10/16/18, 4:24 PMNFTs Not Coming to Fortnite Says Epic Games – Hacker Noon

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Martine ParisTech reporter covering AI, crypto, blockchain for The FinTech Times, Blockchain Gamer/PocketGamer, Grit Daily, Hacker Noon, Geekazine muckrack.com/martineparisOct 16 · 5 min read

NFTs Not Coming to Fortnite SaysEpic GamesCrypto pioneers are placing bets on gaming to deliverthe Krst billion people to blockchain despite bigpublishers holding back. Tony Cheng of Decentralandsays they’ll never get onboard. Meanwhile Ubisoft movesforward with Blockchain Game Alliance. When willCryptoKitties make a cameo in South Park PhoneUnleashed?

Marshmello, winner of E3 Battle Royale Fortnite Pro-Am, photo by David Stelzer

10/16/18, 4:24 PMNFTs Not Coming to Fortnite Says Epic Games – Hacker Noon

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If 2017 was about fundraising, and 2018 was about infrastructure, then

2019 will be about mass adoption, but whether global payments or

nonfungible tokens (NFTs) are the killer dApp is up for debate.

Many crypto pioneers at SF Blockchain Week said they’re placing bets on

gaming, including Garry Tan of Initialized Capital, an investor in

Horizon Blockchain Games, Bart Stephens of Blockchain Capital, an

investor in OpenSea an NFT exchange, and Jeremy Gardner of Augur

and Ausum Ventures.

At Global Blockchain Forum, Tan told CNBC’s Ran Neu Ner, “The Vrst

mass adoption product will be a mobile game where the end user won’t

even know they’re doing a transaction on the Ethereum network when

buying a digital good or participating in a marketplace. We’ll start to see

this in 18 months or less. It’s not too far away. My partner Alexis

Ohanian recently visited the Fortnite guys… people spend an insane

amount of money on digital goods.”

Gardner added, “Some time in the next one to two years there will be a

Pokemon Go-like game where people collect NFTs with unique

characteristics to level up, that have real world value, and can be

exchanged with anyone in the world. We’ll see a burgeoning economy

emerge out of some game and assets issued in that game will be

CNBC’s Ran Neu Ner with Initialized Capital’s Garry Tan, photo by Martine Paris

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interoperable with assets of other games. Gaming will be the Vrst case

with tens of millions of daily active users of crypto. NFTs make gaming

and online collectibles more valuable. The amount of time adolescents

spend on games is outrageous and they don’t make money on it. If

people can make money on games they’re playing, that sounds like the

future to me!”

At Back To The Crypto Future, Blockchain Capital’s Bart Stephens said,

“One of the areas that we are seeing organic demand in startup activity

and end user activity is the intersection of video games and crypto — nonfungible tokens. If you play a game like World of Warcraft or Second

Life, there are tens of millions, and if you include Asia, over a hundred

million users that live and play in these virtual worlds with virtual

economies and virtual currencies, and you can have virtual objects, but

at the end of the day until this year, all of those objects weren’t owned by

you. You might have spent a year of your life getting some super special

Vre sword but it turns out that in World of Warcraft you don’t own that

Vre sword. Blizzard Entertainment owned by Activision, a public

company, owns that Vre sword. So if you try to sell it for U.S. dollars, you

are out of luck as a gamer. That is changing now. Persistent worlds, even

casual games, you can earn something in game slaying a dragon and get

a magical coat of armor, you can pull that out of the game, go to

OpenSea and sell it for Bitcoin, and go to Coinbase and sell your Bitcoin

for U.S. Dollars. CryptoKitties was the Vrst example of that. There will be

many more games that capture the notion that videogamers own the

experience and work product and results of some endeavor online. So

that is an area where we’re actually seeing an organic demand

envirnoment unlike some of the other areas which are still early stage

like enterprise adoption, still at the proof of concept stage.”

When asked what’s standing in the way of adoption, Tan replied, “It’s

how users are being onboarded. Founders need to remove steps. There

are too many steps. It’s hard to get your hands on crypto, then once you

have it you need to transfer it to a wallet. How is a normal human being

going to Vgure out how to buy CryptoKitties?” Gardner added, “They

need a reason and good user experiences.”

Yes, gamers get crypto. Digital goods and virtual currency have been a

part of the industry since the dawn of gaming. There are 2.3 billion

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gamers worldwide who will spend $137.9 billion mostly on digital goods

this year, according to NewZoo. Top grossing games make over a million

a day. Candy Crush makes over $4 million a day for King. Clash Royale

and Clash of Clansmake millions a day for Supercell. SuperData

estimates that Fortnite made over $1 billion its Vrst nine months, and

Roblox which was just valued at $2.5 billion with 70 million monthly

active users.

Certainly, it would be huge if Fortnite, with its 125 million players and

78.3 million monthly active users, started to test NFTs on the blockchain,

except …

Epic told me there are no plans to integrate blockchain into Fortnite or

Unreal Engine.

You can’t spell nonFUNgible without FUN

At the NonFungible Summit co-sponsored by Blockchain Gamer, on my

Crypto Games panel, I was joined by Grant Hummer of SF Ethereum

Community Fund, Philippe Castonguay of Horizon Blockchain Games,

SF Ethereum Community Fund’s Grant Hummer and me speaking on the Crypto Games Panel at the

NonFUNgible Summit

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Linda Lu of 645 Ventures and Jel Tong, serial entrepreneur, as we

discussed what’s needed to get the top publishers on board.

We looked at the Steam Community Marketplace, a trading post of in-

game items for over 125 million registered users owned by Valve. A

simple integration with the 0x protocol could instantly make it one of the

largest NFT exchanges in the world.

We discussed Ubisoft’s burgeoning relationship with CryptoKitties which

began at its Blockchain Heroes hackathon this summer. Ubisoft has been

the most bullish of all the top publishers and recently formed the

Blockchain Gaming Alliance with Ethereum co-creator Joe Lubin of

ConsenSys, and executives from Fig, Alto, B2Expand, EverdreamSoft,

Gimli, Enjin, and Ultra, to create common standards and a more

interoperable and transparent ecosystem, which will beneVt

stakeholders, by furthering innovation and ensuring economic viability.

As to whether the top publishers will ever cross the line, Matt Condon,

producer of the Nonfungible Summit, shared this post from Tony Sheng

of Decentraland. In short, centralization serves them well. Gaming

simply may not be ready yet.

The jury is out whether the incumbents will resist or embrace the new

technology, but for the hundreds of blockchain game developers sitting

in the audience it was clear that we will have a metaverse of NFTs soon,

even if it takes the indies to lead the revolution. They just need to

remember to make the game fun and move blockchain to the backend.

As the tweet goes: You Can’t Spell NonFUNgible Without FUN!

Posted in Blockchain Gamer, October 16, 2018, by me

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