01/11/2024 Ubisoft dumps its NFT game on the market to little fanfare

Key Art from Champions Tactics: Grimoria Chronicles featuring a masked human displaying toy figures of medieval fighters.

Image: Ubisoftnormal

Ubisoft has quietly released its own NFT game to join the ranks of other vaunted, widely-played blockchain enabled titles like Axie Infinity and...uh,Ember Sword.Champions Tactics: Grimoria Chronicles launched earlier this month with relatively little fanfare or marketing. The game comes two years after Ubisoft’s failed bidto make NFTs work in Ghost Recon: Breakpoint, a solid three years afterNFT prices and purchases fell off a cliff, and barely a week after it announced it would disband the teambehind the critically acclaimed Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown.

Surface level,Champions Tactics is a PC strategy game where players assemble teams of champions to fight their way up the rankings. Teams are composed of three champions, each with their own attributes and abilities that can exploit enemy teams’ weaknesses. At the beginning of each round, players roll dice to determine combat order. Next, they select abilities for their champions before combat plays out simultaneously. Rinse and repeat until one team is defeated. All in all, the game looks like a surprisingly decent, if generic, tactics game.

But then there’s all the NFT garbage. Champions are the game’s NFTs associated with the Oasys blockchain. To acquire champions you have to either forge them from existing champions you own or purchase them off the game’s marketplace. To purchase champions, you can either use the OAS cryptocurrency or plain ole cash money, with the cheapest going for about $7 and the most expensive sitting at an eye-watering $63,000 whole-ass American dollars. To understand what’s in it for Ubisoft to perpetrate this nonsense, the company takes a six percent “royalty fee” for every marketplace transaction, and there are about 2,700 active listings on the site.

But wait! There’s worse! Having more champions increases your VIP status. The higher your VIP status, the more experience points and in-game currency you earn, thus incentivizing players to spend money accumulating champions. To entice even more dollars out of customers,Champions Tacticsalso features an additional exclusive collection of NFTs to buy called warlords. According to the game’s website, owning a warlord unlocks access to “special events” and even more in-game boosts to earning EXP and gold. Players can use their warlords as their in-game profile pictures. Here’s what they look like.

Ubisoft is one of the biggest developers still apparently all-in on implementing blockchain technology within video games. In addition to trying and failing with NFTs inGhost Recon: Breakpoint, last year, the company announceda strategic partnershipwith web3 gaming platform Immutable after reports of Ubisoft employeesinternally criticizing the company’s blockchain projects. The tragedy is that Champions Tactics seems like it has decent mechanics that’d work just fine as a mobile gacha game. Purchasing champions and forging new ones seems perfectly suited to take advantage of the kind of microtransaction activity gaming companies salivate over. This game doesn’t need NFTs to make the kind of money Ubisoft is after.

But what’s worst of all is that Ubisoft spent money developing a game with features thatgamersand developers actively hate, only to push it out to essentially die in obscurity mere days after it essentially said “No, thanks” to the people who made one of its best games inyears. Yikes.

Arts

https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/30/24283677/ubisoft-nft-game-champions-tactics-grimoria-chronicles-sequence

Interesting NFTs
VIRGIN RARE $$$
Heyo! I'm VIRGIN RARE $$. I believe that one day cats will rule this planet. Sometimes I daydream of a life full of tripping my owner, cantaloupe, and swiping left. We're so fur-tunate to have found each other!
The Harvest
An anthropomorphic figure stands, wide eyed, staring at the viewer; its body masculine, muscular, and humanoid. Its “mind” dissociates into a conglomerate of structures resembling feathers, grain, teeth–as well as a radial flower “node”, casting linear rays throughout the composition. To his left, a vat of bodies gesture and writhe in a kind of amniotic soup, attended by a video game robot. The bot's red display reads “uWu”. Behind the robot and filling the left side of the composition is an archaic figure composed of a variety of vintage objects and symbols. Among them are a hardbound book with ancient cuneiform scripts, indicating barley, beer, bread, ox, house, and sky, behind which is a grimacing, salivating jagged toothed maw; and an old Commodore floppy drive. The figure’s head tilts toward an illuminated crescent moon, suggesting the Egyptian Sacred Bull. The archaic figure is composed of a variety of mutating cells, which shift in color, and pattern; eventually breaking free into an ephemeral broadcast of bubbles which move across the background. The work came into being against a psychological introspection, which included associations to pop culture such as alien abduction and pod people, as well as quite a bit of reflection on grains as a symbol of civilization, agriculture, sustenance, life, and imbibing (mainly whiskies).
Nyan Cat
Nyan Cat is the name of an animation uploaded on April 2 2011, and became a viral internet sensation. The design of Nyan Cat was inspired by my cat Marty, who crossed the Rainbow Bridge but lives on in spirit. I am the original artist behind the iconic GIF and have remastered the image for its 10 year anniversary. Owning this piece grants the following stats: Charisma +10 Luck +10 Happiness +15 ________________ 1400x1400 - 12 Frames
Verifactory
The factory process behind the making of a verification badge. 10-second loop, 30 fps. Created using Cinema4D, X-Particles, TurbulenceFD, Redshift, and After Effects.
Not Forgotten, But Gone
Not Forgotten, But Gone by WhIsBe