Since their emergence in the last two years, NFTs have left no one indifferent, especially in the gaming world. In general, in fact, they have been badly received by the public, but also by specialists and other players in the sector, as demonstrated the survey released today within the GDC.
NFT, metaverse – developers still don’t believe it
As we were talking this morning the survey carried out as the Game Developers Conference escalated to harassment and toxicity from gamers to developers, developers too had to talk about NFTs, metaverses, or massive buyouts.
We could have expected it, but the survey confirms it: the creators and players in the world of video games are not always attracted to all of this despite the fact that these technologies are very trendy. As for the sample, it is, like this morning, a survey based on 2,300 people. The questions mainly revolved around NFTs, unionization phenomena, large acquisitions or the metaverse.
Concretely, only 23% of developers state that their studios are interested in Web3 technology. Note that last year 27% were interested which shows a decline in interest. These findings correlate with the stealth of NFT and cryptocurrency projects in 2022. We also learn that 56% of surveyed developers who weren’t interested then still aren’t today.
The rest of the questions focus more on the metaverse, and the GDC survey asked respondents to rank the companies most likely to create a true metaverse. 14% of them think Epic Games is more likely to jump into the game with Fortnite as a foundation (twice as much as Meta and Minecraft, for example according to them). However, 45% of respondents did not answer this question, because according to them the metaverse is not viable and “will never deliver on its promises”. One respondent said the following when asked what the metaverse needs to become sustainable:
“A clear definition: the ‘promise of the metaverse’, as it stands, is nothing. The people trying to sell it have no idea what it is, and neither do the consumers. »
When it comes to questions about organizing movements, more than 50% of respondents are in favor of organizing, while 20% say they have discussed it in the workplace. However, the feedback is much less positive regarding major acquisitions such as Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard. Only 17% of respondents believe such acquisitions will benefit the industry, but 44% believe they will have a negative impact.