in it for the right reasons, who have long term goals still have a looooong life ahead of them. There are fads within NFTs, for sure, but NFTs are not a fad.

Max Miller

NFTs are absolutely a fad. Crypto is obviously a more complicated situation but NFTs are NOT here to stay.

ZeoVGM

Thank you for speaking out against NFTs and Crypto, we need more voices in the gaming communities calling out the grift and harmful trends before they take hold. They don't bring anything new to gaming and are just hurting the community trying to make a buck.

Delissi

Not necessarily a correction, but your blindspot for Riot was apparent here. The technical director of their fighting game is Tony Cannon, who made GGPO (rollback netcode middleware used by Skullgirls, among other games) and is also an EVO co-founder. There are concerns, but netcode and community support are low on the list all things considered.

NFTs started hot when a lot of laws went hard on old money laundering laws.

Chris Park

I agree with everything you have said :) I'd also like to add that the environment concerns are valid when it comes to crypto currency but that is largely because the mining of said crypto requires a lot energy, and if that energy is generated from fossil fuels then there's your environmental impact. As the world transitions to renewable energy (hopefully sooner rather than later) the environment impact will be different. Applied to games an interesting possibility with crypto is the ability to transact across international borders without worrying about regional pricing or exchange rates, governments may not like this though! Would be great if/when these sorts of topics are discussed on the podcast in the future some broader research / opinion is gathered so that the discussion could have a bit more nuance and be more interesting and insightful.

Matthew Borg

Love you EZA, been here since day 1, I'm not going anywhere, and so I say this with total Love & Respect: NFTs are here to stay. Verifiable digital ownership is all that it is. The most exciting things about the technology and the possibilities it presents have nothing to do with money. If you're just reading the Kotaku headlines and seeing pictures of cartoon apes selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars, I understand that it sounds dumb and scammy. The reality of it though is a lot to wrap your head around. It took me weeks of research to be able to confidently understand what NFTs mean for the future, and I am still learning something new every day. It’s so early. You could say this is the “printing out directions from MapQuest” phase, compared to the 20+years of progress that lead to having a GPS pre-installed in your watch. I’ve seen more creativity and innovation in the past year being in NFT space, and have felt more inspired with my own art than I have in years. Seeing artists and developers of all ages, genders, races come together to try and experiment with this new material before the rules have been written yet -- and in fact helping write the rules, from the ground up.. it's really a revolutionary moment in time. Hating NFTs is like hating trees, just because there are some shitty books out there (which, absolutely, there are some complete garbage/cash grab/bullshit NFT projects out there at the moment for sure.. but they do not represent the entirety of NFTs). As to the environmental concerns, artists and innovators within the space also want things to get better, and are actively working towards fixing it from the inside. Many are moving to other chains that are already a lot more eco-friendly. The Ethereum network (where a lot of - but not all - NFT activity takes place) is heading toward an upgrade that will reduce energy use by 99%. It's also important to note that the energy use comes from a blockchain as a whole, and is not effected by the individual NFTs being made. NFTs are still just a small niche of the much larger crypto ecosystem, so it's not fair or correct to blame individual artists/devs/etc for majorly contributing to climate change (it's like blaming a YouTuber for all of the energy that Google as a company and all its related services/offices/vehicles/etc use). I'm not trying to be combative here, I just feel there is a lot of misinformation about what NFTs actually are, and am just hoping to share some of my understanding of it with the class. Happy to discuss and get into more details, or answer any questions as best as I can. I just hope we can get past the "NFTs are shit, and if you interact with them, you are shit." mentality.

Max Miller

Love you EZA, been here since day 1, I'm not going anywhere, and so I say this with total Love & Respect: NFTs are here to stay. Verifiable digital ownership is all that it is, and it unlocks a huge amount of possibility in the digital space that couldn't be done before, and is certainly where we are headed whether people like it or not. The most exciting things about the technology have nothing to do with money. I agree that the current moment we're in right now has a lot of cash grabbing, bullshit projects and is ridiculously money-focused... but that is a people problem, not an NFT problem. I'm looking 5, 10 years ahead at where this stuff is going to go, and I am working on building towards that future (as are many others!). NFTs can be game items, art, identification, access to experiences and communities, concert tickets... pretty much anything! I've seen more creativity and innovation in the past year being in NFT space, and have felt more inspired with my own art than I have in years. If you're just reading the Kotaku headlines and seeing pictures of cartoon apes selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars, I understand that it sounds dumb and scammy. But being in the various communities built around different projects, watching independent game devs, artists of all races and genders coming together and trying to experiment with this new material before the rules have been written yet -- and in fact helping write the rules, from the ground up.. it's really a revolutionary moment in time. Hating NFTs is like hating trees, just because there are some shitty books out there. As to the environmental concerns, this comment is already super long and the technical details are a bit over my head, but the short of it is that the artists and innovators within the space also want things to get better, and are actively working towards fixing it from the inside. A lot of NFT activity currently happens on the Ethereum blockchain, which is heading towards a massive upgrade that will literally reduce the energy use of the network by 99%. Other blockchains like WAX, Tezos, Polygon, and Palm already operate under this much more eco-friendly "Proof of Stake" blockchain model. It's also important to note that the energy use comes from the blockchain as a whole, and is not effected by the individual NFTs being made. NFTs are still just a small niche of the much larger crypto ecosystem, so it's not fair or correct to blame individual artists/devs/etc for majorly contributing to climate change (it's like blaming a YouTuber for all of the energy that Google as a company and all its related services uses). I'm not looking to get into any arguments or be combative here, I just feel there is a lot of misinformation about what NFTs actually are, and am just hoping to share some of my understanding of it with the class. Happy to discuss and get into more details, or answer any questions as best as I can. I just hope we can get past the "NFTs are shit, and if you interact with them, you are shit." mentality.

Max Miller