Rushdown Revolt is Anti-NFTs

We’re making Rushdown Revolt to be the most electric, combo-centric, and expressive combat experience. One where player skill is challenged and celebrated at every level of play - no matter how you decide to play. Embedding tradeable resources and NFT rewards would effectively make our goals pointless.

Exploration beyond the optimal path would not only be a waste of time, but it would also be a waste of money. We’ve found thinking of NFT Games as their own genre to be helpful for understanding the impact they have when introduced to a game. Introducing NFTs would simultaneously:

Remove the “no stakes” escape of gaming for those who need it.
Change the focus of our game towards resource optimization & speculation.
Add an unnecessary layer of suspicion to player interactions

Watch our full announcement or read the announcement transcript below for more information.

Anti-NFT Announcement Transcript

For anyone paying attention, NFTs - and cryptocurrencies - have taken the games industry into an uncomfortable place - maybe even an unrecognizable one. If you’re familiar with our story, you know we’ve taken a very close look at NFTs. However, we’ve come to the conclusion that we will not touch NFTs. Our conclusion will also help us steer clear of similar technologies, too.

But first, I honestly need to note a few areas of my background which will provide important context:

Because blockchain was originally introduced as a financial innovation, I note that nine years ago I worked on Wall Street and was a licensed broker-dealer. I additionally note that I graduated with a four-year degree in finance and economics.
Because NFTs are a concerning form of monetization, I want to point out that seven years ago I was trying to stop Icons: Combat Arena from launching “predatory” lootboxes and instead urged them to use the recently invented battle pass system.
Because blockchain carries concerns around scams and illegality, I want to add that five years ago I founded a cryptocurrency compliance & regulatory company, Cointaxes.com.
Because oftentimes decisions to jump on the bandwagon can feel spontaneous, I want you to know that by the time I started talking with our team (and our players) about potentially integrating NFTs into Rushdown Revolt in Summer of 2021, I already had seven years of experience with the subject matter*.*

All that said, we reached our conclusion to be “Anti-NFT” because of the intimate, well-informed, and thoughtful conversations with you.

It was because we put in the time together to study and understand the nuances of integrating any technology. Not just NFTs or blockchain. We discussed particular concerns around NFTs & blockchain such as their environmental impact and their lack of safeguards. We also discussed the known solutions. But even while everything “looked good on paper,” a lingering feeling persisted: “Something about NFTs still feels really wrong.” That’s when we went deeper.

We wanted to understand: what was behind the sickening feeling around NFTs? For us, this was the most compelling point: NFTs are essentially their own game so adding NFTs into existing games will change the way games are played. Once we moved past the technology itself and actually started exploring what would happen when NFTs are introduced, everything became obvious.

It’s not said often enough that playing games is an emotional experience. It’s about the joy, camaraderie, and immersion. It’s fun. All this magic happens because games are an escape from the consequences of real life. This kind of gaming is completely different from speculative-based games like gambling or NFTs, which provide a rush from putting real stakes on the line.

NFTs carry an overwhelming desire to collect them and to speculate on their value. There’s a thrill associated with buying NFTs early at low prices and betting that they will become more popular and valuable. This speculation-centric design is core to their fun and appeal, and it’s why there’s an NFT-craze in the first place.

By their very design, the interaction of NFTs with games feels fatal to us because they add stakes to the game. This is particularly a problem because the games we want to make are supposed to be primarily for fun with no stakes attached. We found ourselves weighing NFTs as heavily as whether or not we would want to introduce real-money betting.

We decided against it because the all-important boundary insulating in-game decisions from reality would be gone. Every player would be forced explicitly or implicitly to consider whether their time in-game will be worth it. This taught us it’s imperative that we preserve the sanctuary that games provide for those who want or need it.

At this point, it’s worth elaborating that there are a lot more wrinkles that come from NFTs. In particular, there’s the pressure for everyday players to optimize gameplay towards goods which are tradeable for financial rewards. If the point of our game was to optimize processes, manage resources and speculate in player-trading-markets, then this complexity might actually add to our game.

However, we felt that the power of the “game” of NFTs would effectively change the GENRE of our game. It really does like feel like that kind of a decision too. Just as many developers never take an existing game with an existing community and change the genre, we didn’t think it made sense to do it here.

Thinking of NFT Games as their own genre of games was particularly instructive. If we’re an NFT game, then all of the combat, artistry and craft is a means to an end for players to speculate on the value of our NFTs. The real game instead would be collecting and speculating on the goods.

We founded Rushdown Revolt because golden age of Fighting Games was not in the Arcade Era. Our Golden Age is still ahead. Fighting Game players are some of the most skilled and most talented gamers in the world - but thats not enough - we want them to be recognized and celebrated for their skill. We did not feel comfortable with anything else becoming the ultimate destination. We are focused on our players’ journey of discovery, skill development, and personal expression through combat.

We’ve saved the most important finding for last, which directly affects our community. We invest just as much in our Discord as we do our game. We believe our community is just as much a part of the fun of Rushdown Revolt as our combat. We even have a division of our company dedicated to our Team and Community Wellness.

We may not think about it this way, but the “game” of NFTs is inherently social, too. That meant we also had to consider how adding NFTs would affect existing social dynamics. It is perfectly understandable that many NFT owners proudly promote owning something they coveted. But because part of the “game” of NFTs is betting that said object will become more popular and more valuable, any promotion is implicitly or explicitly an ask others to buy in. Unfortunately, even innocently talking about NFTs, is implicitly a solicitation to buy in and self-serving for their interest in the “game.”

We don’t want any of our players to second guess the intentions of one another, and if we introduce NFTs to our game, that will always be a concern. That’s on top of any concern of how our players risk appearing intrusive and distasteful to others.

I’d like to just wrap up what we’ve covered here. We’ve found thinking of NFT Games as their own genre to be helpful for understanding the impact they have when introduced to a game.

We found that introducing NFTs would simultaneously :

Remove the “no stakes” escape of gaming for those who need it.
Change the focus of our game towards resource optimization & speculation.
Add an unnecessary layer of suspicion to player interactions

Based on these findings, we found the decision to stay away from NFTs and recommend an anti-NFT stance to others to be the right one. Around a year ago, we adopted an internal team structure called “the chain of trust” instead of the “chain of command.” Adopting any technology that could cause us or our players to be less trustworthy is an automatic non-starter.

This framework can of course apply to anything that requires buy-in and encourages speculation in a similar vein like cryptocurrencies. We’re genuinely relieved to put the topic of NFTs or any similar mechanism thoroughly behind us, but are grateful this journey gave us a valuable framework for any future considerations. Now, we can get back to focusing on making the best game and community we can.