9 Great Reads From CNET This Week: NFTs in Games, NASA’s Moon Rocket and More

Cryptocurrency is making inroads into video games, including a surging wave of blockchain-based games that range from free-to-play mobile titles to big-budget AAA games for PCs and consoles. NFTs are creeping in, too. Not everyone’s thrilled. 

The fear is that crypto and NFTs will contort gaming into a side hustle, focused more on money making and less on entertainment, as CNET’s Dan Van Boom reports. But he notes as well that for many developers, the goal isn’t to make titles that benefit crypto speculators, but rather to make games fun enough that people can justify playing them regardless of whether they earn crypto or not. CNET’s Oscar Gonzalez, meanwhile, looks into an earlier backlash that might offer clues about how all this will unfold.

Those articles are among the many in-depth features and thought-provoking commentaries that appeared on CNET this week. So here you go. These are the stories you don’t want to miss.

Gamers scorn games that use crypto and NFTs. A new wave of these “Web3” games hopes to prove them wrong.

For 50 years, humans haven’t traveled more than a few hundred miles above Earth. Now NASA’s plan to return to the moon is kicking into high gear.

Commentary: With a runtime longer than most feature films, Stranger Things’ finale should have delivered more.  

Even a little bit of hubris can set a journey back by hours if something goes sideways.

In its eighth year, the shopping event aims to make you buy in spite of inflation and constant online sales. 

A multiyear search attempts to explain one of the most extreme, and baffling, cases of human survival.   

The US government has overseen the design and testing of new post-quantum cryptography technology since 2016.

Commentary: The iPhone has become much less reliant on physical tethers, furthering the argument for an iPhone with no ports at all.

This shallow Marvel Cinematic Universe blockbuster doesn’t give Natalie Portman’s mighty return or Christian Bale’s creepy baddy nearly enough time to shine.