Hey everyone!As a lot of you already know, we dropped our first official NFT collection recently. Although the majority of the response has been likes, thumbs ups, and redemptions of the free NFTs we put out, we also got a fair deal of negative comments in some communities. We care about our community and we care about our game, so if you are one of the people who think this is a bad idea, or are upset that we are doing this, we encourage you to read through to get a better idea of what we are doing, and where we are coming from. Of course, you’re still free to think it’s a bad idea after you hear us out, but it seems that some of the concerns out there might be misplaced. Leave a comment if you think there’s something we missed, but we wanted to take a moment to address what seems to be the main concerns. We’ll start with the most often asked question.
“What the fuck is an NFT?”An NFT, or a “Non Fungible Token”, in our case is simply a collectable image (sometimes animated). It’s really no different than a trading card or action figure like a lot of other companies create with their IP, but it’s a digital version of it that can be put on a blockchain, which allows you to prove and transfer ownership. This creates the ability to have limited edition items that only so many people can officially own, and some of these tokens can be used by players to redeem exclusive in-game goodies down the line.
“Why did you create NFTs?”The characters in our game have a lot of personality, and a lot of people seem to really enjoy them so we thought this would be a fun new way to bring them to our players and fans, for those that would be interested. As I mentioned before, it’s really not any different than sports teams having trading cards, or movies or video games having action figures. It’s just a fun thing to put out into the community for enthusiasts.
“But aren’t NFTs bad for the environment?”You can collect, enjoy, trade, and even sell our NFTs on the marketplace without ever putting them on the blockchain, so doing any of these things with our NFTs doesn't use any more energy than a typical Venmo or Paypal transaction. Of course we wouldn't do something that could potentially cause harm to the environment without looking into what kind of carbon footprint we'd be leaving, and what steps we could take to do it in a more eco-friendly manner. Our collectables don't need to be put on the blockchain. The only time you would need to actually use the blockchain (that's the part that can cause environmental harm) is if you were going to move them off the marketplace, but even that won't be a concern for much longer. The reason we chose to put our blockchain on the Ethereum network is because Ethereum has plans by the end of the year to move to what is called "proof of stake" algorithms for reaching consensus. This new approach uses significantly much less energy than it's "proof of work" predecessor, and should alleviate most, if not all, concern for environmental damage. Green NFTs! It’s a thing! If you are planning to move your House Party NFTs to the blockchain, we encourage you to do so after Ethereum moves to proof of stake.
“Shouldn’t you be spending your time working on the game instead of this crap?”Sure. The game is always our first priority, but as our team size grows, some of the graphics team are finished with their part in House Party, as most of what’s left to come is implementation of new content and polish. They are working on Office Party somewhat, but there’s only so far ahead they can get before they need the developers to step in and help out, but we don’t want to take our developers away from House Party until it’s finished. So, we thought this would be a fun side-project for our graphics doods.
“But aren’t NFTs a scam or a pyramid scheme?”Not really any more than trading cards and action figures are as we mentioned above. You’re either into it, or you’re not. Nobody has to buy them. We just thought it’d be a fun thing to do with our crypto-embracing community. We’re not making tons of money on this. Sure, there’s currency involved in the nature of crypto and the collectables world, but only if the community embraces it and utilizes it. That’s not, however, why we did this. For us, it’s more about putting out fun limited edition items that we think people would enjoy.
“But NFTs are stupid.”Maybe you think so, and we are completely OK with you thinking they are stupid and never participating in collecting or trading our NFT offerings, but for the fans of the game that are, we thought this would be a fun thing to do, and it can help us with our development costs.
Bottom Line:As anybody who has been following the development of our game knows, we always like to be upfront and transparent with our community. We’re not one of those companies that sits quietly on the sidelines until our PR team comes up with something clever to say. We have always tackled our criticism head on. We are not in the business of doing something that can cause harm just to make a quick buck. We understand there’s some controversy out there surrounding these new technologies, but we made sure to do our research and took steps to be on the right side of this.
We hope this sheds some light on the whys and hows of what this is all about. As we mentioned, we appreciate and care about our community. We understand that every decision won’t be accepted by all, and that’s OK, but rest assured, our main goal is always to make fun and engaging video games. Anything we do on the side is always about helping and facilitating that process.
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Till next time!
Eek! Games team
