Since their emergence over the past two years, NFTs have left no one indifferent, especially in the gaming world. Indeed, they were generally poorly received by the public, but also by specialists and other players in the sector, as shown by the survey published today within the framework of the GDC.
NFT, metaverse: developers still don’t believe it
While we were talking this morning about the survey carried out in the run-up to the Game Developers Conference regarding the harassment and toxicity of gamers vis-à-vis developers, the latter have also been brought to speak about NFTs , metaverse or massive acquisitions.
We could expect it, but the survey confirms it: the creators and actors of the video game world are not always attracted by all this despite the fact that these technologies are very trendy. As for the sample, it is, like this morning, a survey based on 2,300 people. The questions mainly revolved around NFTs, unionization phenomena, major takeovers or the metaverse.
Concretely, only 23% of developers declare that their studios are interested in Web3 technology. Note that last year, 27% were interested, which shows a decline in interest. These results correlate with the stealth of NFT and cryptocurrency projects in 2022. We also learn that 56% of developers surveyed who were not interested then are still not today.
The rest of the questions are more focused on the metaverse and the GDC survey asked respondents to rank the companies most likely to create a real metaverse. 14% of them think that Epic Games is most likely to get into it with Fortnite as a base (twice as many as Meta and Minecraft for example according to them). Still, 45% of respondents didn’t answer this question, because according to them, the metaverse is not viable and “will never keep its promises.” One of the interviewees said the following when asked what the metaverse needs to become sustainable:
“A clear definition: The ‘metaverse promise’, as it is, is nothing. People trying to sell it have no idea what it is, and neither do consumers. »
When it comes to questions about organizing movements, more than 50% of respondents are in favor of organizing, while 20% say they have discussed it at work. However, the feedback is much less positive regarding major takeovers such as that of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft. Only 17% of respondents believe such takeovers will benefit the industry, but 44% believe they will have a negative impact.
