Square Enix President Shares NFT, Metaverse, & Blockchain Plans in New Year Message

Square Enix AI

With 2021 behind us, the game industry is looking to the future in 2022, even at the cost of discontent to a huge chunk of the playerbase. Nowhere is this more true than with the New Year message from the Square Enix president, which shares the publisher’s plans and hopes for NFTs, the metaverse, and blockchain technology in general. It should come as no surprise that this was somewhat negatively received by gamers on Reddit, Twitter, and more.

Here are some of the more eye-catching quotes in the message, all pertaining to NFTs and the metaverse:

The metaverse was a hot topic in 2021, inspiring a lively global conversation first about what the metaverse is and then about what sort of business opportunities it presents. Against this backdrop, Facebook changed its name in October to Meta, serving as evidence that the concept is not a mere buzzword but here to stay. The metaverse garnered so much attention that 2021 was dubbed the “Metaverse Year”

Another term that gained quick currency in 2021 was “NFT” or “non-fungible token.” The advent of NFTs using blockchain technology significantly increased the liquidity of digital goods, enabling the trading of a variety of such goods at high prices and sparking conversations the world over. I see 2021 not only as “Metaverse: Year One,” but also as “NFTs: Year One” given that it was a year in which NFTs were met with a great deal of enthusiasm by a rapidly expanding user base. However, we do observe examples here and there of overheated trading in NFT-based digital goods with somewhat speculative overtones, regardless of the observed value of the content provided. This, obviously, is not an ideal situation, but I expect to see an eventual right-sizing in digital goods deals as they become more commonplace among the general public, with the value of each available content corrected to their true estimated worth, and I look for them to become as familiar as dealings in physical goods.

What caught the public attention more than anything, though, is this paragraph:

I realize that some people who “play to have fun” and who currently form the majority of players have voiced their reservations toward these new trends, and understandably so. However, I believe that there will be a certain number of people whose motivation is to “play to contribute,” by which I mean to help make the game more exciting. Traditional gaming has offered no explicit incentive to this latter group of people, who were motivated strictly by such inconsistent personal feelings as goodwill and volunteer spirit. This fact is not unrelated to the limitations of existing UGC (user-generated content). UGC has been brought into being solely because of individuals’ desire for self-expression and not because any explicit incentive existed to reward them for their creative efforts. I see this as one reason that there haven’t been as many major game-changing content that were user generated as one would expect.

Some gamers took to Reddit to criticize this paragraph in particular, with the claim being that the Square Enix president is shaming the playerbase that, quote, “plays to have fun.”

Regarding the NFT Letter. I Encourage Everyone to Actually Read the Letter. It’s Insane from SquareEnix

All said and done, it is fairly obvious that Facebook’s (now called Meta) push for the metaverse is not going away anytime soon, in addition to the rise of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and the blockchain technology in general. However, it would seem that there are many gamers that are still skeptical of its practical uses in the industry. Just a few weeks ago, Ubisoft was ridiculed for their own NFT implementation in Ghost Recon Breakpoint, but not enough for the publisher to pull out of the project despite the overwhelmingly negative reception.

In any case, there are some game companies who have not expressed interest in dipping their toes in the NFT and blockchain craze; Valve, in one of their latest updates to Steam, has blocked games with direct connections to cryptocurrency and NFTs, a stark contrast to Square Enix which seems to see the massive potential in all this new tech.

What are your opinions on NFTs in Square Enix games in the future? Are they overall a good evolution for gaming, or nothing more than a cashgrab for companies? Let us know in the comments down below!

Source: Square Enix

Top Games and Upcoming Releases