The Atari club returns, with Members Only jackets in tow.
Retro game publisher Atari is launching new versions of its Atari Club membership jackets, inspired by the ’80s originals. The navy zip-up jackets will go on sale Thursday through December 1 and will only be available to holders of Atari’s ARC NFTs, according to the announcement .
Compared to the original jackets, the new versions will be made of thicker material and the Atari logo will no longer be a removable patch, but will instead be embroidered onto the jackets. It is an official collaboration with the fashion brand Members Only that was popular in the eighties, just like Atari itself.
While fans can buy a lot of merchandise without crypto, Atari’s website states that owners of the ARC NFT, which launched in May, will get early access to merchandise, voting rights and discounts, in addition to access to pre-sales of the new member jackets.
The new jackets won’t be delivered to buyers until approximately February or March 2024, but in the meantime fans can purchase Atari patches from the publisher’s store and attach them to their jackets upon arrival.
Why is Atari limiting pre-sales of jackets to NFT owners and launching other NFTs like the “Onchain Summer” release offered at Coinbase this year? The truth is that the classic gaming company that has been around since the 1970s has been in crypto for a while.
Atari has been exploring blockchain integrations for about six years, says Atari X director Tyler Drewitz, who oversees the company’s crypto-powered activations.
“It’s a divisive space. People are afraid to move in, especially since they are so new and traditional gamers [creating] a bit of pushback about Web3 gaming as a whole,” Drewitz shared Declutter in an interview.
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Although Atari has changed leadership since it began exploring crypto in 2018, the gaming company is still exploring blockchain integrations with the aim of redefining gaming.
“When Atari was founded by Nolan Bushnell in 1972, a video game genre did not yet exist. There was no such thing as a video game,” Drewitz said. “Atari really pushed the boundaries of both technology and gaming.”
Image: Atari.
“Web3 is a clear path to pushing the boundaries and what we believe will be a fundamental element of the future of all technology, not just gaming,” Drewitz added. “And Atari, we’re a legacy, we’re a pop culture, we have a really good onboarding disaster.”
As for whether Atari could offer its NFT fans and member club jacket buyers blockchain games in the future, it’s not completely ruled out. Drewitz sees a push to build crypto-powered games within six months to a year, but said such a fast timeline has led to simple, low-quality games.
However, Atari is exploring options for Web3 player ownership and other third-party benefits or integrations, Drewitz said.
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“We will certainly do that, even with some of our arcade classics and some of our titles in the future, in a way that you might not even know is Web3,” Drewitz said.
Don’t expect Atari to go the play-to-earn route, though.
“Web3 games lack a bit of fun because it’s all speculation and ‘How much more can I make?’ And that takes a bit of the joy away from many of them,” Drewitz said. “So how can we improve the experiences with current Web3 games and others to make them a little more fun?”