When Brendan Greene (aka PlayerUnknown) left PUBG it was to create something new like most game developers are inclined to do from time to time. He started a new studio, PlayerUnknown Productions, and start working on a new open world project currently named Artemis, (we’re sure the name will change at some point), a very ambitious massively multiplayer title that requires the creation of its own engine to achieve its noble goals. He’s been doing that ever since.
Meanwhile, blockchain technology and NFTs have clearly established themselves in the minds of developers as the “next big thing”, often to the chagrin of gamers. It must be said that like many new technologies, blockchain could be incredibly useful, especially in the gaming space. It all depends on how people use it. So far, it seems that many games that have used blockchain, especially NFTs, have had more negative impact than positive. So when someone like Brendan Greene comes along and says he’s considering blockchain for his next project – even avoiding saying “NFT”, players think he’s considering doing NFTs.
– Advertising –
The subject came up for Greene, during an interview on Nathan Brown’s LifePoints, where he touched on the metaverse-like nature of Artemis and the issues that arise from being so heavily tied to blockchain and NFTs. During the interview, he said he’s “just going to do what [he’s] go do.” He added: “It’s this thing that [they] I want to create and it’s going to give people a lot of fun, a lot of fun and a lot of meaningful things to do. He also stated that it doesn’t matter if it’s called the Metaverse, he doesn’t care what its name is.
What Greene cares about – according to the interview – is that he thinks gamers should have the ability to “extract value from a digital place”. He believes gamers should be able to do things that make them money, but clarifies that it’s not about advertising for big companies that already have a lot of money, but “a kid called AwesomePickle selling cool skins because it understands what people want”.
Even though Greene didn’t mention NFTs in the interview, people assumed that was what he was getting at, or at best they assume that Artemis will be a full blockchain project. Greene addressed this hypothesis on Twitter, saying that while the company plans to use blockchain, it won’t be the basis of the game.
Not enough. We view blockchain, or a future evolution of this technology, as a utility within our digital space, not the foundation of it. https://t.co/ZklHxtMI65
— PLAYERUNKNOWN (@PLAYERUNKNOWN) September 28, 2022
While that doesn’t necessarily negate the use of NFTs in Artemis, it should at least mean that it won’t be something players will have to get involved with in order to play. It’s also worth noting that what Greene is describing doesn’t sound all that different from games like Second Life, where players were able to earn real money through in-game systems by creating whatever they wanted. Maybe if blockchain were applied to something like this, it wouldn’t be the plague we all think it is.