After millions in NFT sales, the hyped “play to earn” game was effectively dead in weeks.
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How Legacy became a costly crypto bust for players and a business win for Peter Molyneux
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So the thing with any of these games is, none of them are fun. Because things that would be fun are in conflict with things that would justify scarcity, and vice versa. In order to make something worth selling, you can't easily get it in game. But if the good stuff is something that you have to pay for, then you're stuck grinding a game that's not likely fun. It's like the problem with the Diablo 3 real money auction house.
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I played a lot of Dungeon Keeper and DK2, they were awesome games. I've got DK2 on Steam (or GoG? I forget)and I still play it from time to time.
I would love a DK2 remaster, but not if Petie boy had anything to do with it.
My first thought on reading the article was "OMG, who is stupid enough to still be giving this guy money?"
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I guess it wasn't clear from your description whether they created actual NFTs using blockchain, or just created "NFTs" by putting a bunch of unique, or "unique" images on some cool physical memorabilia.
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If you weren't already doing this, good lord, look at the screenshot.
"Employ 13 workers. 10 more to hire. 0 more bedrooms required. 0 more workstations required. Day 7 Efficiency"
This is just the Silicon Valley grindset wrapped in a bad fantasy skin, isn't it? How far out of touch with reality do you have to be to think this is what people want in a game?
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This is kinda off topic for the actual story, but I just want to bring up an interaction that was brought to my attention. This was posted on bsky:
I called them out for it (a bit rudely, but if you're going to make me log in social these days I'm going to choose violence), and they later retracted and deleted the posts, so I won't link them or reveal who it was.
It was just a silly doodle of Millhouse to do the NFT/Pog meme. Because I thought it would be funny. Kyle suggested the "take my money" shot of Fry later too, but by that point I didn't have time to do another doodle. Maybe save that for later.
I'm not offended if someone found the pupils odd or anything. It was a quick sketch for fun, based on a classic cartoon moment. Not high art. I had a couple reference images (the one noted above and another that had more shading) and spent 15 minutes drawing with my iPad on my lap controlling Photoshop on my Mac.
The only purpose was for people to go "remember Pogs?" when they saw it.
Here's why I got irritated though: there are a lot of illustrators out there, very talented people, who spend hours doing drawings and then sharing them with people. Because they're having fun, because they're looking for commissions and work, because whatever. It's cool to see people's art, who cares why.
And so many of them who actually put time and effort into their drawing—the things I did not do here—get accused of being AI.
That sucks.
Just one more reason for generative AI to piss me off I guess.
I called them out for it (a bit rudely, but if you're going to make me log in social these days I'm going to choose violence), and they later retracted and deleted the posts, so I won't link them or reveal who it was.
It was just a silly doodle of Millhouse to do the NFT/Pog meme. Because I thought it would be funny. Kyle suggested the "take my money" shot of Fry later too, but by that point I didn't have time to do another doodle. Maybe save that for later.
I'm not offended if someone found the pupils odd or anything. It was a quick sketch for fun, based on a classic cartoon moment. Not high art. I had a couple reference images (the one noted above and another that had more shading) and spent 15 minutes drawing with my iPad on my lap controlling Photoshop on my Mac.
The only purpose was for people to go "remember Pogs?" when they saw it.
Here's why I got irritated though: there are a lot of illustrators out there, very talented people, who spend hours doing drawings and then sharing them with people. Because they're having fun, because they're looking for commissions and work, because whatever. It's cool to see people's art, who cares why.
And so many of them who actually put time and effort into their drawing—the things I did not do here—get accused of being AI.
That sucks.
Just one more reason for generative AI to piss me off I guess.
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It seems a lot of the old computer game "visionaries" of the 80s and 90s seem to be just pitchmen rather than actual game developers with a vision. Richard Garriott, who started Origin Systems and who is famous for the Ultima RPG series, got involved in some bad business when he tried to make a spiritual successor to Ultima in recent years. Peter Molyneux just kept on hyping up his projects but nothing recent after Fable really panned-out (Project Milo, Godus, etc.) and led to some controversy involving money. Chris Roberts is probably the most "successful" out of all of them with Star Citizen where he somehow keeps on pushing back the release of his game for more than 10 years now and people still keep paying his company money for it.
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"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool." - Richard Feynman
This is a concept that has been totally abandoned it seems. I thought this was going to be a quick article, but it went on and on and on. (no fault to the author, but I had to start skimming)
This read more like a crypto-scam disguised as a game. I remember when my kids wanted to buy an outfit for their character in Fortnite. I caved because it was only a dollar or two, but there was no hope of getting that back. My son ended up buying/trading items in TF2 and eventually sold them for about $80. I was happy for him, but I still saw that as more like 'trading cards'.
Crypto is just a whole different thing, and I want absolutely nothing to do with it. I could see where someday it could become legitimate, but we're far from that. Some people will make lots of money, but the majority will be pissing in the wind.
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Illustrators get it hard right now but if we're pouring one out for the artists most effected by the AI disaster i'll have to bring up digital realism artists. There was a massive demand for hyper real photoshop paintings, mainly portraits and their entire careers ended when Midjourney released.
I have a friend who made a good living doing super detailed realistic pet portraits in Photoshop and her entire business disappeared almost immediately. Closely followed by her being hounded constantly every time she posted a piece online.
AI blows. But the people who think everything they don't understand must be fake are, arguably, even worse.
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I am 99.44% sure those were one million magic beans, not cold hard cash. See for example the other guy who sold his plot for Etherium and thought he made a profit.
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Mobile / Gacha games can be enjoyable enough playing free. In fact it could be argued that you need a population of non-paying players to create a space where the whales can feel cool. It all depends on the game, and I guess your skills at it. In some cases you can enjoy playing indefinitely, in others you might have to drop it at some point (that happened me at some enormous level of Candy Crush where the levels got almost impossible to defeat honestly. Up until then playing it free just made it a better challenge.)
The worst thing about many micro-transaction multi-player games, I have come to think, is that they are too fair - i.e. not random enough, making them ultimately a bit boring. Of course that applies to MMOs as well. But it's not a good aspect to a game where the hook is a dream of riches.
The biggest problem with NFT games like Legacy or whatever is probably that they are not designed for game players at all, but for players who want to make money (in a place where they should realise that the only way to do that is to be in early on the Ponzi scheme.) So usually there's not even a compelling game there, especially with the advent of NFTs.
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Have you tried War for the Overworld? It’s basically DK3. I think they’re currently working on a sequel too.
Obviously it’s not exactly the same - no Mistresses for one - but it definitely captures the feel of the originals.
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Ugh, for sure.
I'm using "illustrators" pretty loosely here as a term, I would definitely put anyone who takes the time to do work by hand under the umbrella.
Really, it doesn't matter how you're working. Pen and paper and scanning it, or digitally painting over photographs with a Wacom, there's human effort involved.
In this particular case "effort" would be a stretch, but still. I grabbed one of my go to pressure sensitive brushes:
and drew everything out by hand except the map. A few years ago even nobody would think that anything else happened.
Times change, I get it. But still, I know the toll it's taking on people, and I can't help but think it's a pretty shit bargain.
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I ascribe to the conspiracy theory (I'm pretty sure it's a given now) that the reason these companies are going so hard at the creative industries is to make it impossible to be self employed. Creatives, whether it be makers pushed out by cheap 3D printing or visual artists with AI (even bands now, depressingly) don't need to sit in an office all day to survive.
I keep being reminded of this scene whenever a new AI post appears
View: https://youtu.be/ZH7hyzPIbp0?si=nZQ1s1g06xOebJFB
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I have increasingly been thinking about the tetraethyl lead that we used to put in gasoline. That, too, was a real technology that has real merit in some senses. There's just this one small very enormous problem when we deployed it widely...
SV has never escaped the idea that introducing any new technology is per se good, or at worst harmless. In the physical world, we long ago learned the folly of this mindset.
LLMs, social media in all its forms, unending autoplaying short-form video directly into kids' brains--we should have burned it all and salted the ashes.
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Pretty sure this will happen eventually. The amount of damage being done to young people now is finally getting studied and reported. If kids leave school unable to process information longer than a tweet and can't make decisions without an app to help them things will slowly grind to a halt. How can someone with an attention span of half an hour do a full shift? Anywhere?
Something will need to be done just to keep industries going as aging workers leave, taking valuable skills with them. It'll be interesting to see which industry heads take up that battle first.
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I hate to victim-blame in pretty much any other circumstance, but crypto people have been making themselves willfully ignorant for so long that I now (and as recently as 2023) have zero sympathy. If “seems too good to be true” doesn’t sink in after 5000 scams, it’s time to give up and give up responsibility for your money. Yes, the creepy guy in the run-down van with a sign that says “child molester” on the side really is trying to lure in your children.
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When "plain" NFTs arrived, they were such an obvious scam. I kinda think mixing them up with game economics was a clever way to obscure that a little.
I never understood how NFTs were different from, say, the infamous Dutch tulip craze centuries ago. "These are scarce and in demand, so they can only go up in value, and you can sell at the high point." I learned of it as a cautionary tale before I ever had money of my own.
In my young-adult years, it was Cabbage Patch dolls. Well, they were scarce and in demand... for about two minutes.
The same applies, in my ethics, to 2D artists who produce "limited editions, numbered and signed." OK applied to, say, pottery -- but a print? If the edition is hand-pulled from a vintage letterpress or giclee prints, then maaaybe. (I speak as a 2D artist.)
I never understood how NFTs were different from, say, the infamous Dutch tulip craze centuries ago. "These are scarce and in demand, so they can only go up in value, and you can sell at the high point." I learned of it as a cautionary tale before I ever had money of my own.
In my young-adult years, it was Cabbage Patch dolls. Well, they were scarce and in demand... for about two minutes.
The same applies, in my ethics, to 2D artists who produce "limited editions, numbered and signed." OK applied to, say, pottery -- but a print? If the edition is hand-pulled from a vintage letterpress or giclee prints, then maaaybe. (I speak as a 2D artist.)
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Peter Molyneux + NFTs? What could possibly go wrong… 
I am old (school) and date back to the days when Populous was new. The Bullfrog era was great: Syndicate, Magic Carpet, Dungeon Keeper, etc. But everything in the last years that had Molyneux’s name attached to it did nothing but overpromise and underdeliver. I am surprised that there are still people believing in what he says.
I am old (school) and date back to the days when Populous was new. The Bullfrog era was great: Syndicate, Magic Carpet, Dungeon Keeper, etc. But everything in the last years that had Molyneux’s name attached to it did nothing but overpromise and underdeliver. I am surprised that there are still people believing in what he says.
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Einlanzerous
Wise, Aged Ars Veteran
Reading people think crypto ever looked like a sure thing in any year is wild. It's been basically crime money or scam money since the beginning and NFT literally always seemed like a somehow even more insane version.
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Molyneux has had a few hits, but many more whiffs. Populous was groundbreaking (no pun intended) and undeniably influential, but the game itself doesn't hold up well. Fable was well received (and I found it enjoyable FWIW), but IIRC that was the brainchild of Dene and Simon Carter, not Molyneux. For everything else, his formula seems to be "let's make something kooky and eccentric and therefore it will be great," which reminds me of Tim Burton TBH, minus the self loathing.
To be fair, it's good that someone is willing to take a stab at games that aren't simply "same mechanics, new graphics," but Molyneux's capacity for self-serving grandiosity far exceeds his capacity to deliver, let alone to deliver something that's actually enjoyable. For me, anyway.
To be fair, it's good that someone is willing to take a stab at games that aren't simply "same mechanics, new graphics," but Molyneux's capacity for self-serving grandiosity far exceeds his capacity to deliver, let alone to deliver something that's actually enjoyable. For me, anyway.
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Hey, there was a time there was a very reasonable crypto that paid out in swanky hats!
(Man, that was 14 years ago, I wonder if you were even registered then. Time flies ...)
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Ah, literally everyone after all Molyneux' hype on Black & White AND Fable...
"He promises so much and delivers so little", according to a comic strip almost 20 years old!!!
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I took an animation class at USC and heard quite the earful about how rotoscoping wasn't really animation. I don't know if this was taking a side or not but my final project used micro-manipulation of Terry Gilliam-style hand-drawn articulated characters (think 2D claymation), layered via a multi-plane camera. I got an A, which I thought was against all expectations for a guy who can't draw for shit.
I have little doubt the 14 second clip that took me a month to plot, construct, and shoot frame-by-frame could be done today via generative AI in minutes, but that would have defeated the purpose of taking the class.
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I've been around since Dungeon Keeper and Peter Molyneaux always over promises and under delivers. Every. Single. Time.
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Just before I wrote my comment I got a call during a teleconference. So a couple of hours later I got to look and see that I had a message from the caller. It turned out that "Jason from Toronto" calling on behalf of "Apple Tech" needed to know my bank account details. I was tempted to call back and give him some bank account details, while discussing the excellent advantages of "my ten inch dick", but work pressure means I can only invest in making snarky comments on Ars.
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I think the biggest lie the industry ever told us is that "whales" are just rich people with too much money on their hands trying to look cool.
By and large, they're addicts. Becoming a "whale" means becoming addicted to the pay cycle of some kind of microtransaction system. There's story after story of someone spending themselves into destitution and homelessness chasing that high. We all do ourselves a disservice pretending it's just a way to separate rich people from their money, when it's people like us, but who are particularly susceptible to exploitative gambling style mechanics who are the ones giving their money to these games. Simply put, there aren't enough rich gamers who like wearing the latest cosmetics to fund all these games. They can only buy all the cosmetics on the store once after all.
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I only buy games that are complete. I mean, sure, I'll pay a few $$ extra for more cars on a racing game, or more tracks.. As long as I can do unlimited runs for one price. I have probably a thousand hours into supermegabaseball 3 at this point and it's still challenging at ego 85 on franchise mode.
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Sounds like a pretty accurate simulation to me!
On a more serious note, I just feel such an overwhelming sense of disappointment with Molyneux. I still remember the hype around Black and White and the press calling him "The Kubrick of video games" at the time, and while I did honestly enjoy the game when I got my hands on it and played the hell out of it, it was the first of oh so many times where he overpromised. There was so much stuff he talked about regarding the Creature that it really just didn't do, and I ultimately never finished the campaign due to game breaking bugs I couldn't figure workarounds for.
Seems like it's just been down hill from there.
What happened man? You used to be cool.
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"Ownership of a database entry means absolutely nothing if you can't do anything with that entry."
extremely well put and the reason I never understood the hype with nft's at all. Okay, so I "own" a certification that I have "digital land". When the servers for the game shut down is my certification valid elsewhere? No? Then what the hell is the point of "ownership"?
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I remember when Crypto came out. Even then it seemed most obvious as a money laundering scheme. But I think a lot of people saw it as a soft protest against the government monopoly on money (or maybe just paying taxes). Not that simply holding illegal money demonstrates collective action, but it did sort of force the question of what money means really. I think some hoper that it would actually replace money, but money is already pretty good so why would it? Besides for illegal stuff.
NFTs really had no reason to exist. They always felt like such a dumb scheme, and I needed some convincing that anyone actually ever bought them.
Then one day I saw Chess.com was selling NFTs and was like wtaf, and then immediately they stopped.
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My feelings on Peter Molyneux these days are mixed. Objectively speaking he has had a hand in many ambitious games that were critically and commercially acclaimed that impact the industry to this day. That said in many cases his ambition and promises for products have often been well above his means. Certainly at the point of wait for the reviews first before buying anything he touches though seems lately he has had more misses than hits.
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I don't want to victim-blame, but if you open the Oxford dictionary at "lying bloody bastard" it's gonna be Peter's face as an illustration. He did manage to make some good games, yes, but he never managed to keep his promises. This had been widely known about him since the late 80s, so I'm sorry, you had literally 30 years to look up the guy you poured your life savings into. On another note I have a bridge to sell to these people!
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Who would forget Alf though?Ahem... don't you mean "Remember Alf?"
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The assumption is rapidly shifting to "if it looks that good, you used AI". I understand why people assume this. And it's really going to fuck over whoever competent remains in the trade.
Our kid is in film school, and got roundly accused of using AI for every script written or revisions of scripts written by others. ALL THE TIME, throughout. The only way around it is to A) be able to explain how you did what you did in detail, and B) be able to do it on-demand, live. And yeah, it's grossly insulting, but in the end, EVERYONE in the class except our kid admitted to using AI.
Joke's on them though, guess who is about to graduate and go to the most prestigious graduate movie-making program in the world... (/flex)
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I just can't make myself feel too bad for the folks that got scammed here. The story of this game could be "Obvious scam targeting get-rich-quick enthusiasts, ends the obvious way". At a certain point you need to be responsible for your own choices. There was every reason in the world to laugh this idea down back in 2023, this isn't all hindsight.
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