Square Enix and Crypto

[Exosapien]

To me it sounds like they're trying to put people who buy their NFTs on an equal "contributing to the game" pedestal with the people who volunteer their time to organise hunt trains or in-game events or make tutorials.

Those are all just people playing for fun. This statement is obviously purely from a financial point of view, CEO's don't care about hunt trains lmao

[Iscah]

Those are all just people playing for fun. This statement is obviously purely from a financial point of view, CEO's don't care about hunt trains lmao

What other definition in the current setup can you find for "people who are motivated to contribute and make the game more exciting"?

[Hasrat]

What other definition in the current setup can you find for "people who are motivated to contribute and make the game more exciting"?

"People who will buy into the scam because it's the Hot New Thing, with no real regard for the game."

[Fawkes]

What other definition in the current setup can you find for "people who are motivated to contribute and make the game more exciting"?

"Making the game more exciting" means giving SE money in this context. Like if a billionaire drops a ton of money on a flash-in-the-pan mobile game then that game might get updates it wouldn't have gotten otherwise.

Some rich people like to throw their money into pits for fun, and SE is saying "hey what if we had a pit for them to throw money in?"

[Exosapien]

What other definition in the current setup can you find for "people who are motivated to contribute and make the game more exciting"?

I mean you're just looking at it from the PoV of FFXIV. SE is massive, and they aren't talking about a single MMO or just multiplayer games. They're speaking from the point of view of making games as a whole, not just FFXIV. This isn't Yoshida. This is the CEO of a publisher that Yoshida's entire team only works for.

[Conundrum]

The minute that garbage comes to FFXIV is the day I go to my account page and close it.

[OtakuSempai]

I was extremely disappointed to read this morning that Square Enix is embracing NFTs and other crypto-related schemes (as seen in this letter from the President of Square Enix, Yosuke Matsuda).

Much has already been said about environmental harms caused by existing approaches to crypto mining, notwithstanding potential (and, as-of-yet, largely unproven) ostensibly less-harmful alternatives. It is also plain for anyone with eyes to see that the crypto world is chock-full of scam artists, Ponzi schemes, and various other frauds. Beyond this, however, the continued financialization of gaming is a troubling development. Games have already seen the advent of paid downloadable content (some of which is fine!), microtransactions, extortive battle-pass type systems, not to mention lootboxes and the like. The last thing we need is yet another avenue for game publishers to extract revenue from their players.

In his letter, Matsuda writes:



Couching further financialization of gaming as catering to a heretofore purportedly underserved market of people who "play to contribute" is laughable at best. Games are not some new medium; I find it hard to fathom that there is some large market waiting to be served games which they care not to play, but instead to "contribute" to in some way. Frankly, it's hard for me to imagine what is even meant by this. Is tossing a Raise to a fallen adventurer in Bozja not contributing to the game?

On a personal level, this is a very disappointing development. I've been playing FFXIV since the second or third ARR beta, and truly love the work that YoshiP and the FFXIV team have done. However, I am loathe to contribute to the financial success of a company seeking to further financialize gaming, again notwithstanding the other rampant issues with crypto-related technologies.

Gonna have to think hard about whether to continue my subscription in light of this development.

This clown is the reason I've been suspecting for a long time that the incompetent leadership over at SE (not CB3, the developer of FFXIV) are actively making the game worse.

Fewer armor sets this xpac, homogenization of jobs, fewer side content. I think leadership is actively pulling resources away from CB3 (the only money making studio this publisher has left) to help fund other garbage projects like what he's talking about here. We have less nice things because suits like this guy are running the show and are completely out of touch.

[Sclair0]

One of the reasons I came online today, I also think it would be terrible in XIV.

[DinahDemiurge]

To be fair, bitcoin and proof of work does not hurt the environment. In fact, it helps the environment by incentivizing development in cheaper, renewable energy(your profit goes down if you use dirty expensive energy by design). Second, NFTs are huge scams but NFTs have nothing to do with bitcoin or proof of work. Just to be clear.

[OtakuSempai]

To be fair, bitcoin and proof of work does not hurt the environment. In fact, it helps the environment by incentivizing development in cheaper, renewable energy(your profit goes down if you use dirty expensive energy by design). Second, NFTs are huge scams but NFTs have nothing to do with bitcoin or proof of work. Just to be clear.

Proof of work is still orders of magnitude more inefficient than even a Visa transaction. The criticism is still valid.