NFT expert suggests using people from poor countries as NPCs: “They could fish, work, walk back and forth”

The possibility of making money in games is on the rise and is closely related to the technology “NFT”. Wealthy western investors have paid players from countries like the Philippines to perform menial services in pay-to-earn games in the past. Expert Mikhai Kosser suggests there is something more to go on.

Who’s speaking? Mikhai Kossar speaks. He is part of a group that advises companies on NFT gaming projects. He gives an interview to the site “Rest of World” (via restofworld).

This is his suggestion:

You have people who have money but don’t have time to play a game, and you have people who have no money but time to play a game. […]

Because work is cheap in developing countries, you could use people from the Philippines as NPCs, real-life NPCs, in your games. They could just populate the world, maybe do some job or just run back and forth, fish, tell stories, be a clerk in a store – anything is possible.

Mike Kossar

NPCs are “non-player” characters, they populate a world and give it color. Maybe these MMORPGs would still be alive if they had better NPCs:

Investors were already using cheap labor for menial services in games

Is there already something in the direction? We reported on MeinMMO in April 2022 about the German YouTuber “Sw1pe”: In the pay2earn game Axie Infinity, he employed 16 players from Phillipen, but not as NPCs, but as “farm bots”:

• You played the game for him, earned the in-game currency and he then shared his profits with you. Swipe sees itself as a kind of investor who wanted to generate passive income in this way.
• In return, the German provided them with the expensive pawns they needed to play Axie Infinity at all.
• That went well until the “real money value” of the in-game currency in Axie Infinity collapsed completely.

The Rest of World post tells a similar story, but in a Minecraft-based NFT game called Critterz. An investor named “Big Chief” used a team of Filipino children to collect materials for a casino, which he then had “professional Minecraft builders” construct.

Big Chief saw himself as a benefactor because he does so much for the children of the Philippines by providing them with a secure livelihood:

I got a lot of kids that play for me, and they play because they want to make extra money in a country that’s just keeping them down.

big boss

According to Big Chief, members of his guild had to work 8 hours a day. However, he completely rejected the idea that he was an exploiter.

But the in-game currency also collapsed in this game. Now Big Chief is said to be annoyed that he can’t do as much for “his kids” anymore:

I’ve treated a lot of these kids like my own kids, so it’s kind of sad that I can’t offer them as much anymore. Before I was helping a lot of the kids by giving them an opportunity to earn some extra money for their families and now it’s kind of stupid that I can’t do that anymore.

big boss

Maybe someday he’ll hire a few just to populate a virtual world like that. Instead of chopping rocks and carting them to a building site, they could fish, do any job, or walk back and forth.

More on the case of the German YouTuber:

Deutscher employs 16 “China farmers” to edit an NFT game – but the market collapses

The cover image is an icon image. It shows people harvesting salt in Vietnam.