 What's up everybody I'm the Mangus, you are awesome at undying games made over $80,000 in less than an hour on Sunday by selling NFTs. What are NFTs? It stands for Non-Fungible Token. It's basically digital art that has a form of electronic provenance. Provenance being a paper trail for identifying the authenticity of a piece of art. NFTs are often bought and traded much like traditional art, or in this case, like trading cards using digital currency. I know it all seems dumb as fuck but bear in mind that Pokemon cards are selling for upwards of $100,000 and the tradition of putting way too much value on collectible cards goes all the way back to 1948 when the first introduction of baseball cards. Bottom line up front, undying discovered an alternate means of funding production alongside the planned Kickstarter without seeking investors that would claim a stake of the company. This all started, for me at least, when someone in Discord asked about the NFTs going up for sale on Atomic Hub. Undying obviously wasn't prepared to release this information yet and they immediately went on the defensive with a focus on letting people know that they're going with an eco-friendly route. Them getting defensive like that raised my hackles. I figured that even though I knew nothing of NFTs and had zero clue how any of it could possibly affect the environment, them getting defensive was a red flag that needed to be investigated. And so began my journey down the jackastic rabbit hole that is NFTs. I've already explained a bit about what NFTs are so let's first address what the environment has to do with anything. Most NFTs are paid for via Bitcoin, a currency that is known to use a massive amount of energy thus leaving a huge carbon footprint. I still don't 100% understand why that's necessary and to be honest, I don't care because I'm not into Bitcoin and it also doesn't apply to what undying is doing. Ethereal NFTs are traded on Atomic Hub that uses wax instead of Bitcoin. It's still a digital currency but has tremendously less impact on the environment. I mentioned that NFTs are kinda like trading digital artwork. People have been buying and selling art for centuries so no problems there, however NFTs work a little different. People normally don't buy these because they enjoy the art. I will say however that the ethereal NFTs are pretty fucking cool. But no, they don't buy the art for the sake of having the art piece, they buy them in the hopes that the value will increase and they can sell or trade them at a higher price then they purchase them. Just like stocks. It's just like Dogecoin or Paris Hilton, they have no intrinsic value but people assign worth to them just by communally agreeing that they have worth. That's the other reason undying got a bit defensive. The entire thing at its core is pretty fucking stupid. But just because I think something is dumb doesn't mean that there isn't money in it. Think about how much money people have made by investing in Dogecoin. Also undying has already reaped the benefits of using this system. I would personally never buy into any of this but I'm happy that undying has already made some money off of it. Undying's NFTs are actually pretty cool. I know many people that invest in these not only because they believe that they will increase in value but because they enjoy having the art. I watched Jelly Knees buy packs from the sale and it was kind of exciting to see them combine shards and attempt to get the cards that he wanted. If there was an art team knocked it out of the park with these NFTs. I know some people have criticized undying for dedicating one of their departments to this when they still don't have a finished game but as I've mentioned in previous videos the art team has already done their part and it's been done well. The departments that need to be working now are animations and programming. The NFTs were a way to use a currently underutilized part of the undying team to contribute towards the monetary support of the rest of development. I've been told that much of the money made will go towards getting a new programmer and channeling some money into mocap so that they can improve animations. Don't worry though a percentage of the sales go directly to the artists that created the NFT so they aren't getting fucked over here. I do have a problem with all of this though. Undying made a promise to the community that they wouldn't take any money from the community until they had a gameplay trailer to prove the game's existence. This is the reason we still don't have a Kickstarter from Undying. It could be argued that the NFTs are completely separate from the game and therefore don't count towards that promise however they recently announced that the NFTs can be used as a profile pictures in the game. They can justify immense words all they want but the simple fact of the matter is that undying games receive money for something that will directly affect the game before they release a gameplay trailer thus breaking the promise that they made to the community. They've delayed alphas before which hurt but they always had a caveat for that saying that the alpha will possibly be this date they never set a firm concrete date for an alpha. This however is different this is undying doing something in direct contrast to what they said. I personally think they never should have made that promise to begin with. They should have had a Patreon or some sort of way to fund progress from the very start. I understand why they didn't. There's a stigma associated with Kickstarter indie games usually MMOs for some reason where a developer offers the world but it's all just a quick money making scheme. Undying didn't want to ask for money because they didn't want anyone to think that ethereal was a scam. I've play tested the game now and I can tell you that the game is very real so I'm glad they're making money from the NFTs. I'm happy that they broke their promise in order to increase the pace of development. It was a dumb thing to say in the first place because developing a game takes money and they need to sustain the team in some way. But make no mistake a promise was broken in Pepperidge Farm remembers. My final thoughts on all of this is that while I still think the idea of NFTs are dumb undying going out on limb and trying a new and innovative way to fund the game is awesome. Even more so because they succeeded. They ended up making around 130k so far. They don't get all of that for the game. 32% goes to the artist directly. They've also added 700 new followers to their social media channels which is an advertising success. It gives me hope that all the other risks that they've taken when developing this game will also bear fruit. While other games I track have investors that now have a say in the direction of their game or may have pissed off a potential player based with battle passes and early development undying has discovered a way to utilize a previously dormant department to create an alternate means of funding the project. Hopefully this combined with the eventual kickstarter will set undying up to have full control of a successful product. Like the video if you enjoyed it subscribe if you want to become a member if you want to support what I do monetarily. But for now this is the Mangoo signing off you guys have a good one