Ubisoft has yet another NFT project. I feel terrible for the artists who have wasted their time on this garbage.

We've all agreed that NFT games won't happen, but the nature of the game development industry will see doomed projects flying their unwanted freak flags on the proud ship of "Sunk Cost". Videogames are made over a period of time, so any trend that was popular in the past will only be seen now, unless it's Early Access (which many NFT projects have).

Ubisoft is already on the bandwagon and has made it halfway to Oregon. Champions Tactics is a Web3 PVP (that's called "NFT" by tech bros) game that, from this trailer, looks like its art department has been completely wasted.

Here are some nice things I can say about Champions Tactics. This aesthetic is a mix of Darkest Dungeon-style tabletop miniatures and Heroforge. It's rad. On the website, there are 3D models with a lovely painterly texture. This is the first NFT I've seen that looks half as good as the bizarre, lifeless pseudo anime dolls in Square Enix Symbiogenesis.

Here's what I don't like about Champions Tactics. It is an NFT game. Since its introduction in 2015-2017, the technology has been hailed as the future of video game development. However, I have yet to see any use of it that isn't easily replicable.

Evangelists will tell you you can own a digital corner of the highway of information (Second Life was released in 2003 and most MMOs offer housing) or that you can exchange rare items with other players (TF2 & Counter-Strike do this since forever). There's also the idea that you can "own" the item in question more than would be possible otherwise (you own a certificate associated with it and the item will disappear if infrastructure goes away). There's also the "you can use a sword in one game to play another game" thing. This is nonsense that I think we all agree was created by people who do not understand game design on a fundamental level.

This is no exception. If you missed out on the free minting orgy in July, you can still play the game with "Ethereal Champions", but you will need to purchase enough cryptocurrency to engage with the game mechanics.

The price of these champions can range from $7 to $63,000. You know that the more expensive ones will dominate the meta in a PvP-game, because they are worth it,otherwise, they wouldn't have that much value. Okay, that's a bit unfair. This ecosystem seems to be created by players. The price of a high-end game is usually between $300 and $1,000. With that money, you could buy a few good games rather than bragging rights for a game that no one with a regular day job cares much about.

The biggest tragedy here is the collapse of that awesome visual identity. The artstyle, which is cool, is used to create thousands upon thousands randomly-assembled heroes, instead of anything that has any kind of spirit. I'm not sure anyone is attached to "Methodic Warrior", or "Earthy Pugilist", which, by the way, has a pistol. This is the closest to being preserved in the game's "factions" page, which outlines the film-thin setting lore. But look at this art. It doesn't belong there. Let me free you from the prison Ubisoft has put you in.

The real tragedy is that, unless Champions Tactics manages to avoid a 100% miss rate, all this genuine effort will be thrown out in a few years when tokens devalue and the games wind down. Ubisoft may have stumbled upon a secret sauce. I could be wrong. But this game isn’t really a competitive genre. It’s more like wading through a graveyard and shouting "I'm still alive!" Ah well. It's not causing skin and eye injuries.