EA And NIKE Going Down The Web3/Blockchain Route

Yesterday, CCP Games reminded players of CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson's continuing efforts to serve as a thought leader in the Web3/Blockchain world.

Hilmar Veigar Pétursson, CCP Games CEO, will share his thoughts on blockchain game economics at the sixth Korea Blockchain Week in Seoul, 4-9 September 2023.@kbwofficial I #kbw2023 pic.twitter.com/87ZSVzWPts

— CCP Games (@CCPGames) June 5, 2023

Thanks to a plucky band of very irate players, the Icelandic game company was forced to cancel its plans to bolt Web3/Blockchain tech onto a 20-year-old game. To put blockchain tech into New Eden as publicly described, CCP needs to launch a sequel. But that much money will find a way to escape from people eager to throw it away. Which is where EA Sports and Nike comes in.

Nike Virtual Studios and EA SPORTS are today announcing a new partnership aimed at enhancing and personalizing the virtual sports experience for fans all over the world. This collaboration brings together two of the biggest names in sport and entertainment, and will lead to all new ways for members of .SWOOSH, Nike’s new digital community experience, and EA SPORTS fans to express their personal style through play.

While MMORPG players are resisting inserting Web3 and Blockchain technology, perhaps the larger public that plays console games like Madden and and FIFA will accept the technology more. At least, that is what many publications speculate. Crypto News Flash explained the connection.

According to blog post, the partnership will allow members of .SWOOSH to gain access to Nike-branded digital collectibles which will be infused into EA games. .SWOOSH is a Web3 platform run by Nike. The platform, which was built on Polygon, the Ethereum scaling network offers NFT collectibles as digital sneakers and membership cards to users.

Hopefully everyone is putting 2 and 2 together and getting 4 to come to the NFT claim correctly. And why not? From what I hear, players in EA's two biggest sports franchises are used to spending Star Citizen-like amounts of money to upgrade their players. What's a little more in non-fungible tokens as long as the items fit seamlessly into the game?

And that is the key. A lot of crypto-bros seem to think the most important thing in the games they are backing is the blockchain technology. Instead, gameplay must come first, with any Web3/blockchain technology supplementing the gameplay. Until the crypto-bros realize that truth, they should expect a lot of resistance to their dreams of wealth.