Square Enix president still wants to push forward with blockchain games despite widespread backlash
Yosuke Matsuda seems to have no intention of stopping the company's blockchain plans.
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Square Enix president Yosuke Matsuda still seems to want to push forward with play-to-earn blockchain games, based on a recent interview.
Speaking to Yahoo Japan, Matsuda once again spoke of his desire for Square Enix to incorporate the blockchain into Square Enix's games - something he mentioned at the start of the year, despite acknowledging the widespread backlash to all things blockchain and NFTs.
"In the future, we would like to try our hand at providing ‘autonomous game content’," Matsuda said in the interview (translations by VGC). "Until now, in most games, we provided the content as a finished product and the players played that content. However, there are a certain number of players in the world who want to contribute to making games more interesting, by creating new settings and ways of playing."
Matsuda continued, saying "In the future, we want to utilise the power of these people to create games that will continue to evolve. If, instead of relying on goodwill, we can also provide incentives to those who contribute to development by utilising technologies such as blockchain, there is a possibility that innovative and interesting content can be created from the ideas of users."
For some reason, the main driving point of blockchain for Matsuda seems to be this idea that games should incorporate ways to motivate players to "play to contribute." In his speech from the beginning of the year, Matsuda acknowledged that some people "play to have fun," which is a really weird way of saying that pretty much everyone plays games to have fun.
The idea of financially rewarding players for their work isn't a terrible idea when you consider a game like Dreams, which is essentially a piece of game development software that you can't monetise. But outside of that, it just turns games into work, which isn't exactly the point of them really. Thankfully, at least industry leaders like Xbox and Valve are being clear about their lack of desire for NFTs and the like.