There was no scenario in which I was the target audience for Reaper Actual, but I would never assume that it could have never had an audience. Sure, I might be firmly of the mind that adding John Smedley to a spiritual sequel for a series I’ve never really had an emotional attachment to is cruise control for not really caring, but I imagine it could have made a splash with a certain contingent of loyal fans… until, y’know, it started talking up the idea that there will be two parallel versions, one with blockchain play-to-earn integration and one without.

Now, that line alone has clearly tripped the “NO THANK YOU” button in MMO vets’ and our own readers’ minds, so I do not need to explain to anyone who is reading this and comments regularly that blockchain and P2E games are bad and should feel bad. But Johnny the Smedley Engine is hardly the first person who has tried to do the “we’ll have two versions of our game, and one will be free of blockchain” routine. And it literally never works. It didn’t work for Legends of Aria, it didn’t work for Ravendawn, it’s not working for EVE Frontier or Avalon, it won’t work here, and it is not going to work in the future. Because it’s dumb.

First and foremost, since somehow I have wound up in the position of Person Who Vocally Explains Why Blockchain and NFT and P2E Is Bad, I feel there is an important article to read beforehand: the one where I went in-depth on EVE Frontier. That game is not advertising that it will have one “innocent” version alongside the crypto version (although it kinda is since EVE Online is that innocent version). But the reason you should read it is that it breaks down down the core concept of what the blockchain specifically offers an MMO in general.

In short? It offers financial incentive. That is really it. It doesn’t actually facilitate creativity in a way that cannot be better facilitated through other means, and you have to kind of know this already because if that weren’t the case and blockchain actually had some really unique use cases that weren’t about reselling assets, people would have used them by now.

I’m not being flippant here. This technology has been floating around in implemented form since 2008. That is a long damn time for something to be out there without anyone having come up with a version of this that isn’t “sell things to people.” A function, you might note, that doesn’t even require the blockchain. For example, Warframe has a process for adding player-generated skins and accessories to the game, no blockchain needed. In fact, SOE/Daybreak helped pioneer these systems, which John Smedley, as former president of SOE/Daybreak, knows full well. He even mentioned that very Player Studio program in his pitch. Blockchain is not needed for any of these things whatsoever.

But we’re not just talking about how blockchain has no advantages to offer video games; we’ve done that dance before. No, we’re talking about the idea of running two separate versions of the game. And here again, I direct you to do some additional reading, specifically our almost finished limited-run column Gachapwned, which hit its main thesis and point of discussion by noting that gacha isn’t just a business model but an integral part of the game.

This is the problem with having two versions of the game. It’s not that you’ll be running a blockchain gacha, a set of words so cursed that I’d feel bad about speaking them into existence if I weren’t fairly certain someone else already had. Rather, it’s the point that you can’t just remove the gacha and have a purely better game on the other side. The gacha is not just a business model but a core part of how the game is designed from the ground up, full stop.

If your crypto blockchain junk is a core part of the game, then it is a core part of the game. The version that does not have it is going to feel lesser as a result because a core element of the game itself has been ripped out and replaced with, well, nothing. On the other hand, if it isn’t a core part of the game and can be excised easily, the version of the game that has it is going to at best feel like a competent game that has a gross financial scheme grafted on top of it. Neither of these options is good!

And again, the fact that the financial incentive is the only unique thing the blockchain version has to offer means that literally any and all interaction with that part of the game is going to be filtered through that lens. Even in the best-case scenario where blockchain integration is just welded onto the side, the result is that potential players are going to see and know what you’re doing. You are trying to sell them the same game they’re already playing but with crypto moneymaking junk shoved in because that’s… literally what you’re doing. It isn’t subtext; it’s just text.

Players will not see that and think that the designers have faith in their product as a fun game; they will think the designers have faith in their moneymaking scheme, or at least are willing to fake it long enough to keep the crypto investors around long enough to see it through. And that does not attract people to the game! Even if you can actually excise P2E with zero flaws and fully intend to support that version of the game, you have started off by telling players that you are looking for every possible means of sneaking money out of their wallets. This does not promote trust!

But on top of all that, there’s another problem. Running an MMO of any sort is hard. Running two is doubly hard.

To a certain extent, sure, the blockchain manages itself. But that’s only to a certain extent. A lot of management still needs to be handled on the human side, something that aforementioned article goes into. Running two completely separate versions of an MMORPG, much less a new one, is doubling your workload and expense when it’s possible – even probable – that only one version is ever going to get any sort of playerbase.

And to be clear, this isn’t just speculative. When you look at the actual userbases of explicitly blockchain-based financial schemes masquerading as games, no one is actually playing these things. It’s like having an MLM convention where everyone is trying to hawk their scams to people who are themselves trying to hawk a scam. You don’t have players; you have would-be marketers, which does not entice other normal people to come in and play because that’s not what the machine is built to do.

I’ve said more than once that a game’s launch features demonstrate the designer’s priorities. That doesn’t mean that launch features demonstrate the only thing the designer wants in the game; rather, it means that launch features demonstrate what the designer considers non-negotiable for the game being in a launch state. Promising to launch with a blockchain version before you have made a solid case for playing the game in any other capacity serves as a pretty clear indicator of what is non-negotiable for the studio, and it is not something that speaks well of the true priorities at play.

Obviously, this is not an evaluation of a new game that has only just been announced and may very well sensibly alter course long before we get to the point of worrying about any of this promised blockchain nonsense. But it’s always worth pointing out that when developers promise “we’ve made blockchain a part of the game but it’s totally optional,” that is… not actually a good sign. It’s not even really any better than making it non-optional. The net effect is identical.

Sometimes you know exactly what’s going on with the MMO genre, and sometimes all you have are Vague Patch Notes informing you that something, somewhere, has probably been changed. Senior Reporter Eliot Lefebvre enjoys analyzing these sorts of notes and also vague elements of the genre as a whole. The potency of this analysis may be adjusted under certain circumstances.