Just a matter of a year ago, NFTs were on everyone’s lips. Non-fungible tokens were set to be the great revolution of the decade, and there was not a single technology company that did not think about them. However, the fever for these digital products has died down for the time being. The collapse of both NFTs and the crypto market in general, added to the refusal of users to jump through the hoops of large video game companies, has caused interest to drop sharply. Despite this, Niantic seems to be going in the opposite direction, and its take on NFTs differs quite a bit from the apps we’ve seen so far .
The creators of Pokémon GO go against the tide
Those of us who play video games know the market. We know very well that the big players in the sector use very perverse practices to take advantage of the most vulnerable customers. After free-to-play with microtransactions and wicked loot boxes , the general public got a kick out of it when industry giants started trying to sneak in NFTs. And, for the moment, the players have won this battle.
On the other hand, we players also know very well that any video game can be articulated to insert NFTs, and it would almost never benefit us as users. For example, in the Pokémon video games, each creature is unique, and its metadata could be translated into NFTs. However, turning your Pikachu into a non-fungible token would not benefit you at all. The Pokémon Company and Nintendo have already shown their refusal to convert their games into NFT slots, something that we sincerely appreciate. But Niantic goes much further, and they believe they have discovered a formula in which they could use some of the technologies of the blockchain for the benefit of both parties.
Niantic does not want to do a play-to-earn
The Verge medium has interviewed this week John Hanke, the CEO of Niantic, the company behind Pokémon GO. Hanke has been in favor of the inclusion of this technology in video games, but has given a somewhat different vision than what we have seen so far. As you know, Niantic is focused on augmented reality games, a technology that began to explode with Ingress and that took it to its maximum level with Pokémon GO .
Not too long ago, Hanke was introduced to the work of SpotX Games , a Miami company whose goal is to bring web3 innovation to the real world. And this is a common goal with Niantic, which in 2018 already presented a new toolkit called Lightship , with which they intend their games to evolve with new layers of augmented reality . This vision is radically opposed to what Zuckerberg has tried to sell us with his metaverse, since it would mean bringing some of the web3 tools that do work to the real world, but without transporting us to a world of science fiction .
Lightship Seeks Other Targets Using Web 3.0
Niantic took over the studio, and they’ve been working together to perfect Lightship ever since. The goal is to create an improved ecosystem in which both parties win. Hanke has not given much information, but he has expressed some hints about what it would mean to put Lightship’s technology into operation. For example, one of the objectives is that players cannot take advantage of others by cheating , and this would be achieved thanks to the traceability offered by the blockchain.
According to Hanke, using a token wallet would also improve user privacy , thus avoiding the typical data reselling that occurs when logging in via OAuth. It would also minimize middlemen, so creators would be rewarded more directly , and in-game costs could be reduced. However, using any type of cryptocurrency will expose the studio to typical speculation, and they will have to work hard to control said market so that it does not happen as we see with Decentraland.
Pokémon GO is not in the plans at the moment
However, Niantic’s “real-world metaverse” is still very green, and at this time, Hanke says there are no plans for this technology to come to Pokémon GO and other games they already have in circulation. John Hanke is very sure of his ideas, and affirms that Niantic knows the business very well, because otherwise, they would not have raised 5,000 million dollars in their first five years of activity and 300 million more to finance Lightship.