Fans were so excited for the launch of the Pixelmon NFT game that they gave almost $70 Million to fund it. However, when the creators of the game revealed the final product, the results were incredibly underwhelming. Fans were outraged at being fooled into giving away their money to fund such a bad product.
PIXELMON – A CLONE OF THE POKEMON FRANCHISE
The world of NFTs is still young, and it has changed the perception of digital space. With advancements in the development of NFT projects, people are now more eager to explore and invest in new ideas.
Sometimes, however, these projects turn out to be nothing but hype created to attract investors. Unfortunately, it seems that the Pixelmon NFT game launch was exactly that. According to cnet.com, the promo images and animations for the project looked promising initially, but the final NFTs looked like blocky pieces junk once they launched.
Pixelmon had appeared to be an ambitious project. It was advertised as an open-world RPG, where players catch and then sell the creatures as NFTs. This created a lot of hype around the project and attracted people to it.
The game was announced around the end of 2021, and in February its developers released a collection of 10,000 Pixelmon NFTs on Opensea.io to fund the project. NFTs listed on Opensea.io have the potential to appreciate in value over time, which was also one of the reasons why Pixelmon’s new project was super hyped.
BETRAYED EXPECTATIONS
Capitalizing on aesthetics similar to that of the Pokemon franchise, the Pixelmon developers made a teaser similar to “Pikachu and friends”. Pokemon has been a fan favorite anime and videogame series for a lot of people, and boasts one of the highest net worths of any series to exist.
In addition, an augmented reality game called “Pokemon Go” earned millions for enabling people to catch Pokemon in nearby physical areas. The Pixelmon launch teaser also mimicked that game, and because people liked “Pokemon Go” a lot, investors were hopeful that such a success could be replicated. They were gravely mistaken.
Pixelmon was nothing like what people hoped for. According to fastcompany.com, the game developers sold the project through a Dutch auction at a starting price of 3 ETH. The price of the project was set to lower by 0.1 ETH every 10 minutes. The most surprising thing about the project was that the collection sold out within an hour, with each NFT selling at prices between 3 ETH ($9,000) and 2.4 ETH ($7,000).
Normally, this would be a good thing for both the buyers and the developers. However, with this project, only the developers benefited. The unveiling of the project in February shocked people because they could not understand how this game was even related to what they invested in.
People on social media platforms called them “the ugliest NFTs ever”. They became such an object of ridicule that people started to make memes of how bad they were.
HOW BAD WAS IT?
The NFT characters of the game were poorly designed, inviting people to mock the $70 million in funding that the project received on social media. The characters looked disfigured, giving off images of low-quality pixels. Although they were going for a “voxel” style game with blocks shaping the characters, the art still didn’t even nail that style.
The pixels of some of the NFT characters were hidden amongst the pixels of the grass, and some could barely be seen at all. The project itself and the NFT investors as a whole instantly became a laughing stock of the industry. However, what wasn’t funny was the amount of money wasted on the project.
Out of all the strange NFT characters of the game, however, a character named Kevin proved to be the “favorite” object of ridicule. It was a hunkering, green, zombie-like character with tattered clothes and pink-colored hair. The overall character was hideous, so much so that people started to make memes about it.
GIVING NFTS A BAD REPUTATION
Unfortunately, this project will give people a stronger impression that NFTs are just used as a quick money grab and don’t provide any value to buyers. Some people called it a “rug-pull” and called out the creators for being “bad actors” within the community. This term is used when the creator of the NFT collects all the valuables attached and the participating people are left with mostly nothing.
According to dexerto.com, even the lead creator himself admitted that the art was “unacceptable”. The project leader Syber made a public apology on behalf of Pixelmon, stating that having a “small team” was the reason for the poor quality of the project. Although he claims that his team will see the project through and improve the art later, the damage may already have been done and people may not trust the project anymore.
This NFT Pixelmon game is not the only NFT project that’s failed to meet expectations, and it certainly won’t be the last. This launch may serve as a sign to investors that it’s advisable to do complete research on a project before investing in it. One should always be conscious about “hype” generated for a project, and keep a level head when it comes to financial investments.
