NFTs. block chain. He metaverse. she happened to other gaming companies, and it can also happen to a Nintendo property; in fact, it could happen. Last week, The Pokémon Company published a job in LinkedIn that requires experience with NFTs, blockchain, and the metaverse. When it comes to Pokemon, I wanted to catch them all. But not like that.

The list spends a lot of words describing the vague duties of a “corporate development manager” who pays six figures for an advanced business degree. But if he reads the candidate requirements, he’ll see what it’s really all about: NFT. The corporate development director must possess “a thorough knowledge and understanding of Web 3, including blockchain and NFT technologies, and/or metaverse.” The ideal candidate is “deeply connected to a network of investors and entrepreneurs in the above technology sectors (Web3 and metaverse).”

Bleh. He wouldn’t be worried about this if it was a small job in some experimental technology department that’s closing down in a year. But this role hears directly from the executive leadership team and works only two levels below the president. TPC is not just looking to hire a clown. It’s hiring a clown teacher to turn the company into a circus. my city He reached out to TPC to ask whether or not this work reflects the company’s future priorities, but did not receive a response at the time of publication.

Maybe we should have anticipated this all along. Neopets, a pet collecting franchise, had experimented with crypto collectibles last year. infinity axis was a Pokemon clone where finance bros low paid workers exploited to agricultural resources. Logan Paul fans have lost thousands of dollars in cryptozoo, a game where players hatch NFT eggs and trade exotic digital animals. Even within the Pokémon community itself, players have been buying and selling shiny Pokémon. about ebay during years. Other people saw the NFT potential of collectibles Pokemon before TPC did. So perhaps it was inevitable that its executives would come up with the idea of ​​creating their own. But that’s not to say it’s not a shitty idea. Associate child-friendly IP with an ecosystem riddled with frauds and scams would cause significant damage to Pokemonthe public image of . Did I mention that the NFT community that TPC is trying to court is full of scammers and hackers?

I don’t want to buy into the image of an ugly Charizard to play a Pokemon game, and neither do most Pokemon fans. Hopefully TPC realizes that before losing also lots of money on metaverse bullshit.