NFTs have taken over the world with everybody, from ordinary folk to celebrities, engaging in the marketplace for those assets with a unique artistic value.
Although NFTs are seen as artistically pleasing or exciting in the way they spark discussion, many NFT enthusiasts can’t say the same for the new Pixelmon collection just launched.
Pixelmon’s Grand Promises
The Pixelmon franchise managed to raise a staggering $70 million in February, which marks the biggest revenue generated at launch by an NFT project so far. The company had a massive advertisement campaign, which excited many with a wide array of promising features.
Early holders were labeled “Generation 1” which would earn them exclusive land airdrops, early access to the Pixelmon token presales, and other additional rewards. The game itself was promised to be “the largest and highest quality game the NFT space has ever seen.”
The project was ambitious to the point of considering its very own metaverse with tons of features that could all be accessed just by playing the game enough.
The Disappointing Launch
Many bold promises were given, but the launch was less than ideal. Many people felt their Pixelmons were “ugly,” appearing “dead” or not showing up at all. The overall reception from the NFT community was one of disappointment since the end product appeared of a very low quality.
To many, the project wasn’t just “plain ugly” but diverged hugely from the standards and expectations that the company set. The disappointment was so universal that even the Pixelmon founders admitted that the non-fungible tokens were “poor quality.”
The acknowledgment of the dire situation quickly turned into an attempt to avoid responsibility by the Pixelmon team.
“I would like to apologize on behalf of myself and Pixelmon for everyone that has been affected by this,” says Syber, the project leader who held an AMA in the exclusive Pixelmon Discord channel.
According to Syber, who admits to being a 21-year-old male named Martin, “When we began this project, we were not thinking it would get as big as this.”
Not only did the project get out of hand, but Syber claims they had a limited team and “poor execution,” which led to the flawed final product.
Even if the initial project did not meet expectations, Syber claims that “The plan was always to use the funding raised from mint to create proper and better models – our NFTs are updatable and what they look like now is poor quality – we own up to that – they will be made better,”
Although Pixelton is to blame for how the project turned out, one has to acknowledge the massive amount of social pressure that they and similar companies are facing to launch a product as soon as possible regardless of their strained resources, lack of experience, and time it takes to experiment and perfect the final product.
Nevertheless, one moment of relief from the whole drama came from the NFT “Kevin,” which went viral due to its horrible design. The average price for a Pixelmon NFT is 0.4 ETH, but “Kevin” is selling at 3 ETH at OpenSea, which once again goes to show just how bizarre NFT trading can be.
