Square Enix’s President Still Hasn’t Given Up On Blockchain

If you’d thought Square Enix might be off the blockchain and NFT bandwaggon, think again. The company’s president, Yosuke Matsuda, still believes the technology might have a place in his company. Of course, it’s never good to ignore a technology completely. We just really haven’t seen something amazing out of it yet when it comes to games. And yes, a lot of it seems to be just a lot of general hype and potential disasters. But...maybe someone can do it right.

In the case of Square Enix, the drive is apparently to encourage people to create content around games. Matsuda believes that using blockchain technology to do this is better than relying on the goodwill of modders. According to an interview with Yahoo Japan (translated by Video Games Chronicle), Matsuda went on to add that by doing this, “there is a possibility that innovative and interesting content can be created from the ideas of players”. On the surface, it sounds like a neat idea, but then perhaps just hiring talented people to create games is also a way to go. Or, perhaps actually encouraging modding in general – something Square Enix isn’t really big on (even if it happens anyway).

There have been plenty of people who have already addressed their concerns about this potential model to the company, but that doesn't seem to have the company rethinking its plans. As Matsuda put it in a letter earlier this year, “some people who ‘play to have fun’” and are currently the “majority of players” have expressed concern. He added that this is understandable, but that he believes that there are “a certain number of people whose motivation is to ‘play to contribute’.”

In conclusion, the gist is that they’re still gonna try to make this a thing, the answer to a problem no one was worried about to begin with.