Extremely excited to say I’m joining Quidd, the NFT collectibles empire of Animoca Brands, to run content and strategy for our future. Thanks to Michael, Tim, Robby, Yat, and Yusuf for the conversations; I’m ecstatic to be working with all of you.
Quidd has been bringing the world’s largest catalog of branded digital collectibles to a gamified marketplace for years. With the future of collecting and gaming in blockchain, we, along with the masterminds at Animoca, are reimagining what it means to be a collector of your favorite IP and new collections you’ve never seen before. Stay tuned for more here soon: everything you know about NFT collecting, gaming, and media is about to get way, way cooler.
This journey started years ago when I joined SuperData Research to provide the first-ever coverage of the digital games and interactive media markets. It was a time when this now-$180B industry was on the cusp of — somewhat begrudgingly — moving past a physical world where you went to Gamestop and spent $60 on Call of Duty and that was that. One unit at one price, end of story. Digital downloads became a thing. Then DLC, subscriptions, microtransactions, free-to-play. The community ballooned from gamers-are-nerds-in-basements to everyone-on-the-planet-is-a-gamer, whether they identify that way or not. (Typical exchange with non-endemic clients: “I’m not a gamer,” only to hear, when I pressed them, that they spent $80/month in Zynga Poker. Not a gamer? You’re nearly a whale). Niche content and events like E3 turned into gaming video content (there were 100B hours watched on YouTube in 2020 alone), esports, the rise of Discord, etc.. Brands and IP holders who were previously weary of gaming started throwing every logo and character they could in Fortnite, or developing their own titles. Starting to sound familiar?
NFTs, in many ways, harnessed what games already knew how to do. You want to sell digital goods to an engaged community with long-term roadmaps and value? Welcome to gaming.
But with NFTs, digital games as they have existed have started to look rusty. Despite pushback from vocal minorities who will hate on any announcement from a AAA game publisher (looking at the Ubisoft debacle), the blockchain is the most significant innovation in games (and other verticals) in years. Let’s take a look at the old school: player Jamie loves FIFA. He spends $60 to download the full-game FIFA 19. Sure, he can play as much as he wants at this point. But Jamie wants the best players and wants them now. He spends $10+ per pack to build his team, but the players he gets are random, so to fill his roster as best he can he’s spending $50/month or more to unlock the players he wants. He’s now got dozens of players, only a handful of which he actually uses. The ones that he doesn’t? He can’t sell those for real money. The good players? He can’t sell those for cash, either. Nor can he transfer these players from FIFA 19 to FIFA 20 when it comes out, so he’ll have to start all over again.
The pushback from the NFT naysayers in gaming and elsewhere sets up a truly absurd hypocrisy, especially in the claim that it’s a “cash grab.” Sorry folks, I have all the data on your MTX purchases since 2010 and you spend an absolute truckload on the “cash grab” that was additional content and microtransactions you so loathed the last time you did this. So, Jamie: a system that allows you to buy the exact player you want, then sell that hot player at a premium (worth actual IRL money) when you’re ready to switch things up, that you can seamlessly take from FIFA title to title, is not only uninteresting but somehow abhorrent? For essentially the first time in history, you’re being offered the opportunity to get real-money value (IRL $$) from a non-casino game. And this isn’t even getting into play-to-earn, something bringing economic benefit to your average players but also those in economically distressed countries. [On the climate front, I hear you, though there are choices and solutions here that have already negated this as an issue for those that plan accordingly, as Ubisoft did.]
Since day one, Quidd has understood that people deserve value in the digital collectibles they buy just as much as the physical. If you can sell a rare Cursed Totem, then a unique Morty Smith digital card is worth money, too. The other thing that Quidd has known since day one, something other NFT collections are only now starting to take to heart, is that merely dropping a jpeg without any metagame, roadmap, or community is a disservice to the buyers, the artists, and the market.
This is why I can’t wait to show you what we’re building by supercharging access to the world’s best IP, media, artists, games, brands, built on the most engaged ecosystem and market in NFTs.
