Square Enix President Is Still Hopeful About NFT Exploration — Are Gamers in Favor?
The New Year's letter from Square Enix president, Yosuke Matsuda, expressing his enthusiasm towards a future involving NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) and blockchain games, received scrutiny from gamers worldwide.
The letter from Matsuda has caused an outcry over the controversial nature of NFTs which brought the gaming community into debates of whether it's good for the future of the industry or not.
However, despite the backlash that Square Enix received, Matsuda remains hopeful about his NFT and blockchain technology prospects.
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Gamers Unhappy With Matsuda's Move
Square Enix faced a lot of backlash when Matsuda published his New Year's letter expressing his plans to explore NFTs and blockchains.
Gamers were disappointed with Matsuda's decision as most gaming fans have supported companies who have chosen to stay away from NFTs and blockchain.
Matsuda's "play-to-earn" concept was also criticized by gamers. Points of his letter which talk about blockchain technology being the torch-bearer of self-sustaining game growth received disapproval.
Game developers and publishers have already expressed their skepticism with regard to such technology. Companies like Valve and its subsidiary, Steam, have already banned them on the popular store.
Gamers are unhappy that Square Enix is planning to tap into the market in 2022, a move that they deemed to be quite too quickly. This happens while many of their games suffer from a lack of resources.
There are still advantages and disadvantages in incorporating blockchain technology.
While it may revitalize user-generated content by incentivizing them, many believe it will also cause much trouble between developers, independent creators and consumers.
In a report of PCGamer, Matsuda has reiterated his previous hopeful tone about blockchain and NFTs.
"If, instead of relying on goodwill, we can also provide incentives to those who contribute to development by utilizing technologies such as blockchain, there is a possibility that innovative and interesting content can be created from the ideas of users," he said in an interview with Yahoo Japan.
In his New Year's letter, Matsuda expressed that he believes that cloud gaming, AI, and blockchain games will be major areas of growth for the industry in 2022.
He said that blockchains are built upon the premise of a token economy and therefore hold the potential to enable self-sustaining game growth.
In Matsuda's view, NFTs will incentivize contributions and inspire more user-generated content in games.
"I believe that this will lead to more people devoting themselves to such efforts and to greater possibilities of games growing in exciting ways. From having fun to earning to contributing, a wide variety of motivations will inspire people to engage with games and connect with one another. It is blockchain-based tokens that will enable this." Matsuda said.
He also shared that by designing viable token economies into their games, they will enable self-sustaining game growth.
"It is precisely this sort of ecosystem that lies at the heart of what I refer to as 'decentralized gaming,' and I hope that this becomes a major trend in gaming going forward," he added.
Matsuda further said that as a "major strategic theme for us starting in 2022," the Square Enix portfolio of games will consist of both "centralized" and "de-centralized" games.
