Square Enix's president Yosuke Matsuda explains their interest in what he calls "blockchain games" and in particular, NFT, as a new incentive for their customers.
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Square Enix - Blockchain Technology in Games
- Thread starter Redglyph
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And now I'm just seeing this. Actually it's perfect, people who still want to play Square Enix's games will be able to do it with Samsung's devices. What a wonderful world we're living in. 
EDIT. Back on topic and related to the news post:
EDIT. Back on topic and related to the news post:
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So the main push-back appears to be over environmental concerns arising from block-chain trading of NFTs? What if the NFTs were awarded but non-tradable?
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Because it would be like a coffee without the colour of the coffee, the taste or the caffeine? The point would be missed.
One of the main point of the NFT is each of those are limited in number, so they are scarce, and they are strictly owned. It introduces 'few' in the digital world which is a space where assets until now could be reproduced indefinitely.
Owned and scarce mean the value of some of those items will raise so speculation and trade are the natural consequence.
JFarrell71
SasqWatch
I have yet to see any explanation of NFTs that tell me how they are supposed to make the games themselves better in any way. It's always a bunch of vague techno-business speak about "adding value" that breaks down to creating revenue streams.
The environmental concerns seem to be amplified by the pro-environmentalist values the game is apparently conveying.
Using NFT in a game (or even outside) is somewhat controversial too. People start trading worthless items at ridiculous prices, and it detracts from the purpose of the game, or give it a superficial and unhealthy enticement.
To be frank, I never understood the enthusiasm for trading items obtained through those games, like the cards we get in Steam (or items or whatever they call it) when doing specific actions in a game, and which can be sold for a virtual currency - which can be used as money in some cases too I believe.
I don't see what you mean by NFT that would be non-tradable. Sign your own identity in it? Just make a good hall-of-fame website, then
I just don't get it. Blockchain in games ??? WTF ???
They allow people or the vendor to create 'exclusive' assets for the games. People can buy them, own them and sell them. Those assets are limited in numbers so the value will go up with the time.
Obviously works better in a MP setting so people can drool about your very exclusive hat or whatever.
Those NFT use the same technology to store the information than Bitcoin and they are generally also bought using that 'money' which makes the whole package dubious in every way and quite bad for the environment. Exists since 2014 but the AAA publishers are starting to grasp the potential only now. Says a lot about how bad they are since it's a gold mine for people like them.
Very very lucrative, so those poor publishers cannot resist: they can create a thong for your toon and guarantee it will only be sold to 10 or 100 people. They can put any price they want, they will sell them.
EA and its yearly FIFA scam will look like a responsible company with a noble consumer vision compared to that. Until they put it in their games too, obviously.
Obviously works better in a MP setting so people can drool about your very exclusive hat or whatever.
Those NFT use the same technology to store the information than Bitcoin and they are generally also bought using that 'money' which makes the whole package dubious in every way and quite bad for the environment. Exists since 2014 but the AAA publishers are starting to grasp the potential only now. Says a lot about how bad they are since it's a gold mine for people like them.
Very very lucrative, so those poor publishers cannot resist: they can create a thong for your toon and guarantee it will only be sold to 10 or 100 people. They can put any price they want, they will sell them.
EA and its yearly FIFA scam will look like a responsible company with a noble consumer vision compared to that. Until they put it in their games too, obviously.
Carnifex
SasqWatch
I don't like it, and including these wanky NFT thingies will likely deter me from making any game purchases that offer this silly "feature".
Wait until Windows 12 makes it mandatory to have an accelerator to support their new blockchain-enabled OS
Perhaps that since Intel acquired Altera and AMD is supposedly acquiring Xilinx, they could make it available as soft IP in a programmable FPGA embedded in their blockchain-ready CPUs.
JFarrell71
SasqWatch
Might grow hard to avoid, at least in AAA games. Personally, I won't skip an entire game I'm interested in because it has some "feature" I have no interest in. For years, you've been able to use real money to buy in game resources in various games (Ubisoft games, for example), but I just ignore it. Which is super easy to do, since it's only even visible from the main menu.
But all this talk about "improving the experience" is utter bullshit and that's maybe the part that annoys me the most.
I know that it's a losing battle, though. Never mind NFTs, I have never understood people's fascination with achievements or with the trinkets you can buy and collect on Steam. It's just another facet of that desire to collect virtual garbage (which quickly becomes the desire to find exploits so one can mine that garbage and sell it on to other garbage collectors)
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I hope all of these attempts to maximize profits crash and burn, so that we can move on to their next attempt at maximing profits. This is so draining. And it will never end. It's been a long time now since making money isn't enough. They need to make all the money. And they also have the fucking audacity to say that these new income streams will make game development sustainable? After the biggest part of the profits are already taken by the heads of these companies, and the teams actually building the software get crumbs. Or get laid off. This system will never cease to amaze me.
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And here I thought the fact that digital goods are infinitely reproducible at no cost was a tremendous advantage, scarcity being a main source of inequality all over the world.
Silly me.
Silly me.
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Without scarcity there is no significant value in the market. No one wants to just make out evenly. They want to introduce scarcity into the digital world. And as always they want to suggest that everything will be improved if you introduce a profit margin. And they want to dupe the "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" into thinking this is a way they can get ahead in the capitalist rat race. Man, what a world we live in.
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Carnifex
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It's never a losing battle, save if you capitulate. I lump these NFG thingies in the same barrel with abominations like Ubijunk, Unorigin, and many others, if they violate a principle of mine, then they forfeit the right to be on my machine.