Orcs don't wear Nikes
The pitfalls of bringing NFT-powered fashion assets to video games and how to avoid them.
If you were to draw a Venn diagram with on the one side people who are obsessed with fashion and on the other side people who deeply care about how their videogame character looks like, I would be right at the center of it.
Fashion allows me to inhabit the world of a designer and just love going all the way with it.
So, if there ever was someone who would absolutely love NFT’s, those digital authenticity certificates that turn infinitely copyable online assets into unique items1, it would probably be me, right?
Well, not really, but not for the reasons you think.
While I’m definitely interested in technology that could bring my favorite fashion items to the realm of video games, I do think a lot of companies are going about it too carelessly.
NFT’s have become so hyped online, the discussion on how NFT’s could help create these unique digital fashion items has sadly been reduced to a technical debate about technology and ownership. All while ignoring the most crucial aspect: the cultural component.
Fashion and video games are so defined by their respective subcultures and customs that you can’t just force collaborations.
In the short term creating Balenciaga hoodies for Fortnite might work, but if brands want to have a permanent presence inside the countless virtual worlds inhabited by millions of gamers, a deeper and genuine understanding of these subcultures is required.
Here’s what to avoid and how brands can do better:
Immersion
This might not apply to every single gamer in the community, but there are a lot of gamers who play video games for the storytelling and immersion. And for them, the outfits worn by their characters have to make sense inside that world.
Sure, this doesn’t really matter in games Fortnite which isn’t really rooted in any expansive storytelling or worldbuilding, but in games like Destiny 2 & World of Warcraft, Balenciaga sweaters and Nike sneakers would actually break the suspense of disbelief which is crucial to immersion.
That’s why you don’t see Orcs wearing Nikes.
This love for fashion isn’t just visible inside the video games themselves, but also on YouTube, Reddit & Patreon where thousands of creators & communities dedicated to the worldbuilding, lore, and fashion of video games thrive.
And it’s not just gamers who care about this, game developers are increasingly starting to take this trend seriously as well.
For example, Destiny 2 developer Bungie recently released a virtual magazine featuring the best player outfits in the game, and this week, People Can Fly, the developer of the game Outriders, released an update that finally enabled transmogrification inside their game.
Transmogrification is the ability to turn the appearance of an outfit or armor to another and is one of the most requested features in many games.
All this just all goes to show how important in-game fashion has become, but also how much the fashion taste of gamers is tied to the world their characters inhabit.
This is the case in the real world as well, so why would it be different here?
Fashion designers can definitely play a role in the production of video games though, there just has to be a genuine understanding of the worlds and subcultures they’re designing for.
Fashion design has had a long history of creating truly breathtaking costumes for movies and TV-shows, imagine what they could do if their creativity was unleashed upon the fictional worlds of Destiny, World of Warcraft, …
Clout
Since the internet has homogenized most of pop culture2, one could argue that there’s a nice, clean overlap between ‘offline’ and online subcultures.
While that might be the case for some subcultures, it’s bold to assume that one’s unique, ultra-rare Nike or Supreme collection will automatically translate to online clout.
For example, the Balenciaga x Fortnite & Louis Vuitton x League of Legends collaboration may have made a splash in the media, there’s been little buzz about it in-game, on Reddit, or on YouTube3.
Most gamers don’t have the money to buy from any of the aforementioned brands either, so there’s little reason for them to feel connected to these brands.
Truth is, gamers just want to wear outfits or skins that are fun, colorful, or just batshit crazy which ties into the point I previously made; if fashion houses just tapped into their vast archive silhouettes and house codes, and embraced the setting of whatever videogame they’re developing for, they could make the most bad-ass outfits and skins on the market.
The operative phrase here is not “what would a gamer like to wear”, but rather “what would a gamer want their lightning-shooting space wizard to look like?”
Universality
In an attempt to justify the existence of NFT’s, a lot of designers or crypto enthusiasts are either creating fashion NFT’s for very niche games or developing new games from scratch.
For those who want to make a profit from these NFT’s, it’s hard to see how this approach can ultimately be sustainable.
Paying lots of Ether (the cryptocurrency that powers NFT’s) for a fashion item certainly makes sense in a very popular game where a lot of people can see it, but less so for nascent games with no community or cultural resonance.
There’s also no such thing as “the video game”. What might be popular and worth a lot of money in one game could be utterly irrelevant and worthless in another.
So, how do you justify getting people to invest in an NFT-powered sneaker that might lose its value when the next new popular game comes around?
And we’re not just talking about the setting that sets videogame worlds apart, there are also very practical considerations like how do you make a universal fashion asset that can both be used for humanoids in Fortnite and cars in Rocket League?
NFTs could potentially solve this problem by allowing us to store the essence of a brand or piece of clothing on a platform which could then be linked to whatever digital object we’d like.
The one problem it wouldn’t solve, though, is the ‘money’ part, but maybe this points towards a deeper truth: that NFT’s are a solution desperately looking for a problem.
Gamers and companies have actually been selling in-game skins for years, and they’ve been doing pretty well without the help of blockchain and NFT's.
And these systems have only been accepted by gamers with great reluctance. Microtransactions, season passes, … games have become so over-monetized that even the mere mention of NFT in games angers players.4
A universal database that would link costumes, skins, and armors across games definitely sounds interesting on paper but it would still have to find a way to overcome the inherent subcultural difference between video game communities.
Proponents also assume that video game companies will automatically place nice with each other, which probably won’t be the case as Bloomberg journalist Jason Schreier keenly observes:
Exploitation
In all these discussions about NFTs in fashion, one important question is often ignored: who is going to design and develop all these things?
It’s no secret that the gaming industry, just like the fashion industry, has notoriously brutal work hours. Ridiculous overtime often accumulating to 60 to 80 hours a week is quite common and only a few companies offer any meaningful compensation.
A serious problem that’s, unfortunately, going to be exacerbated by the NFT craze. Not to blame all the woes of the video game industry on NFT’s, but unfortunately, developers are already feeling increasingly pressured to work on NFT-powered games.
This news could be framed as anecdotal were it not for the fact some of the world’s biggest gaming companies are seeing NFT and blockchain as a big part of their future, even though, so far, none of these companies have been able to explain why exactly.
My fear is that a lot of super creative and passionate people will be burnt out as a result of being forced to work on a technology that hasn’t yielded any tangible benefit yet.
Creating multiple assets for different games is one thing, doing it for a very undefined idea/concept/platform your bosses don’t even understand is quite another.
With great hype also comes a lot of money. While this problem isn’t tied exclusively to fashion NFT’s, a lot of scammers have already found their way to the NFT/video games space.
Affected by this aren’t just gamers who are losing actual money, but also developers who are being harassed for something they didn’t even want to create.
Currencies, Communities & Culture
Reading this might make you think I’m either a Luddite5 who hates innovation or a frustrated investor who missed the boat on crypto and NFT’s.
The truth is, that I actually love observing the ways technology is changing society. It’s at the core of my professional activities and a big theme in one of the classes I teach at my school.
What has made me write this piece, though, was the increasing discomfort I’ve been feeling about the discourse surrounding NFTs in fashion and how it has been ignoring one of the most crucial aspects: the respect for the culture and the creative professionals who have to build all of this.
We may still be in the early phases of ‘NFT fashion’, but I feel like if we don’t speak up now, I fear we’ll end up in a dystopian future where all culture will be turned into advertising and everything will be monetized by big corporations.
This fear is already manifesting itself in real conflicts between different subcultures in which proponents see NFTs as a decentralized and democratic new way of making a living, whereas NFT skeptics perceive it as “an attempt to re-impose artificial scarcity on culture”
Not to go all philosophical, but the discussion about fashion NFTs is part of a bigger cultural conflict about the soul of the internet, and its challenges can only be solved if we acknowledge this context and respect the (sub)cultures that inhabit the internet.
But big things have small beginnings and I believe a lot could be achieved if brands, designers, and NFT-enthusiasts forgot about planet Earth for a moment, and immersed themselves in the worlds and subcultures of video games instead.
The physical world and the internet are definitely converging, but that integration goes both ways.
If you want to know more about all these exciting virtual worlds and subcultures, but don’t know where to start, feel free to add me on Steam via this friend code 98751192, and on Battle.net as Voidwalker#21559.
A very good description of what NFTs are: “NFTs are a way to transform a digital good that can be endlessly copied – such as an image, video, or message –into something unique, which is then verified on a blockchain. It is a digital version of a certificate of authenticity. NFTs often act as collectibles that consumers can purchase and store, like Pokémon cards or an original painting.”
Interesting article on this subject by designer Tobias Van Schneider.
This mainly applies to Western audiences, though. In China, luxury brands have a lot higher status, and luxury items are much more sought after.
I know one Reddit-post is anecdotal, but if you just search for NFT’s on the gaming-related subreddits you’ll see the hatred towards NFT’s is almost universal.
You should definitely read this article on how Luddites have been greatly misunderstood and how much of their philosophy is more relevant than ever.
Love this piece! Also graat sources 🤯Keep it up Voidwalker ✨