Dr. Disrespect’s studio, Midnight Society, is charging $50 USD for an NFT that lets you test the game

Dr. Disrespect’s studio, Midnight Society, is giving people early access to a new game — and the opportunity to pay $50 to test it.

Noted gaming influencer Dr. Disrespect, real name Guy Beahm, started a game studio, Midnight Society, off the back of his massive audience and industry contacts. The studio’s first game, Project Moon, is in the earliest of early stages, but those who purchased a Founders Access Pass now get access to the game in snapshots every six weeks.

The Founders Access Pass operates as you’d expect, as well as being a tradeable NFT. The unique profile picture which comes with each one – an armoured nondescript soldier-looking person with a variety of potential weapons, visor images, and the like – is the most traditional element. However, it also gives access to various other bits and pieces.

Dr. Disrespect’s studio, Midnight Society, is charging $50 USD for an NFT that lets you test the game.

One of those, just announced in a recent blog post, is Snapshot builds of the upcoming game. These are incredibly early versions of it, specifically designed for feedback on various topics. With only 10,000 founder’s packs sold, it’s a very specific audience indeed. The first is a few grey-boxed rooms with spawnable shooting ranges that can be used to test the one weapon’s gunfeel.

The main issue with this is that’s usually something you’d get paid testers to do, rather than fans that paid $50 for perks. Quality Assurance is a massive field and while not the best-paid in the industry, salaries can range into $80,000 AUD. At the very least, most people wouldn’t pay to do it over the ludicrous period of time a game like Project Moon takes to develop – it’s pitching to be a triple-A multiplayer experience with all the trimmings, after all.

Another announcement made in the blog post is an upcoming LA event for “committed Founders Pass holders.” There’s a bit of a cult-like feel to the whole thing, lots of drop capped terms like The Existence (the name for Midnight Society’s community, as far as I can tell) and Variants (player-characters in Project Moon) and Claws (a type of Variant (I think)). Details on the LA event were not forthcoming, just that it was happening and would be streamed on YouTube.

There’s also the promise of “future minting opportunities” – i.e. ways to buy access to what will eventually be a free-to-play game but with the profile picture and presumably some of the other benefits attached. There’s also a lot of talk of the benefits of being a Founders Pass holder, despite them no longer being for sale. You can trade the NFT that represents it on OpeaSea or other platforms, though nobody is currently selling – not a lot of time for it to appreciate value, and presumably the people that paid $50 to begin with do actually want to use the benefits for a bit.

Other benefits include voting rights on game features – which sounds like both a terrible idea and practically difficult, if not impossible – and exclusive dev access. It’s been promised in the past that the NFTs and any other blockchain-adjacent features will not make the game pay-to-win, but if you get to influence how the game itself is designed… Well, let’s see what happens, eh?

Of course, there are some good comparisons to be made. It’s essentially an Early Access game with some additional benefits and a token you can sell on to give access to someone else if you get bored. It may also make you fabulously wealthy or influential if the game takes off, such is the promise of any NFT project.

In response to natural criticism on the topic, Dr. Disrespect got a bit snippy on Twitter. Prior to changing to this new persona, Beahm was a community manager and then level designer at Sledgehammer Games, notably on Advanced Warfare. Presumably, he didn’t pay $50 for the privilege. He quit to start a career as a full-time streamer, during which he illegally filmed inside a bathroom, was accused of racism, got mysteriously banned from, began a lawsuit against, and eventually settled with Twitch, and cheated on his wife. He has over 4 million YouTube subscribers.

Written by GLHF.