Video game companies have actively and passively tried to find new sources of financing related to Blockchain technology. However, players have not received these proposals particularly well, and Eva Gaspar, CEO of Abylight, explains that developers do not like them either.
The commercial aspect of video games has already undergone several revolutions despite the relatively short life of video games as a cultural sector. The way that companies in this medium have found to sell themselves to players has changed a lot in just fifteen years.
The arrival of Blockchain technology, and specifically NFTs, led companies in the sector to look at this new possible source of income. However, the players have not reacted exactly as the companies expected and what for them could seem an interesting source of financing, for the users it was considered as a way of trying to charge them for elements that were previously free.
Business Insider Spain exclusively published the recent signing of Trip Hawkins, founder of Electronic Arts, by a new Spanish company that seeks to establish itself in this way of understanding the video game.
For this reason, Business Insider Spain wanted to ask Eva Gaspar, CEO of Abylight, a Spanish company that has developed or distributed renowned titles such as Cut the rope, Hyper Light Drifter, or the most recent One Military Camp, where this rejection of NFTs comes from, and why they decided not to bet on this model in their latest project.
“We Really Wanted to Get Involved in a Project that We Could Exploit for a Long Time”
Gaspar explains that for their latest game, One Military Camp, a resource management video game similar to the famous Theme Hospital in which the objective is to manage a military camp and lead your army to victory, they wanted to undertake a project of great size. considerable.
“We really wanted to get into a project that we could generate an IP [an intellectual property] and exploit it for a long time,” says the CEO of Abylight. “If not, you create the games for a long time, you launch them and basically in one year you have burned 80% of the exploitation,” he points out, referring to the economic return that can be obtained from these products.
NFTs as “Vulgar Economic Exploitation”
When asked why they have not chosen to incorporate solutions such as NFTs into their financing model, the CEO of Abylight affirms that these types of concepts are cyclical: “With so many years of career I know that every year we have the keywords, that you say it in an investment pitch and they throw money in your face. That happens. I think last year it was metaverse, and now that has deflated. “
Regarding why NFTs are so frowned upon, the director of the Spanish video game company points out that, on the part of the developers, “there is a lot of reluctance” and expresses that they are perceived as “vulgar economic exploitation”. “It’s something like: ‘My work is my video game and fracturing it like this, in tiny pieces, to get more money from users…’, there is an important sector that does not like it.”
By Audy Castaneda
