Trying to Sell the Crow Queen in Web 3.0.: on the Resistance of Video Gamers to Cryptocurrencies, NFTs and Their Financial Logic

This essay is an encounter between an artist creating characters for video games and an academic studying how people and things are being financialized. Exchanging about the appearance of NFTs and cryptocurrencies – technologies associated with Web 3.0. in the video game industry, the academic and the artist reflect on the place of playfulness, creation, and finance in our society. They observe that most North American and European players resisted NFTs and cryptocurrencies, while more Asian-Pacific ones embraced the latter. They conclude that those reactions were explained by the fact that gamers perceived cryptocurrencies and NFTs as institutional objects associated with a financial logic, whose presence threatened the gaming logic. Reassured by the fact that the Web 3.0. society will probably still embrace playfulness and an imaginary world outside capitalism; they still wonder what the long-term prospects of the Web 3.0. society will be, financialization might come in disguise. As pragmatic friends, they nevertheless tried to issue an NFT by publishing this essay and its accompanying artwork, a “Crow Queen” on a blockchain. Time will tell if the Web 3.0. society will praise this new form of digital joint academic/art production.