footage of a meeting between the NBA and the "metaverse partner"
I can't believe South Park is as solid as ever when it comes to capturing the absurdity of cultural phenomena.
Thing is, people have been shelling real money for virtual items for a long time. Remember MMOs, hell even Diablo? Team Fortress 2 and the whole hats money making machine? Well, now all that is going to end up mainstream.
I don't like it one bit but status symbols have been around since before there were humans. You can see this shit in animal societies, too
But the whole thing seems so craven, just like freemium games that south park also skewered, based on taking advantage of some addicts/clout chasers who crave the rush of some digital bits attached to their avatars.
The only thing NFTs seem to offer is an extra middleman who can make money off of these transactions.
Even that isn't new. Valve has been taking a 30% cut of everything sold on their community market for as long as I can remember.
I think the difference is that at least to someone, those virtual MMO goods had value. You could wear the stupid hat. You could buy in-game stuff with the virtual gold. You could live in your Ultima Online castle.
NFTs really don't have any intrinsic value to anyone, at all.
Just think of NFT's as a digital receipt (incl. tickets or club membership), certificates and then think of use-cases where proving that you have one of those would be useful. Of course you can argue that the entire blockchain aspect isn't necessary but that's a different conversation. Or if this is a good thing or not.
Another thing I thought would be useful in games, but unlikely to ever happen, is using NFTs to track ownership of in-game cosmetics. That way cosmetics you get from known e-sports pros could be worth more than cosmetics you purchased from whatever store, the same a pair of Michael Jordan's shoes he wore during a game is more of a collectible than buying the equivalent shoes from Footlocker.