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Square Enix is curious about crypto
Square Enix president Yosuke Matsuda has announced that his company is joining Ubisoft on the NFT bandwagon. While cautious, Matsuda's New Year's Letter is also unabashedly crypto-curious.
The letter opens with the inevitable nod to the metaverse, noting that Facebook's parent company is now called meta and musing about the business opportunities the metaverse might provide.
- Ubisoft recently launched its Quartz NFT service, without much fanfare
- GSC Game Worlds announced and then canceled NFT and metaverse plans for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2
- Matsuda is skeptical of “goodwill and volunteer spirit” motives
- NFTs offer a way to compensate players for user-generated content
- Valve has banned blockchain-based games from Steam
Baby steps: Matsuda thinks blockchain technologies “are at this very moment enteirng a growth phase” in the games industry, and believes this could lead to “self-sustaining game growth”.
Motivation: While Matsuda acknowledges that most gamers “play to have fun”, he believes that user-generated content is mostly motivated by “goodwill and volunteer spirit” and that explicit incentives might open new possibilities for involving players in co-authoring game experiences.