2023-07-22 09:00:14
Posted Jul 22, 2023, 11:00 AM
I missed him more than them. POG, the famous playground game of the 1990s (10 billion POGs were sold between 1994 and 1998), is relaunching, but in the form of NFT. This time, it is no longer a question of targeting children but the adults they have become. They can be found on Discord messaging and crypto exchange sites. Fewer, though.
You haven’t experienced the POGs? These pucks with the image of a shaggy monster claim to be the first collectible game (1993), before Pokémon cards (1996). The principle : two players form a stack on the ground with, for example, three POGs each. A player hits them with a heavier token (the “kini”). He wins the pucks that are turned over, and expands his collection. There was the salt of the game. BN, Coca-Cola, Candia and so many other brands distributed it.
Discord and speculation
Thirty years later, collectible cards continue to invade playgrounds and you can still find children playing POG. But these artifacts from the 1990s have also become objects of speculation, snatching up thousands of euros on the secondary market. Had NFT-version POGs been launched right in the middle of the crypto speculative craze of late 2021, perhaps they would have followed the upward curve of the CryptoPunks or Bored Ape Yacht Club collections. Alas, they arrive a little late.
In 2023, these POGs are displayed forty dollars each, or even more than a hundred. The NFT market is in the middle of winter and this is no time for speculation. The digital pucks bring together ten thousand fans on Discord messaging, 30,000 on Twitter. The idea remains to collect them, hoping that they will be appreciated. But also, and there is the contribution of this game, to put them into play in order to win new ones… or to lose them. Like back then.
Spirit of the POGs, are you there?
“If we wanted to digitize this game, we needed a technology cut out for the collection, and the blockchain was ideal. I had developed this vision in 2018 and it made no sense not to be present on this technology”, explains to “Echos” Julien Savino, holder of the rights of POG – his father, Alain, is the one who held the license in France in the 1990s.
To reach more people, these new POGs are intended to be interoperable. They are minted (“minted” in Web3 jargon) on several blockchains: Solana, Ethereum, Bitcoin (in the form of ordinals) and since this Friday, on Theta. For players who cannot find an opponent, they can stake their chips against the machine. POG Digital the POG Unlimited subsidiary publishing this game will have to look, like Sorare , at the “Jonum” bill on NFT games.
Missed return in 2020
At the start of the school year, the company will publish a limited collection of cardboard POGs. On the back, they will display a QR code pointing to the NFT version. But Julien Savino is not waiting for the game to return to schools. He has already tent to republish the miracle in 2020, however with great means: Asmodée, the leader of board games, had published the covers, Gulli had ensured the promotion and a TV series was under study, but the confinements linked to the Covid killed the project in the bud. And the sale price, at 1 euro per puck, did not help…
The context for this second return of POGs is not ideal either, with an NFT market divided by ten in one year. The NFT of the first tweet even saw its value drop from $2.9 million to $3.77! To stand out from opportunistic projects, POG Digital hopes to capitalize on the strength of its license. Julien Savino promises that his strategy is not “take the money and run”.
1690060682
#years #return #POG #NFT