Square Enix president still thinks the company’s future lies in blockchain technology

“We want to utilise the power of these people to create games that will continue to evolve.”

Square Enix president Yosuke Matsuda has detailed how he expects the game developer and publisher will capitalise on blockchain technology in a new interview.

Matsuda intimated that traditional game development, especially in the domestic Japanese market, is now “not enough” for the company, adding that he wants to “utilise the power of [autonomous game content] to create games that will continue to evolve” and use blockchain tech to incentivise any such user generated content.

“In the future, we would like to try our hand at providing ‘autonomous game content’,” the president told Yahoo Japan (as translated by VGC).

“Until now, in most games, we provided the content as a finished product and the players played that content. However, there are a certain number of players in the world who want to contribute to making games more interesting, by creating new settings and ways of playing.

“In the future, we want to utilise the power of these people to create games that will continue to evolve,” he added. “If, instead of relying on goodwill, we can also provide incentives to those who contribute to development by utilising technologies such as blockchain, there is a possibility that innovative and interesting content can be created from the ideas of users.”

The comments follow a controversial New Year’s letter in which Matsuda expressed hope that NFTs and blockchain technology will become a “major trend” in gaming, stating that he believes they will be major areas of growth for the industry in 2022, including cloud gaming, AI, and blockchain games.

The latter “are built upon the premise of a token economy and therefore hold the potential to enable self-sustaining game growth,” Matsuda said at the time.

ICYMI, Activision Blizzard is also seemingly gauging players’ interest in cryptocurrency and NFT products. In a YouGov survey issued to players over the weekend, Activision Blizzard asked players how “interested” they were in a range of “emerging/future trends in gaming”, including blockchain “play-to-earn gaming” that uses cryptocurrency and NFTs.