In a recent interview, Edward Snowden criticised play-to-earn games, highlighting the unethical practices behind many of the games’ designs.
Snowden comes out as play-to-earn opponent
Edward Snowden recently revealed that he is no fan of how NFTs are used for play-to-earn blockchain games. This comes as quite a surprise, as avid crypto followers will be aware that Snowden has lauded the emergence of Bitcoin and decentralised finance, considering both of them a positive development that could counterbalance the increasing influence of governments and traditional financial institutions.
However, he had no kind words to say about the use of NFTs in crypto games in a recent interview on Parachains, a Polkadot and Kusama-focused YouTube channel. According to Snowden, monetising gaming platforms how blockchain games are doing now utilises a false sense of scarcity and takes advantage of players’ insecurities.
Snowden said that “an inherently anti-social urge” was at play that was putting those at a disadvantage that see crypto games as an escape from their dire real-world situation:
“If you think about the world that people are retreating from to their games, where they live in a cold bare box, if they’re lucky enough to even have a home in some overly expensive city where they spend all their time working, they get home exhausted.
They make their cheap meal, and then they turn on their device to escape from all that and then in their digital world, where they’re on a beautiful island, they build a beautiful home, and they want to change the colour of the wall, and you got to pay $19.99 for the wall or for a token to let you roll for the potential to maybe recolour your wall. There is something horrible and heinous and tragic in that to me.”
Snowden also stressed that the crypto sector needed to be more careful with its business practices in the gaming space. Creating the kind of false scarcity and false urgency that many games display now mirrors the exact situation gamers try to escape from in reality. Concluding his statement, Snowden made it clear that technology was a tool to overcome real-world inequalities, not recreate them in cyberspace.
Blockchain gaming as the next big boom?
Considering Snowden’s generally crypto-friendly stance, his criticism merits some attention, especially given the fact that many household names like Electronic Arts are bullish on NFTs as the future of gaming.
Indeed, NFTs can be a boon for games, as they allow players to monetise their time playing and finally earn from following their passion. But Snowden is also right in his critique that many a developer has frontrun the upcoming NFT trend by throwing unfinished products on the market that are high on promises but offer little behind their fancy packaging. Oftentimes, these games are repackaged get-rich-quick schemes with a lot of buzzwords but very little actual gaming substance behind them.
The truth will probably be somewhere in the middle. We may be a good while away from seeing a legitimate game like FIFA or Grand Theft Auto incorporate NFTs in a meaningful way, but that will not stop it from happening.
