Square Enix and Crypto

[Bobby66]

NFTs are a scam because they have no value. Literally none.

Let's say you go out and kill the evil Troll King ten times a day for two years to acquire the vanishingly rare Sword of Fiery Awesomeness +4. Once it finally drops, you have the rarest and most powerful sword in the game. Congratulations! So what good does that do you? Well, you can use it to kill more things faster and get more loot. You can wear it around town and show it off. You can sell it to someone else for in-game money/items or maybe for real-world money.

Now let's imagine that your Sword of Fiery Awesomeness +4 is an NFT. In what way is it better? Is it more prestigious? Can you do more stuff with it? Can you take it into a different game and use it there? Do you have some kind of legal right that exempts your new sword from all the EULA boilerplate about everything in the game belonging to AwfulGameCorp and you having no legal recourse if they ban you, lose your stuff, or shut down the game?

The fact that your sword is now an NFT is of exactly zero real value. It adds nothing at all. And that's because none of this is driven by a desire to make games better. It is driven by the desire to cash in on the latest tech buzzword-y bandwagon by shoehorning some irrelevant technology into their games.

You say you are interested to see what they might do with NFTs or blockchain. What might that be? I challenge you to come up with a single way that they might improve this game via blockchain or NFTs. Anything at all. What could they conceivably do to make the game better through NFTs or blockchain technology that they could not otherwise do?

I am not going to give my money over to a phone scammer or televangelist, but that doesn't mean I think they should be given free rein to scam others without recourse. That is doubly true if their scams have direct consequences for me and the things I enjoy (I don't know about you, but I'm not super thrilled to hear the president of a game company talk about their efforts to attract the vast untapped pool of potential players who are not incentivized to play games built for "people who 'play to have fun.'")

I am not going to cancel my sub because the president of SE released a letter gushing about the potential of NFT gaming, but I am going to make clear that I think it's disgusting and I hope that the collective blowback from outraged players is enough to get them to rethink this stupidity.

Value is based around what people are willing to pay for it. I have made a decent chunk of change selling NFT's people will pay if they feel it has value.

I just do not think it is my place to question what one feels has value or not.

[ovIm]

Value is based around what people are willing to pay for it. I have made a decent chunk of change selling NFT's people will pay if they feel it has value.

Yes, but as Kakure challenged you to, can you provide any example how NFT technology would actually improve this game? "Making real Money" and turning a game we play to relax into some sort of job with financial incentives is not exactly a good use case that makes the game aspect of this game better.

[Bobby66]

Yes, but as Kakure challenged you to, can you provide any example how NFT technology would actually improve this game? "Making real Money" and turning a game we play to relax into some sort of job with financial incentives is not exactly a good use case that makes the game aspect of this game better.

I never said it would make the game better, I did say it was just another means like micro transactions to get extra money from the consumer. That was the relationship I said the share in the following post after that one. Thus I have no reason to provide an example as to how it would make the game better cause that was never my stance to begin with.

It does not have to make the game better per-se though on a personal level if they allow one to sell those NFT's that would personally increase my own enjoyment. So that is a plus.

[ovIm]

I never said it would make the game better, I did say it was just another means like micro transactions to get extra money from the consumer. That was the relationship I said the share in the following post after that one. Thus I have no reason to provide an example as to how it would make the game better cause that was never my stance to begin with.

It does not have to make the game better per-se though on a personal level if they allow one to sell those NFT's that would personally increase my own enjoyment. So that is a plus.

You did say "I for one am interested in seeing what they do", though, hence the curiosity. However ->

It does not have to make the game better per-se

That is why everyone is against implementing any kind of NFT's into this game. Thank you very much for proving the point.

[Brennus]

Honestly I've not spent a lot of time reading about and trying to understand all the nuances and intricacies of crypto-currencies, blockchain, or NFTs. But I do understand what they are and represent, and I do not like reading what the SE president wrote in his latest letter.

Why? Because IMO games should entertain without including overly obvious hooks for profitability, such as excessive commercialization of its various shiny blings and/or services. I'm fine with many things that do exist in current games that require real monies to purchase, such as WoW tokens, costumes, mounts, minions, FFXIV equivalent buys, fantasias, retainer journeys, character and MSQ boosts, etc. I think those are fine because they essentially help players attain certain goals that maybe their skills or available game time will not allow them to get to. In addition they do not affect my own ability to enjoy the game, as they do not compete with me and other players directly in the game.

Introducing NFTs into the game, however, opens up a whole new can of worms. Making the game pay participants to produce content is, again IMO, changing its dynamics drastically. You'll have "players who just want to have fun" and then entrepreneurs who want to make an income "playing" the game. I can already envision sweat farms of hapless "players" strapped to their PCs all over the world slaving away 12-16 hours a day for greedy business entities wishing to benefit from such game payouts, producing all kinds of NFTs that SE would then resell to us the players who just want to have fun.

If that was the goal of game producers, why have they tried to ban gold farmers, and power leveling services, and other types of schemes requiring real money to purchase? I still remember when WoW would threaten to ban accounts that players would sell to one another once they'd leveled their characters to max levels. Some level of real-money products and services, as what the Mogstation has now, is OK - even as many players don't care for them and are against them. Making the game even more focused on hard cash revenue tightly connected to blings and additional services would eventually turn off many current players, myself included.

I hope this will not come to pass. FFXIV is a very nice, popular, and well-loved game, cherished by many of its legacy and new players. I hope it will stay that way, and don't think that NFTs will be beneficial to it staying that way. It will become a different kind of game, and will cater to a different genre of players if that's where SE will take it.

[dapperfaffer]

Yes, but as Kakure challenged you to, can you provide any example how NFT technology would actually improve this game? "Making real Money" and turning a game we play to relax into some sort of job with financial incentives is not exactly a good use case that makes the game aspect of this game better.

Bobby66 has no interest in if it makes the game or service better, its about whether or not they can make "real money" playing FFXIV with NFTs since that would increase their own personal enjoyment of the game.

[Kakure]

Value is based around what people are willing to pay for it. I have made a decent chunk of change selling NFT's people will pay if they feel it has value.

I just do not think it is my place to question what one feels has value or not.

No one anywhere has ever said "I know there are copies of this little cartoony ape sketch all over the internet and that anyone can freely use them for anything they want, but I value having my alphanumeric identifier atop the digital certificate associated with this one at... oh, about the price of a new house."

Those people bought NFTs from you for the same reason I presume you purchased them: to resell to someone else. It is all speculators buying from speculators buying from speculators hyping their speculation in hopes that their nonsense speculative investment appreciates.

If you chose to roll the dice and buy in to some vapid speculative silliness and you got out with more than you put in, good on you. I am genuinely glad for you. But I don't want that stuff anywhere near my games and "some other person somewhere might value it for reasons that I cannot explain or defend but don't feel I should be questioning" isn't going to move me out of the anti-NFT camp.

[Bobby66]

No one anywhere has ever said "I know there are copies of this little cartoony ape sketch all over the internet and that anyone can freely use them for anything they want, but I value having my alphanumeric identifier atop the digital certificate associated with this one at... oh, about the price of a new house."

Those people bought NFTs from you for the same reason I presume you purchased them: to resell to someone else. It is all speculators buying from speculators buying from speculators hyping their speculation in hopes that their nonsense speculative investment appreciates.

If you chose to roll the dice and buy in to some vapid speculative silliness and you got out with more than you put in, good on you. I am genuinely glad for you. But I don't want that stuff anywhere near my games and "some other person somewhere might value it for reasons that I cannot explain or defend but don't feel I should be questioning" isn't going to move me out of the anti-NFT camp.

That is generally what you do with them though, holding on to them is kinda silly tbh since the value is as you mentioned based around hype more so then genuine interest. Oh I am not trying to sway you one way or another, though I do not get why people call it a scam when if you practice common sense, do not put in more then what your are comfortable with lose and understand the inherit risk associated where does the scam come into play? In the end if a company wants to make profits off people that have more money then sense so be it that is life, and no different from pretty much every other company. In the end all you can do is voice your concerns, and hope it changes something, and if it does not all you can do is vote with your wallet.

I do think choices like this our individual opinion do not matter cause the minority if done right with the proper systems put in place would net some insane returns especially with IP’s that SE holds.

It is not for everyone that is 100% certain I agree with you on that.

You did say "I for one am interested in seeing what they do", though, hence the curiosity. However ->

It does not have to make the game better per-se

That is why everyone is against implementing any kind of NFT's into this game. Thank you very much for proving the point.

Well not everyone, though one can be interested in something does not mean I think it will be good for the game per-se. Still I would like to see what they do with them.