“They hold the potential to enable self-sustaining game growth”: Square Enix CEO opens up about Blockchain games

In a recent New Year letter, Square Enix President and CEO Yosuke Matsuda opened up about Blockchain games and play-to-earn models with NFTs.

Square Enix is one of the biggest Japanese publishers with a significant number of both Japanese and Western video game franchises under its belt. From Tomb Raider to Final Fantasy, it is one of the most influential publishers on the global stage.

Yosuke Matsuda recently opened up about the upcoming trends of Blockchain games, play-to-earn models with non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and Square Enix’s future.

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Square Enix CEO hopes blockchain and NFTs in video games become a major trend

In the New Year letter, Yosuke Matsuda addressed the growing trend of implementing NFTs in video games as well as utilizing the blockchain network. While many smaller studios have already implemented the technology, the biggest so far has been Ubisoft’s implementation of NFT cosmetic content in Ghost Recon Breakpoint.

Yosuke Matsuda not only addressed 2021 as “NFTs: Year One” but also talked about its shortcomings. He said:

“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.”

He also talked in-depth about how traditional games so far have involved a unidirectional flow whereby creators provide a game to the audience to play them. In contrast, Blockchain games are built upon the premise of a token economy and therefore hold the potential to enable self-sustaining game growth.

While the industry is growing towards implementing the technology, most of the player base is oblivious to its implementation. Furthermore, Ubisoft’s implementation has come off as unfair to the player base and received significant backlash.

Speaking on the concerns regarding blockchain games and NFTs, Yosuke Matsuda said:

“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 hasn’t been as much major game-changing content that was user-generated as one would expect.”

It is yet to be clear exactly how Square Enix plans to implement the growing trends, but one thing is for sure: Blockchain games and NFTs in video games are certainly growing trends.