GM. How are you doing with this recent downturn of the NFT market?
I watched a documentary last year (flex), that had a line something like, “the world is so infinitely complicated that it can’t be properly predicted”. No matter how many charts you look at, no matter many models are made, it all can go out the window in a second with some weird event.
Sure, NFTs could be dead, but they just as easily could be back on the top of the world tomorrow. Who really knows? Anyone who says they know better is a big, fat liar (see below).
ALPHA
Cool Pets!
The eggs have dropped after the FUD of last week, and to no one’s surprise, their secondary market is doing well. That doesn’t mean that the team hasn’t failed to meet expectations already. They keep pushing back deadlines, and today delayed their public mint because of potential issues with bots. It hasn’t been a smooth start and it’s fair to question how their launch of the actual game will go.
But I don’t want to focus too much on that. I instead want to focus on what an actual functioning game could mean for the NFT space in general. I’ve already dove into why I think gaming holds a big part of NFTs’ future for 2022 and beyond. I theorize that Cool Cats could kickstart this boom, but they will need to do so carefully and stick the landing here.
Now, I haven’t played the game yet, but early word from Beetah users is that Cool Pets is simplifying down the process. They are building a “world” but it’s not that expansive and there is very little exploring you can do (at least right now). I imagine that this game is an MVP (minimum viable product).
For those unfamiliar with the term, it basically is a startup phrase that means, ‘whatever works.’ Essentially, you go to market with whatever you have and make adjustments as you go along, tweaking things based on customer feedback.
For Cool Pets, they will technically have all they need to "succeed” - $MILK will be an in-game currency that can be used to buy items that can then be given to your egg and also a token that can be traded. Your eggs will then hatch into a Cool Pet that has definable and completely unique traits based on the different combinations of items you gave (that’s your game character). To gain $MILK, you can take your pet on quests. There you have it; that’s the game.
They’ve already used the power of puzzles in their community as part of giveaways and competitions, I expect the game to also do that. So what you’ll be playing isn’t a game in the conventional, game console sense. It’s a minimum viable puzzle (still MVP) that can then start really transform into a game if it catches on. If it doesn’t? Well, it’s still a PFP project and they can pivot to something else. That’s what sets it apart from something like Wolf Game, which doesn’t have any established “brand” already associated with it.
Even better, for someone in the NFT world, this all makes sense. With Cool Pets, you are using some game theory to create a “generative” NFT of sorts. From someone coming from the gaming world, this also makes sense. It’s kind of like Pokemon, but it costs a lot more money, I guess?
Another game project, Pixelmon minted this week, but it’s still in development and the 3 ETH mint price got people talking. Though they have much loftier ambitions (they want to be a full-scale game in the conventional sense), they raised a lot of capital without having proved much else.
What I can never understand though is why minters would put up that much risk to reap the rewards of something that may not catch on. Granted, if Halo or World of Warcraft was minting NFTs, I can understand why that would be worth a swing. However, fledgling game companies like this are notoriously finicky. Their games are constantly “in development” and usually have quite a few delays before going to market. Remember Cyberpunk? And that was a major video game release!
There will be a lot of failures in the NFT gaming space before there’s a hit. Is Cool Pets that? Maybe. Whoever the big winner is though, there will absolutely be a game that bridges the gap between NFTs + video games this year…book it. And I believe it will be a game that is bare-bones to the point where everyone says, “why didn’t I think of that?” Always remember KISS: Keep it simple, stupid.
(Full disclosure, I’m a Cool Cats shill and I own a Cat and an Egg currently.)
BETA
Trust me, the last thing I want to write about is the idea of “cancel culture”. In fact, I thought we had left this discussion in Web2 and 2020.
But this week, it reared its ugly head on NFT Twitter with two separate incidents: Brantly from ENS and a SuperRare employee fired for years-old tweets.
With Brantly, it was hate speech resurfacing from an old tweet. With SuperRare, an employee tweeted several racial slurs from song lyrics a few years ago. (Unrelated, but it might be time to take a look at your old tweets and delete them).
The ramifications seem to be that these people will not be working at their respective employers any longer. Twitter seemed to think these were examples of “cancel culture” infiltrating the Web3 world. Are they victims considering they 1) could have changed as people since their past tweets 2) are standing up for what they believe in? Or are they just “victims” of being dumb and insensitive (this is the correct answer).
Whichever side you fall on in the argument, just because they are Web3, it doesn’t mean they are above the culture that is doing the canceling.
We can think being decentralized makes us the “new guard”, operating independently of the old rules of the system. That, however, is a fallacy. I think what is forgotten is that changing from Web2 —> Web3 will not ultimately change the culture we live in currently. Until further notice, we still operate under that umbrella still.
We are fellow humans first. We are Web3 evangelists second. Be kind always.
Also, don’t forget that Twitter has always been a platform that thrives from “discussions” like these. A lot of you weren’t on Twitter for the 2018 election and it shows. The platform thrives on arguments, drama, and toxicity, so try to not feed the beast anymore with “controversies” like this. Trim the fat and move on.
And remember: sometimes saying nothing is better than saying something dumb and hateful (ie Brantly and the former-SuperRare employee).
DELTA
A crypto raid seized the stolen Bitcoin valued at $4.6 billion this week. What would you do with that kind of money? For me, it’s easy…two chicks at the same time.
Isn’t it kinda weird that Gary Vee made everyone preorder his book and in the process, it became the most pre-ordered book in Amazon history, yet no one has tried anything like this since? I suppose no one has the brand like VeeFriends to pull off something to this level, but I’m surprised no one on NFT Twitter hasn’t used their platform to elevate another more conventional product. Feel free to take my alpha, NFT influencers!
Down with DAOs? I plan on exploring them this week in hopes that I can provide some insight for you next week in the newsletter.