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Oh lord, Will Wright’s new game is built on NFTsProxi is about making 3D scenes of memories, and trading NFTs
Proxi is about making 3D scenes of memories, and trading NFTs
Proxi is… some sort of creation-focused thing. It was originally announced for mobile, though it’s not clear if it’ll exclusively be so whenever it does eventually arrive. Proxi will invite players to build 3D scenes representing pivotal memories of their lives, using 3D and 2D assets and sound. You have to define memories using keywords, and you link memories as roads on a world, which Wright says onits site"becomes a resource allocation game, much likeSimCity", whatever that means. And there’s an AI to analyse all the connections and try to build a model of how you think?
“The ultimate goal is that we build an avatar of your id, your subconscious, that can now go out and interact with other Proxis,” Wright said in a video interview with Forte. “It might be your friends, your family, it might be historic Proxis, it might be Albert Einstein, or ficticious Proxis, it could be Horatio Hornblower or whatever.”
Will Wright’s Proxi — A video game where community-created NFTs turn players into co-creators.Watch on YouTube
Will Wright’s Proxi — A video game where community-created NFTs turn players into co-creators.
Basically, it sounds like an elaborate version of filling a Facebook page with “5 years ago” memories, Picrew self-portraits, Buzzfeed quiz results, and declarations about yourself based upon astrology and Myers-Briggs personality types. But ‘on the blockchain’.
Wright was lead designer on the first The Sims.
Gallium costs real money to buy (100 Gallium is $1) but you won’t be able to take Gallium back out for real money. You won’t be able to sell Proxi items on external marketplaces either. So while both the developers andthe company running its blockchain backendwill make money, player-creators will only get rich in… kudos? Bit of a raw deal compared to games like Roblox andSecond Life, which similarly rely on players making content but do let them make real money.
Even if creators want to give assets away for free, it sounds like they’ll still need to pay Gallium.An FAQsays, “It will cost in-game currency to mint, trade, or place an asset on the marketplace - but you will be able to adjust the in-game price.” This whole situation sounds deeply unfun but it sure does involve the latest tech buzzword.
Perhaps we should have never left the oceans, as demonstrated in Wright’s Spore.
Everest Pipkin has written about how NFTs and cryptoart are an ecological and cultural disaster in an article succinctly titledHere Is The Article You Can Send To People When They Say “But The Environmental Issues with Cryptoart Will Be Solved Soon, Right?“so there’s a primer for you.
“Our intention is not that we build a speculative market where you’re now selling your stupid JPEG for a million dollars,” Wright said in the video, “the intention is that we use this technology in a way that our community becomes a wholesale part of the game development.”
As much as the core memory-building idea of Proxi interests me, it sounds like it’s built on poisoned ground. I’ll stick with the Picrews.
