Square Enix Promises A Sickening NFT Future (The Jimquisition)
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- Опубликовано: 27 сен 2024
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Square Enix has ripped off the mask to show just how cynical, just how exploitative, just how greedy the game industry is. As it embraces the Metaverse, the Blockchain, and NFTs, it promises a truly horrible future for gaming.
This is the culmination of everything the "AAA" industry has been working towards. The turning of digital goods into a mass market where the customer gets literally nothing in return for everything. Where gaming itself becomes a job, where the virtual world is just as corporatized and monetized as the real one.
Thank you, Square Enix, for nakedly admitting just how disgusting you are.
#Blockchain #NFTs #Metaverse #Cryptocurrency #SquareEnix #JimSterling #Jimquisition
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Bandcamp of the Sax Dragon - carlcatron.ban...
Nathan Hanover - / @nhsynthonicorchestra
Hope y'all enjoy the thumbtacks at the end lol!
I don't know how to feel, tbh
We probably enjoyed it more than you did
OUCH! That was well sold!
Good thing you didn’t land backside first into the thumbtacks.
Props for not only taking that face first drop like a champ, but for taking those chair blows like a champ, too.
Please...Can we go back to the time when horse armor DLC was the worst thing in gaming?
On account of the fact that you can't advance backwards: No, we cannot. But if we conduct ourselves well enough we may progress to a point where horse armor DLC-level shit becomes the worst thing in gaming again.
Gotta aim for better than that, Horse Armor DLC was part of the slippery slope to this
@@WolfehAlex Though I long back to the days when horse armour DLC was as bad as it got, you are basically right: Progressing to the way things were _before_ we got horse armour DLC is what we should be aiming for.
@@GrahamChapman Agreed, I'd like to get to a point where game companies just, to quote Jim Fucking Sterling, son, "Make a fuckin' vidya game and sell a fuckin' vidya game!"
@@Sky-CladObserver Feels like indie developers are the only ones who remember how to do that these days. :/
"Do you remember the anti-capitalist themes in FFVII? Do you remember that Shinra was supposed to be bad?"
Oh, but I do! And it makes for the most delicious irony and demonstrates a complete lack of self-awareness on Squeenix's part with how they bat eyelashes towards NFTs/Crypto. Bonus points when you remember how Shinra was literally tapping into the planet's life force for energy, mirroring crypto's impact on the environment...
Now you can "own" digital items in a game with always online drm that you don't own
@@pongchannel. It's so funny how this is supposedly going to "help game growth" when it will...just be exactly the same?
People buying NFT's will be exactly the same as micro-transactions and shitty games like Anthem and Outriders that nobody wants to play for more than a few months will just die anyway because the game industry isn't willing to offer more in exchange for more money, it just expects all the money for the least effort.
Crypto environmental impact is cope by commies (further astroturfed by big finance/establishment currency actors) who realized they missed a major financial opportunity because they can only actually bitch about the world rather than do anything. Perpetual wannabe victims lmfai
@@johng8837 There is plenty of research and reporting into how much electricity these crypto assets consume, and how the electricity is generated by carbon-emitting fuels. Hardly a bunch of commies and bankers with an axe to grind.
What can be claimed without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. If all you have is to call detractors "commies" and resort to ad hominem attacks, then GTFO.
@@johng8837 What the fuck does that have to do with communism...?
The environmental impact is a problem because crypto and NFT's add literally NOTHING to the world, it's just another way for people with more money than sense to launder their money while pretending they give a shit about art and anything but themselves.
"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." It is disturbing how closely this follows the logic of Atlas Shrugged, and that anyone would be comfortable expressing this idea publicly shows how little they care for anything outside of money.
People who write letters like this absolutely carry copies of Atlus Shrugged with them when they travel.
honestly wonder if this guy meant to have someone proof read it to make it more human sounding and forgot
Pretty much. I've been reading it and it's an absolute abyss of sheer selfishness, greed, and spite. It's the same mentality- that only money matters, that anything like caring for other people or intrinsic motivations are nonexistent, etc. And the vacuousness of their existence leaves these kinds of cold capitalists likely feeling hollow, so they project onto others this hollowness and assume everyone's like them.
I will never understand why corporate leadership can't just let the golden goose lay it's eggs and then fucking sell them to people. I feel like making a worse product should be illegal and punishable under the law. Maybe if we could straight up arrest people for skimming on a products quality then they'd stop doing it.
@@iBenjamin1000 Originally it said "irrational nonsense". "Inconsistent personal feelings" IS the more-human edit.
This past year I turned 40 and bought myself a very special gift: I comissioned one of my favorite artist, Steve Prescott to draw one of my all time favorite characters Ive played in Shadowrun, my favorite RPG. It cost me a few 100, but it was well worth it.
A crypto bro I work with asked me if itll be worth more in the future. I had to blink a few times before answering.
Its my favorite artist of my favorite RPG drawing my favorite character. Dude, its f*ing priceless to me.
These people worship capital. That's their god. I am not sure if it's generations of brain-washing, or if it's just how some people are, but holy poop. How do they not understand that money is a necessary evil at this point in time, and not the end-all be-all?
I just... am I taking crazy pills? What world do I live in? What can be done as the planet burns all around us, and yet so many people are ignoring the flames?
But let me end this on a positive note: glad you got your painting!
That artwork will probably be stolen and turned into more shit NFTs, and it will happen at such speed and scale that the artist will be unable to keep up with flagging them all - not that shit sites like Opensea would do anything meaningful about it. This practice is already burning artists out, because why bother making stuff when it keeps getting stolen, stripped of any association with you, and resold on such a scale?
I turned 40 last year too and started getting into model trains instead of video games. Remember physical objects that actually existed? They were good, they were.
@@RedSpade37 its definitely the brainwashing the term capital realism exists for a reason.
I got a large oil painting done a few years back, cost a few hundred, of a recurring dream I have. Now it hangs above my bed. I have gotten tons of artwork commissioned. They are really only worth what I paid the artist for them. They will never be valuable, but what's the point of trying to resell art of my dreams? Bizzaro world.
The way Square Enix talked about what sort of “business opportunities” the ‘Metaverse’ presents before they even know what it really is reminds me of the scene in Jurassic Park where Professor Malcolm says “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should”
Yes and no. It would be foolish of a company not to be aware of and tracking potential opportunities in related industries. But that would ideally mean things like "What games could we possibly produce and how would this work" rather than "I smell money!"
@@Ailieorz The problem is they don't have any actual ideas. They don't have any thoughts as to what they actually want to DO.
1:Make Game
2:Use block chain
3:???
4: Profit$$$
@@danr.5017 Yeah, this letter pretty much just exist to encourage their R&D department to look into what to do. The guy who wrote this is just out of touch. Dude probally read some article about these stuffs and decided to follow the trend even before knowing how all this shit actually work
It's just buzzwords to please shareholders
"You didn't earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don't take any responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could, and before you even knew what you had, you patented it, and packaged it, and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox, and now you're selling it, you wanna sell it."
Normal people: "So the whole point of digital stuff is that we duplicate it at basically no cost, right? Like there's no material cost or anything, so once a thing is made, we can just make as many copies as we want. That's great, it means digital stuff should get really cheap!"
Corporations: "Okay, but how do we make digital stuff non-duplicable tho?"
This. This.
Just what I thought! Then again, non fungible doesnt me that you cannot copy it. You just don't have that unique "oWnEr" certificate.
"There haven't been as many major game changing content that were used generated as one would expect"
That is why people have rebuilt entire games. Created operating systems to let you play games corporations won't sell you. Overhauled almost every game in existence. Released more content than any major studio will even dream of.
The only thing thats slowed the pace of people creating mods, ports and user content is that corporations started suing mod makers or pressing criminal charges against emulator developers
Imagine saying that when seeing how a game like Skyrim is still one of the most played games in the world 10+ years on specifically because of the modding community
this is what i was thinking. the only thing getting in the way of creativity is their greed.
@@davidharman3665 yeah, but people aren't paying for all that content - those consumers are getting content for free! That's why Bethesda tried to monetise it with the creation club, because the idea of players getting free content when they could pay bethesda for it isn't something they want, even if it means they can sell the same game 3 times due to its longevity. Notice that Fallout 76 has no mods, but does have microtransactions.
That's why the Square Enix Demon is mocking Modders in the announcement. They are fixing the problems that those bastards purposely set up to scam people of their money
@@davidharman3665 Hell, Neverwinter Nights, a 2001 D&D game with polygon graphics, still has a gamerbase in 2022... largely because of mods making entirely new stories & adventures.
This is exactly why we, 'the gamers' should and should always have cared how the games industry treats their workers; because the next step for them is to expect us to buy their product AND work for them as well.
All the shit we've been hearing about worker treatment is how they deal with people that actually have employment rights, what do you expect will happen to people who generate content for games but aren't even employed by them?
@@zUJ7EjVD People Make Games have done two excellent YT documentaries about Roblox's many abuses and scummy practices
^ THIS!!! If there was EVER a great Reason to HATE NFTs in Video Games, it's THIS!!
Simple, Objective, and Terrifying
Or be empowered to benefit from playing the games instead of forced to being limited into the role of consumer. This is a revolution, don't miss it or lose your head in it.
@@subcitizen2012 when i decided to make money making games, i stoped making games in other games map editors, why i would i give another company my work and part of the money for free ?, blizzard changed the terms of service of the world editor so they basically own the game you made, a lot of nfts being sold arent even decentralized, they are hosted on private servers that could go down or replace your file, and i dont think it is being enix to simply steal your game idea and sell it as a standalone
NFTs are literally the 21st century version of “I have a bridge to sell you”
Yet another reason why we ought to teach history. Folks are falling for century-old scams...
They're like the virtual version of Beanie Babies, except you don't even own a stuffed monkey. Just an electronic picture of one you're hoping to pawn off on an even bigger sucker for more than you paid before the bottom falls out.
@@pizzarat3275 At least with the Beanies you get a plushie, something your/some kid could play with. Heck, you could even donate the lot for charity to a children's hospital or something. Even MTX gives you some fun in the moment (presumably).
NFTs are like all the agita of gambling and none of the enjoyment.
That is a fundamental misunderstanding of what an NFT is. They are a multi purpose tool which can be used for almost any industry. There is a lot more to it than just this art or game stuff. They are simply a blockchain token. If you think blockchains and decentralization are useless, I can tell you they are not. For example even businesses are starting to use them for internal logistics and supply chains. So they are not scamming themselves obviously.
@@cgsec2275 I’d love if you could go into how businesses use them for the supply chain and logistics. Sorry to ask you instead of google, I’m just really trying to understand and I’ve never heard of this part before.
At the same time, though, the fact that businesses use it doesn’t mean it benefits the average person. I use the “selling a bridge” example because it seems like a pretty one to one comparison. From that perspective, the businesses are more or less the person selling the bridge than the person buying it. Scams are a matter of perspective.
Got to give it to them, they are making it easier for me decide to avoid their future releases.
Same. I’ve pretty much decided to dip from current gens completely and stick to retro gaming. The business nonsense has gotten crazier and crazier these last few years.
Pog official artwork was really good
It's so nice of them to let me know to not buy any of their shit. They can go join the others in the Naughty Corner.
@@WyattoonsComics even the retro market is shite too with people overcharging for piece of plastic games
@@jayhollows5729 Oh it absolutely has its own problems, but at least these companies never see any of that money. I’d rather spend $70 on an old PS1 game then indirectly fund this NFT nonsense by buying a current Squenix game.
This is why you can't be quiet about this stuff even if it seems repetitive because every inch we give they take 100 miles and run with it until they hit a PR backlash and we pay for it versus them. Games aren't complete when released, everything is monetized, and not only do these companies not care about their customers they don't even care about their own staff (Sexual Harassment, Race discrimination, you name it).
The work harassment definitely need to be announced and pursued by government authorities for sure.
In regards to the NFT's though, I am glad Stephanie is getting on this nonsense, but I can't feel but help we are giving them the free marketing if not care on how we crap on NFT'S.
Just make sure to advise a person who wants to invest into NFT'S this,
" That artwork is someone's stolen artwork, and you will end up getting part of the blame when that original artist takes action. It's just a pyramid scheme and I wouldn't deal with it."
That's all. The more we become dismissive of NFT'S and pretend they don't exist (as ignorant and stupid as they are), the more those NFT clipto's will give up once we stop caring about it
Just do your part and educate as many people within your inner circle as much as possible.
we were saying this about lootboxes and here we are. The next step is trying to convince people having their content included in lootboxes by a company will be compensation enough in its own. The "satisfaction" of being part of the hype lmao.
and now they want you to be a paying (not a typo) employee
Gamers have complained for 10+ years over anti-consumer practices from lootboxes to microtransactions sadly.
But DA GAMERS™ can't be bothered to give as much of a psychotic fcuk as they did for *_checks notes_* _"A wahmen wanted to make video essays on games! WAHMEN! ETHICS IN JOURNALISM!"_ so now we're here.
It's hilariously sad that the SE CEO came out with this meanwhile Final Fantasy XIV, one of the few MMOs still around working under a subscription rather than the free to pay model, just released their biggest expansion where the main problem with it has been too many people want to play it. The producer has had to apologies that they haven't been able to account for this growth as the PARTS USED TO MAKE SERVERS have been unavailable due in large part to CRYPTO MINERS CAUSING THE SUPERCONDUCTOR SHORTAGE.
But of coarse the CEO wouldn't recognize the irony of wanting to get in on the very thing that has been causing the problems with their most popular game that has been winning them awards. No no, measly subscription payments couldn't possibly contend with the dollar signs in his eyes when he looks at the crypto scam
As a FFXIV player since summer 2021... who really enjoys and loves the game and how well it, and it's devs, treat us, I hope to god the ceo drops this crap or better yet they drop him from the company... aaauuuggh!
Ah but of course those who complain are "pay to have fun" wussies and don't see the majestical opportunities the pAy To EaRn model entails
the utter insult to injury is the fact that square's most profitable game, final fantasy XIV, selling SO WELL THEY HAD TO STOP SELLING IT, is experiencing that trouble quite specifically and exclusively BECAUSE of crypto miners inflating the microchip shortage.
Reminds me of that one story, about killing the goose for a few golden eggs instead of feeding the goose so it'll lay many of them.
Uh no, it's due to covid.
@@Vashy434 It is many things but crypto mining is definitely part of the problem.
FF14 is also one of the few mmorpgs where the game store isn't accessible from the game at all. Every other game I played shoves the shop in my face at all times but in FF14 it's legit hard to even purchase the game. Really sad how this is the attitude which is giving FF a new lease on life and Square Enix decides to ruin it all.
Making millions from legit poduct < Making billions in money laundering.
That's the sad, dismal future of gaming
That letter was so full of vapid corporate buzzspeak, vain technobabble, and cartoonish villainy I initially couldn't tell if it was legit, or a working script for a Simpson's sketch.
That's because it's meaningless vapour, a ponzi or pyramid scheme, a con, a scam, a grift. But the gaming industry is such a rock-bottom shithole that it'll do any slimy, wanky, amoral thing, and the CEOs running it probably think they might as well jump in and make as much dirty cash as they can before it's made illegal.
I'm pretty sure that the CEO in his boomer brain meant to publish it to the shareholders only but just sent it to everyone instead. I'm sure the only people who were delighted about the stupid letter were the shareholders and nobody else.
Yea it's just fucking gross and inhuman to me. These people are not human.
@@chungusbooper Which politicians of today do we imagine are going to make it illegal? They are more likely to start investing in it at this point😏
Sounds Orwellian double speak combined with a Silicone Valley style golden unicorn cult speak.
I liked the part where they basically said “to those of you who play our games for fun but have reservations about NFTs, we hear you. We just don’t care.”
Seriously, can CEO’s and Presidents of companies stop writing letters themselves? First Bobby Kotick and now this guy. It’s fucking embarrassing.
You'd think someone would keep them away from the keyboard at least.
I genuinely hope the phrase "NFTs: Year One" becomes a joke that we refer back to, and not the harbinger of the worst change in gaming monetisation. I was worried this would be a bit too near filming for a Jimquisition, glad I was wrong. Thank you for covering it Steph. Hell of a crappy start to 2022.
NFTs combine the worst of both worlds - additional monetization of things that have no value, much less reason to be monetized, combined with the insufferable crowd of wannabe bitcoin early adopter bros. Its really sad that a bunch of people are so desperate for money that they jump onto every new get rich digital scheme.
I want to feel bad for people being so desperate but god are they obnoxious, never thought I would have a fight or flight response to the word "moon" in 2022.
I registered the term "NFT bubble" as a NFT.
It won't it will be the next worst thing to happen and it's practically already normalized. Probably the next thing they will do is come up with something even worse so this bullshit seems less like bullshit in a better the devil you know move. No fucker wants to work for a living any more they want to sit on their arse playing games all day and get paid for it. I mean I can't say I blame people in that respect working some shitty soul destroying nine to five ain't all it's cracked up to be either.
NFTs at this moment in time ride the Bitcoin wave. Everyone is investing because they hope they can sell them for 10000 dollars each in the future. But just as the 2008 crash showed: you can have something costing millions of dollars without it actually being ever worth anything.
"Gaming monetisation"
I don't want to sound ominous, but this is the future for everyone, not just gamers. Get in your harvesting pods folks, the construction of the Matrix has begun.
You know when I first heard of NFTs I was confused on what they exactly were, heard some explanations and got even more confused.
Then I watched one of your videos on them and I finally understood what exactly they were.
Turns out I actually knew what they were all along, its just that they were so stupid I thought I was understanding it wrong.
Haha, this perfectly sums up my arc when it comes to NFTs as well. I couldn't get over the feeling that I _had_ to be missing something, surely it's not as dumb as it sounds?! And in the end it was like "no it's dumber".
I recommend professor Lando's video explaining NFT's if there are still bits you don't understand. Darn cryptids.
@@FuzzyNaiyalism what is there to understand? They're a scam. Same as crypto.
I explained it to my brother, he said “you must have gotten something wrong. No way something as popular as NFTs are such a blatant scam“. That's the sad part, normies will eat it up because tech bros are pushing it so hard
@@FuzzyNaiyalism to be fair, crypto and nft are excellent ways to launder dirty money for criminals
People figure out "the scam", then they figure out a new way to do the very same "scam" but legally now. This is what happens when you let corporations regulate them selves.
Try telling that to libertarian like Ben Shapiro or people like Tim pool and Dave Rubin
@@USSAnimeNCC- oh they know. they're part of the marketing
I'm not sure if they are doing it legally. The line between a pyramid scheme (illegal) and an MLM (legal) is that the MLM is selling products.
I'm not sure which side NFTs fall on. Sure, they are technically products. But game companies have been arguing that gambling laws don't apply to them because the lootboxes don't contain things of value. Arguments which, if applied to NFTs, put NFTs firmly on the pyramid scheme side of the line. But that's assuming consistency from the courts.
Then there's Peter Molyneux making 40 million from NFTs on a game he hasn't released yet. If he doesn't release it, that mess is going to be entertaining to watch.
The irony is, is that this is exactly why decentralization is a good thing.
@@cgsec2275 There you go running around spewing your dumb libertarian nonsense again.
Decentralisation of this manner is to evade *government* scrutiny. It doesn't evade *corporate* activity, at all. It frees up corporations to do *even more* shit because now everything's decentralised and there are no more authorities or oversight!
To which your short-sighted counter will be "people won't use a bad service, the market will self-correct!", to which I'll just scoff and laugh, because this gets disproven in the wild on the daily.
I love how not once in that letter does it concretely mention how these "innovations" will actually be good for the players. How telling that it starts off by referring to all this nonsense as business opportunities, the go-to obfuscating term for scammers. Much like how the sex pests at Ubisoft failed with their NFTs, we need to extend the same opportunities to Squenix.
Yeah, the whole letter is clearly directed to share holders and investors. Clearly their customers don't actually matter, they're just a resource for the company.
Neither the letter's author nor the intended audience care about players.
How can they predict what gamers will determine for themselves once they are empowered to? No one ever thought about what would be good for gamers at the dawn of the internet or console gaming either. Deal with it.
@@subcitizen2012 People have been "dealing with it" for a long time. That's the problem, genius.
@@subcitizen2012 Your second sentence is a bald assertion. It's also the kind of thing that any dev would laugh at. There were entire companies focused on internet services for gaming at its outset. You are uninformed.
Kudos for dismantling every “innovation” of NFTs with decades old examples.
No seriously, you just showed not only how stupid they are, but how obsolete they are by virtue of adding nothing but repeats of more successful things.
They say true originality is dead, that we need inspirations to create. But for corporates, creativity is dead period. All they know is how to copy off of others.
Edit: holy crow I never get this many likes!
Honestly any supporter of NFTs who spouts about how this is a good thing is ignoring the past behaviour of game companies over every dlc, mtx and shitty business practice. Every greed obsessed incompetent decision we've seen over the years which will be 10x worse with the nft grift
@A person on RUclips speaking of which did anyone see those trash ads by NetEase?
it doesn't matter if you proove them wrong. they don't care about being right (or doing the right thing), it's all sound and noise, it's not supposed to hold up to criticism, it's there to fill up space. words won't reach them.
What gets me is that there is literally nothing that NFTs can do that can't be done easier, faster, cheaper, more reliably, and more consistently by using existing solutions like regular-ass databases, and that those solutions exist that way for a reason.
Have your like, and by the gods like it!
Just what people need. A second job for people to grind at until they have a breakdown. These companies can burn.
This shit why the main game I picked up during 2021 was fucking CHESS.
There's a reason why I basically left playing video games for tabletop games like Dungeons and Dragons.
I'm at the point I'd rather spend my free time working on a prepping for a D&D session than play anything that's come out in the past five years.
@@tjenadonn6158 You'd better not be using the white bishop pieces. I bought those as NFTs so they're mine now.
The sad part is, there are good ideas in here.
Like the real Metaverse (the one in that book) an open source video game where you made a living selling and trading content that paid for its own servers using the taxes from the marketplace and just kinda...chilled with people from around the world could be really cool.
The fact they are asking us to support Square Enix means everything is going to cost too much and revenue will be mismanaged.
This is it, if NFT's become normalized then we have crossed the event horizon and their will be no going back.
"There haven't been as many major game-changing content that were user generated as one would expect."
*Stares in Nexus Mods*
Most AAA develeopers hate modding and do everything they can to discourage it, maybe they should stop doing that rather than creating some weird crypto dystopia.
Stares at the Command & Conquer franchise.
So far, no one pushing "the Metaverse" has offered a single reason why consumers would want to use it. All the talk's been about selling NFTs, which, unless you already have a reason to be in that virtual space, no one cares about. Unless they figure that out, it's going to be a colossal failure.
I call it the "grandma test" - until a tech is easy and convenient enough that your grandma can use it, it won't be ubiquitous. Pinning the "metaverse" on widespread VR/AR adoption is probably even more of a non-starter than trusting that blockchain/crypto will remain unregulated.
@@mandisaw My grandma's dead so that's a pretty high bar
@@radical_dog Aye, mine as well, dude. 💜 I'm a mobile developer, and once was showing her my app, and she kept asking, "But how do other people use it if it's on your phone?" RIP Boobie 😆
[Edit: Lest folks think that grandma was uneducated, she had a Masters and two full-time careers before retiring. Used to do the Times crossword with my grandpa (a teacher & force of nature).]
@@mandisaw it's a very grandma thing to say. Old people have difficulty adapting to new trends, cultures and technologies, for a whole bunch of reasons, the primary being that they are already strongly entrenched in their old ways and new things feel scary and confusing. Some rare ones who are very open to trying new things are better at it than others, but growing up in the new is a very different experience than learning it when you're old.
@@chaossynergy9768 Hmm, I've found that resistance to change, or inertia relative to new trends can occur at any age. That whole idea of older people having difficulty adapting is more based on ageism than fact.
My point was that tech often assumes everyone has critical knowledge, and doesn't account for people outside the echo chamber.
You or I - smartphone owners - are bombarded with ads/prompts to use the app stores, buy apps/MTX, etc. But my grandma at that point didn't have/need a cellphone, so the mobile ecosystem was just totally outside of her experience. Same with all this VR/AR and NFTs - it's not part of life for the vast majority of people.
I prefer to be thrown on thumbtacks every single day for the rest of my life than to live in a future where the metaverse and NFTs in gaming are a thing.
Rip… all hope fans had for deus ex 3😡
If you think that you don't know what they are. The Metaverse could mean anything. I can imagine a world where things being more connected produces good results, just as I can imagine a world where it is bad. In the free market we will have both. This is fine. NFTs are multi purpose tools useful for EVERY single industry. They are more than just this art memes or game skins. These are incredibly powerful tools that can change the world as much as the internet did. The variety of application you can do with them is near infinite. Don't think about the most dystopian thing you can think of. If you want to say "I don't trust Square" I won't buy these NFTs from them. Fine, good, I agree. But to slam the whole technology is silly.
@@cgsec2275 > I can imagine
We can all *imagine* but reality and the economic pressures of A) entrenched interests, B) basic human greed; always skew things one way. Look at the GPU "resale market" over the last year; look at the sneaker "resale market" over the last 5. Scalpy scalpy scalpy scalpers, that's what opening up free-for-all item economies in games will bring, and it'll be to the detriment of us all.
The whole technology *is* silly and you can take your libertarian corporate-feudalism nonsense and shit it into a bin full of bored apes.
Major game companies are NFT: Not Fucking Trustworthy.
NFT. More like *No Fucking Thankyou.*
We NEED to protect the children. If you are a parent or sibling please educate the children in your life about these predatory schemes. Please don't let the next generation be caught off guard
@@d.r.u. cringe
If you are a parent, please enable parental controls.
@@d.r.u. And then when they get on the internet anyway because you can't watch them 24/7 they'll be easy marks for the predators online because you, Sarah, would rather hide the kids from the real world instead of training them to confront it and send the predators and scammers back into the trash heap where they belong.
@@d.r.u. Unironic conservative moment.
That literally won't work in any conceivably useful way.
Your comment may be the most important comment here.
I'm still reeling from realizing we don't matter; the purchasing public doesn't watch this stuff, and we are so very outnumbered. We need to reach who we can, and expand that reach in every way we can think of.
The sad thing is, when I was 8, the idea of a virtual reality future hangout space would've rustled my jimmies right up, but corporations find a way to completely poison every good thing. This is why we can't have nice things
There are already plenty of virtual reality hangout spaces that aren't poisoned by corporations. The corporations just speak of "building the metaverse" to make it sound like they're the first ones to do it but they're already years late to the party.
@@silentcaay They have to rebrand it as a new thing. If investors did any actual research into the existing market for VR social spaces, Second Life, etc, they'd learn that the market cap ain't all that large.
The best part of realizing how fucked capitalism is, is realizing how corporations will ruin every single cool sci-fi thing you ever dreamed of.
@@FlorenceFox When I grew up, corporations (and/or the gov't) were the bad guys in every cool sci-fi thing I ever dreamed of. (And yes, eventually Star Trek too)
I really hope all these NFT projects fail and the people who thought they were ever a good idea are purged from gaming forever.
@AugmentedOwl I hope it becomes the Google stadia of pyramid schemes.
Its one big economic bubble getting ready to burst. Only a matter of time.
The one tiny bit of hope I’m clutching onto is that _maybe_ some of the big name directors/producers/designers/writers for their actual video games like Nomura, Ito, Yoshi-P, etc. saw that letter and went, “Fuck off, we don’t want any of that shit in our games.” and the execs might allow them not to. So then only _some_ of Squeenix’s games become utter garbage instead of across the board.
Same tbh. Yoko Taro I know you said you'd do anything for a fat stack of cash, but please for the love of god not this.
If this NFT shit is the future of gaming, I'm moving to a fucking cabin in the woods with a generator and a PC with single player games from back when games were about having fun..
Lets be honest, the best days of gaming are behind us, the 90s were the golden age and they peaked in the year 2000 and it has only been a steady trajectory downhill since then.
So yeah, i'll be holding on to my collection of games from between 1992 and 2012 with maybe a handful of newer indie games that have bucked this trend of terminal decline.
That's more than enough for me.
@@transsylvanian9100 i'm on holiday right now but usually i live without wifi and the only games i play are on the xbox 360. i only play an hour or two at a time now. its amazing how much different life is when you arent on the hedonistic treadmill: crypto and nfts are just ways to exploit hedonism and desire for hoarding. so much more fun to be completely disconnected from the modern world when i'm at home, now i only have to put up with it when i am working or when i go to the library for the internet
The good news is that Valve has banned NFTs from Steam.
Something about the consequences of NFTs really scares Valve for them to go that far. It's going to be fun seeing those consequences hit everyone else.
@@bilateralrope8643 NFTs are a scam and are going to crash even harder than crypto, and crypto is 100% a ponzi scheme.
But the stock market itself is headed for a massive crash too, so who cares? Make your quick money now while you can.
These are all symptoms of a dying economic system, symbols of desperation and the ultimate degeneracy of capitalism.
As someone who's last four enjoyable games where respectively an indie (Helltaker) and three Japanese Super Nintendo games (Ihatovo Monogatari*, Umihara Kawase* and The Firemen) I agree...
* English patched by fans.
Remember kids: No corporation is your friend. Especially if they make that thing you like.
Are you implying corporation are not people and don't have feelings?
@@tatiana4050 Not implying, not even levelling an accusation.
Stating blunt and proven facts.
people trying to make "metaverse" a thing have completely missed how awful the virtual world is in Ready Player One xD
This.
I love the movie, it's possibly my favorite movie of all time as far as that goes. I paid attention to all of it, not just the fanservice.
And what becomes of these "virtual goods" when the games they are attached to are inevitably abandoned by their publishers for the "next big thing"? Will they be carried over to a sequel? Of _course_ not. What you bought will become virtual waste, with its value effectively zeroed. It's the next level of scam- not only getting you to pay for nothing, but to _re-buy it next year._
This is what really scares me about this whole "cloud gaming" thing. If you're going to be running your AI on the cloud or whatever, then even single player games become unplayable when the server is taken down.
It's particulary wild that people fall for this when this was the exact reason everyone freaked out about Pokemon Sword/Shield...
I guess publishers will be pushing these nft "games" as the next csgo/dota2/LoL etc. Massive games with huge lifespans and esports scenes. Big hype campaign, fomo sets in, people pay out their arse for nfts, game inevitably is abandoned
You have been playing a lot of Fifa.
"It's the next level of scam- not only getting you to pay for nothing, but to re-buy it next year."
Loads of companies are already doing that without NFTs. NFTs offer nothing new or original.
14:57 There is a lot of “major game-changing content” available for a lot of games. They’re called mods. And developers/platforms that allow people to integrate mods easily and with minimal barriers do see the majority of that content on their games. Two examples stand out: Minecraft and Roblox, one allows for mods freely and easily, the other seeks profit off of user-made content and exploits children as a result.
If developers REALLY wanted more user-generated content in their games, they would make them open source or public domain, allowing for user-made iterations without fear of legal threats or financial exploitation. But no, developers don’t actually care about user-generated content unless it makes the developer money directly.
Not only blockchain ruins life for all the people (gamers included) by being one of the prime reasons behind electronics (like GPUs and consoles) shortage and scalpers running wild but also by further worsening games internally because of NFTs. What a time to be alive.
@@surft The only way to make block chain tech sustainable I see would be to put the processors in orbit and feed them with massive solar arrays or nuclear batteries or something.
Till then they are great at roasting the planet with their waste heat and retarding the electronics industry by gobbling up all available components.
In their current form they are like a cancerous growth that will probably kill itself and perhaps it’s hosts in a few years as the bubble bursts.
@@Virtualblueart there are less energy consuming technology with blockchain but it is not widely used for now. Until then I really don't want to see it infesting the technology space like now, it sucks
Don't forget the Enviroment!
@@Virtualblueart "the only way to make blockchain tech sustainable" hahaha you don't know what you're talking about. They already have sustainable blockchain tech. Ubisoft's NFTs use sustainable tech. You're talking about proof of work blockchains, but there is proof of stake blockchains which uses minimal processing.
@@cjwauer4730 don't worry about the environment, proof of stake uses very limited processing.
"NFT Year One" sounds more like a threat to me than something positive
The "metaverse" as originally described in Snow Crash is more like the internet than anything these companies are trying to sell.
The metaverse is the ability to take your gun from Halo 7 over to Call of Duty 29, Animal Crossing - Resurgence or Train Simulator 2030 and have it work exactly like it did originally. If Facebook has its own metaverse then it's not the metaverse because the core of the concept is that it's an open ecosystem made of interchangeable parts with nobody in charge. It'd be like AT&T having its own internet where only AT&T websites worked. The metaverse is also fictional. It makes for a cool addition to your sci-fi setting but like wormholes or teleportation, the real world refuses to cooperate with author's imaginations. The closest equivalent we have to the metaverse isn't VRchat or Roblox but Unreal Engine and Unity marketplace. And even that's more than a little bit of a stretch since it's not just drag and drop. Those asset flips that populate Steam are the closest thing we have or ever will have to the metaverse as originally envisioned.
The metaverse as a concept isn't actually possible. What these companies are trying to sell is a sanitised, corporate version of VRchat. Anyone who knows anything about VR knows VRchat needs some sanitisation but all any "metaverse" these companies try to sell can ever be.
This. I do not understand how so many people are willing to be misled so hard.
"User generated content has been brought into being soley by the individuals desire for self expression and not because any explicit incentive existed to reward them for their creative efforts."
You can literally hear the corporate minds creaking with the effort of believing that people might create things because they enjoy the act of creating. The very notion that people might do anything that isn't for monetary gain must be as incomprehensible to them as the sound of one hand clapping. "Actions, without monetary incentive? No... If there's no monetary incentive then there can be no action! Yet minecraft modders exist... How... I feel strange... Why is my nose bleeding?"
I remember a decade and a bit back there was a site you could upload your own Rollercoaster Tycoon ride layouts to. Thousands of designs, some of them straight up ridiculous with how complex and over the top they were, all uploaded by users just because they wanted to share the cool things they made.
In theory I don't have any problems with game companies offering incentives (financial or otherwise) for players to make content as long as all parties know what they're getting into.
As a modder the very notion that i or anyone else would try to monetize something i created purely for mine and the community's enjoyment is fucking disgusting, it goes against everything i believe in.
I would rather see my work permanently destroyed than have someone profit off of it.
The profit motive is pure fucking POISON!
@@pizzarat3275 One of the joyous things about modding is that people end up creating niche, bonkers, and original things. Things that may only exist because the modder themselves want to see it. That's why the space is soo creative and innovative. As soon as you implement monetary incentives then people will feel a pressure to focus in on the things that are most likely to make money. There will be the inevitable pressure to make something with as great a market reach as possible for as little cost as possible. The whole culture and community of modding is currently a communal, anarchic and freethinking one. But all of those things are slowly poisoned by money. Chances are we'll end up with a modding scene that looks more like steam greenlight, where anything good is swamped and hidden in the river of low effort fast turnaround garbage, instead of the innovative ecosystem we have now.
@@transsylvanian9100 thank you for being a modder. You are making gaming more fun, and whatever community you are active in definitely appreciates the fuck out of you. Keep it up!
TF2 is such a perfect example of why the big push for NFT content is crap. Valve figured out how to fill a game with assets users can sell to each other a decade ago and it works fine.
Valve figured out how assets in one game can be used by another though Steam inventories a decade ago and it works fine if anyone bothers to use it.
Valve figured out how to harness their community’s creativity though the Steam Workshop and how to pay said users when they added their content to the game a decade ago and TF2 still gets new content to this day entirely on the backs of community creators that are glad to do it because it’s fun.
Valve showed that all of this can work and has worked for years and none of it required NFTs or blockchains. And the frameworks they developed to do it are available to anyone who publishes on Steam.
It’s clear that Squenix saw that TF2 assets were selling for trading card prices where common things were going for 15 cents and was like “no no, we want thousands of dollars like the terrible monkey art.”
But hey, who knows what Valve is up to now? They’ve got Steam and VR ambitions. Maybe they’ll make a half-decent “metaverse” that wards off the rest of the gaming industry from creating deliberately worse ones.
Or maybe they’ll see dollar signs, forgo their integrity, and go wallow in the mud with the rest of them.
Problem is that TF2 created a sustainable economy that allowed the game to be hugely successfully over the long term. Investors only care about having the money now, seeing the returns now even if they could make far more money later.
And even in cases where companies don't make it easy to add content to their games people still do it. Rockstar had to threaten lawsuits to stop mods for GTA. Modders even had updates to fix problems in the Definitive Editions out faster than Rockstar's own patches.
Valve is still making a bank on the tf2 items, but as J.S.S. said Sqeenix doesn't want some money they want all the money
Somewhat off-topic, but I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who calls them "Squeanix".
I just add that extra a because I can't stand their recent squealing.
Isn't one of the big selling point of the NFT blockchain energy blackhole is that it is decentralized and "independently verifiable"
WTF would be the point of making an NFT of an item that you can only use on that one game made by that one company, it's not like you're going to transfer it between games made by different companies.
Also it's just a fucking number you could store on a local server and not on a blockchain? It's much less energy intensive to just do it TF2 style. Even fucking blizzard figured this out in 2011 with their diablo 3 auction house.
this whole thing is just a marketing ploy (and extremely harmful one) to get the Cryptobro audience to gamble away their money because they think they can earn money off of it.
Aren't...aren't most "blockchain games" dependent entirely on getting constant new blood? Needs new "whales" to come in and purchase items from the player driven economy so the devs can actually make money off their cut? Aren't most of these games balanced on a knife's edge constantly as the devs needs to hope they get the money to keep the servers alive month to month, nonetheless earning money to pay for the development costs?
Token economies also have been around forever...and they all break. Diablo II's economy was dropped down to barter because of gold inflation. Fuck, DIII almost did the same until they ratcheted up gold sinks. Double fuck, New World literally has a gold inflation AND deflation problem at the same time! I don't even TRUST most companies to make an economy that WORKS, nonetheless isn't manipulative and miserable.
They are all pyramid schemes
No. NFTs are designed so that the person who minted it always gets a cut. If the studio mint an item as an NFT, they will get a cut of every resell down the line. As long as there are transactions, money will flow. It's basically a massive fuck you to used economies and the idea of resell.
What I don’t understand is that these publishers ad these things that literally NOBODY demands.
No gamer asked for micro transactions.
No gamer asked for yearly releases.
No gamer demanded that game developers have a toxic culture.
No gamer asked for shorter campaigns and released expansions later.
No gamer ever thought “you know, I really wish my progress was slower in the game”
No gamer ever asked for NFT’s (vomits in mouth)
They don’t care what you like or don’t like. As long as you keep paying them money, they won’t stop.
The needs of the company and the needs of the customer are wholly incompatible
“No gamer demanded that game developers have a toxic culture.”
Actually, yeah we kinda did. Gamers literally harassed journalists into not speaking out against toxicity in videogame cultures.
You’re right about the rest, but Ubisoft and Activision-Blizzard’s WoW department being misogynist psychopaths is something “The Gamers” directly caused over the last 7+ years.
@@NoobLord9001 I'd maybe say it started ages ago when gaming was marketed towards boys after the Big gaming crash, when before gaming was marketed as more unisex. I swear to god, toy marketing has been one of the biggest influences of gender roles and divides in modern history
Yes but if they can milk "the gamers" a little harder every release and "the gamers" keep paying then "the gamers" get what they deserve. Every single copy of cod and teamballsport 20xx sold is just a little green light for the publishers.
Saying they didn't ask for yearly releases is kinda false, given how impatient they are, and how poorly they tend to handle delays.
"Remember the anti-capitalist themes in Final Fantasy 7?"
You think the company actually believed those things? Corporations just look at popular ideas, repackage them, and sell them back to you in a calculated risk because they know their capitalist anti-capitalist propaganda isn't actually going to effect any sort of real change.
I doubt anyone believed Square was anti-capitalist, even in 1997.
You're reading too much into the irony.
The game still had anti-capitalist themes, regardless of what Square's beliefs were.
A corporation is an entity separate from the individuals inside of it. I fully believe that some of the individuals that have created FF7 or at least wrote its story were anti-capitalist to an extent. And Square spat on all of them.
The original development team probably did. That was before they became a massive publishing company.
Art of any kind isn’t actually going to effect any sort of real change.
It can’t. If it could, every single capitalist, white-supremacist, anti-LGBT+ government (so, all of them) would ban all forms of media overnight, and people would go to war with them as a result.
Instead, here in the real world, all art can ever hope to accomplish is to either preach to the choir or to convince the gullible.
I love that "decentralized" to them means that they will be at the center reaping the rewards
This is the problem. Decentralization is good and we should all want it. Unfortunately, most people do not even seem to know what it means.
It's like a spider talking about its "decentralized" web.
Man, game companies are really committed to making me spend my money more responsibly
NFTs: imagine a world where you could provide any type of product, from a house to a car to a horse, at zero cost. and then someone decided that they should force scarcity on the world.
metaverse: a shitter version of second life. if that was all it was, it would be shitty, but it carries along all the added shit of facebook.
"play to contribute": mods exist, doom had mods, many games in the past had map kits, world builders, and other ways to allow users to show thier creativity. we even got the genre of moba thanks to user generated content. payment was never the issue. besides, if you want new voices from diverse audience of creative folks... why don't you hire them?
This is especially disgusting considering the developers of FFXIV, probably the best and most popular game SE have right now, have explicitly said multiple times that the components they need to make new servers to keep up with all the nee players are super hard to get a hold of because crypto farmers keep buying them all.
Honestly the FFXIV team is probably the only part of SE that isn't filled with horrible people.
Because Yoshi-P established so much cred when he turned that ship around that he's effectively established his own fiefdom, and the game is making money hand over fist which has kept it protected. The only compromise they got out of him was the Mogstation store, but he's been adamant about there being no way to access it in game.
I love the game, but the day the board forces him out, or kicks him upstairs to anything short of The Big Chair at the company, we know the rot will infect and absorb that game before the week is out.
@@EmperorPylades yeah i hope swuare u derstands our loyalty lies with cbu3 and where they go, so too will the playerbase.
@@princessjello They need to look to what 2021 did to Blizzard and understand the lesson: trust takes years to build, can be destroyed in seconds, and is almost impossible to regain.
FF14 is hard proof that all he execs on wild schemes to make safe money are mad, because the safe way to make game money has always been to just make a good game. FF14 has spent years focused just on making the game good and counting on the money to make itself, and now they have done such a good job of the former that they literallly can’t make any more money from it since it’s too full to sell more.
I mean the good news is that I’ve been told that FFXIV’s code is such an unmitigated mess that it seems unlikely they can integrate anything like NFTs into it.
I had avoided reading this letter, and watching this video, but had to watch it in the end.
It really hurts the soul. I've only ever played games for fun. Not to make money, not to become an esports pro or a streamer, just because I enjoy them, and the many worlds, stories and people I've met along the way have given flavour to it.
Just crushing.
I'm just one of the many artist who have had their art just stolen to be an NFT along with thousands of others. These thieves just blunder into our galleries, steal what they can and then sell it - its disgusting
That sucks, but this technology can also be used to track original owners and pay out royalties. Any new technology can be used for good or bad. I will say this, if your art NFTs are selling for a lot of money, make yourself known, prove you made the art somehow. You won't get the money but the NFTs should stop having any value to the person who stole it and in the market. No one will buy something they know was stolen. Even most original art NFTs struggle to make money. The ones which sell for a lot are very rare.
@@cgsec2275 I tried. The market place my art was stolen to sell on so far has simply ignored me
@@cgsec2275 "No one will buy something they know was stolen" my man, are you not aware of how much stolen art is in the hands of the wealthy? Hobby Lobby was just recently forced to surrender a stolen piece of art, AGAIN.
@@1337w334b00 That is completely different. That art has value because it is the original work of the artist. An accurate comparison would actually be criminals stealing a fake piece of art worth nothing. Although I know some good physical fakes may still have value, I think you get the point.
@@cgsec2275 > prove you made the art somehow
Idiotic cryptbro accidentally stumbles across The Oracle Problem without realising it. Beautiful.
> No one will buy something they know was stolen
Clearly this is demonstrably false given the current state of the NFT world, and humanity in general. If nobody bought stolen things, NOBODY WOULD STEAL THINGS NOW WOULD THEY. This is all very simple. Stop trying to turn every single human endeavour into a source of profit for ten goddamn seconds.
"play to have fun" has big "if you're only here to collect a paycheck, you're here for the wrong reason" energy
Can't wait for this to blow up in SE's faces, and I say that as someone who's been playing the FF franchise since I was a kid.
The devs make the games I like, the corporate exec pricks that have gotten the company into hot water more than once are the ones penning this letter. But hey, they make better games when they're at risk of bankruptcy.
Or at least when they, you know, still remember what that was like.
Hasn't been a good FF game since X-2
It's pretty telling that the only FF/KH game with soul and actual merit these days is the freakin' MMO.
"we buy a game, we want to play that game" it should be this simple, thankfully indies and some big companies still deliver finished products without being shitty
Agreed. I've been looking to indie games (and looking forward to them) more than Triple-A titles lately.
That said, I wish that some indie companies would at least finish their game before releasing them with a tag of "early access". I don't even bother with those games after a bad experience with one, and will only buy one marked "early access" if it's on sale since it's not worth full price anyway (even if it's one I really want to get).
literally the day before this "NFT bros" were crying about falling for day one internet scammers and losing their terrible monkey art, demanding anyone who has it should return it and that the decentralized currency they praised be regulated
Good holy fuck, this is my first exposure to the concept of "blockchain games" and I am completely flabbergasted. This is ghastly, dystopic.
Publishers: create your own fun!
Also publishers: oh you spent many hours of your time creating a mod to bring fun to the game we sold? But wait, why aren't we getting paid for this?
You're a good person, Sterling. A damn good person.
"Decentralized Gaming"
So gambling and work. Like, literally, that's how this works. The argument that you can't have fun if you're not profitting off it is literally just the conceit of gambling and labour. Both of which are not only exploitative but also being marketed to kids, __fuck everything _*_about this_*___
Pretty scuffed when the entire economy is addicted to gambling.
I mean those are the 2 things where House/Company ALWAYS wins...and we get fucked over soo of course that want that.
What's funny is that it is exactly the opposite of how motivation works. Extrinsic incentives do NOT promote more engagement, instead they make people bitter and angry about what they formerly found fun, because now the "fun" is explicitly sidelined for the "rewards". So if rewards go down at all, it triggers loss aversion, meanwhile people see themselves as working and so don't want to "work for free".
If you start paying people to play games, they will literally stop playing for fun, because human brains just work like that. Hearing a gaming exec crowing about the idea really shows how little these people know, much less care, about gaming.
"A fool is someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing". Oscar Wilde
Actually, that was Oscar Wilde's definition of a cynic.
@@GrahamChapman Yes, thank you, I was only paraphrasing and I found it fitting, but it's good to have it cleared up
@@MrHermesthethird Fair enough. Always nice to see some Oscar Wilde quotes in the comments anyway.
Highly ironic that Square Enix is going into NFTs given that it had to stop selling their highest grossing MMO product of all time, a product that's been plagued with 2k long que times, because of the hardware shortage created by NFTs.
I would expect nothing less from the company that dreamt up the single-save-use season pass for Deus Ex.
The moment i heard this i thought "Well this is just the next stage of the fee to pay, isn't it?" It's another layer smeared over the top of dlc, cash shops and loot boxes, it even claims that you can own this thing that you couldn't before like some moral high ground, "contributing to the game". The reality is that they're still foisting another cost onto us, and they nakedly proclaim their intent to try and draw in as much of the money as possible, even from third parties. Just make the game and then let me pay for it. If it's good, you'll get a lot more than you will trying to jump through hoops to grift me for more.
I f'ing hate NFTs.
I've even heard BS claims of "environmentally friendly" NFTs... which is literally impossible.
Never have I become so freaking sick of something’s exist as fast as I have f'ing NFTs.
Last thing for me like that was cryptocurrency.
FUNNY THING ABOUT THAT…
It's so funny to me, because the whole idea of selling digital art in-game has already been a thing for decades. Take Gaia Online for example. Eventually people straight-up bought pixel art, but the thing is, you could actually then GET that pixel art and make use of it by equipping it onto your little avatar to make it look cool. The more pixel art you bought, the wider your range of customization for your avatar became. So even though it was all digital, no one else had a means of re-designing your avatar with all your cool little items except you, which gave you a stronger sense of ownership. There was a genuinely pleasing and expressive function behind it. And if someone screenshot your avatar, you could literally just change how it looked a second later lol
And then Gaia Online's more-or-less crypto-gold economy got so bad that it essentially had to revert back to a bartering system. Eventually, people could never earn enough gold to buy items; they could only trade items they already had for other items that had the same perceived equal value. lmao this whole cryptocurrency trend is dumb and completely nuts.
Yeah the more I hear about it the more I feel stupid but wonder besides the harm to the environment (which is awful but far from the only complaint about NFT) what's the difference between NFT and pet sites?
People could right click and save the image, but didn't 'own' it (technically the site eternally owns the image but the person who paid for it supposedly kind of owns it) and the site records show a chain of ownership. The site claims ownership of other people's art. (And the one I worked for started basically paying only like two people USD even for things that cost users USD.)
Can anyone tell me what the difference is functionally? I fell stupid feeling this way but I wonder. Aren't pet sites scams too then?
@@chaossmith3864 I think I'd say yes, pet sites are probably scams, too, essentially. It's just like buying a pet rock. In the case of Gaia Online, the "pay for pixels" idea really only started as a "here's a thank you gift for donating to our website so that we can keep it going!" So the original intention was never that people were buying pixel art to "own" it. It was so that we could donate money to the website because we enjoyed it and wanted it to keep functioning.
And the thing is, NFTs aren't even about the art. It's just a certificate of authentication that's recorded on a digital ledger... that's it... you're spending money on a series of encryption letters documented somewhere on the internet. It's essentially even worse than "buying a jpeg"... because you're not even buying the actual jpeg! It's, again, just buying a pet rock, but some people are just deciding that some of those rocks are worth a bunch of money just because.
I think, ultimately, NFTs are really just "pretend stocks" for already-rich people.
My work requires me to read a lot of annual reports with these executive statements and I believe that these are not meant for the general public but for the investors and "speculative investors", so most of them are grim as fuck if you actually read into them.
For the love of god I hope Nintendo doesn’t do this. Luckily it’s still 2010 for them so we’ve dodged it for at least 10 years
Knowing Nintendo they will do it after the market crashes and everyone else has already gone home.
@@Flip_91FTW Oh ugh that sounds exactly like them.
If Nintendo starts doing this, I will start buying their consoles with NFTs of "money". They should like that even better than money.
Nintendo will resist, due to either ethics or inertia, just long enough for the tulip mania to crash. They might end up looking like the One Sane Man if the others take a bath on this nonsense.
@@mandisaw If they resist, it's going to have little to do with ethics lmao
What gets me is just the open brazenness of this letter. Like we’re so used to game executives use their vague, non-committal corpo-babble to try and dance around revealing their true intentions and keep up the illusion they still give a fuck about making and selling a quality video game. But this guy just jumps right in and screams the quiet part out loud that they are going to scam us and cater to only the most miserable, pathetic dregs of society instead of the fanbase they’ve cultivated over several decades by making finished, quality, poignant, _artistic_ games.
They will only get less honest from here.
It's like they forgot to run the letter through their 'corporate monster to human translator.'
And those 'pathetic dregs' solely exist to try and scam us into their dirty pile of shit. When that dries up, they move on to the next pile of shit and leave ruin in their wake. If someone comes at me with that in real life, I am punching them in the fucking face without regret.
Seriously, when I first read it (and even now tbh) i was like "i have to be misreading this, or misunderstanding this, or something. theres no way theyre really just outright saying this to our faces, they cant be *that fucking brazen*" but the truth is, they are
I love how it swaps between a first person singular and a passive plural perspective throughout. That upper class of billionaires showing that intelligence they supposedly get paid those billions for.
I'm so excited for cyrpto and NFTs to crash so hard, I really hope Square Enix falls so hard on their face that the only way they can recover from this is to have their own version of the 90s Disney renaissance. But given how corporate, greedy and fucking creatively drained the games industry is now, they're probably instead gonna get swooped up by a bigger fish in the ocean.
*cue Tencent
Eh if NFT does crash they will just go back to doing what they are already doing.
Its a win win for game publishers, when EA makes The Sims 5 an online game with NFT; if NFT crashes, they can go back to the classic adding £500 worth of DLC that people buy even though they constantly say the previous games were better.
One day without hearing about fucking NFTs would be nice. Thank god for you in this new year.
I can see them being the next new big ongoing controversy.
NFTs are literally DLC;s 2.0 which were just a cut up mutilated body of an expansion from old days. I cannot even imagine what would come after this to make a quick buck beyond NFTs.
I really am getting tired and I finally feel justified in .... yarr harring their games instead of giving them my cash.
I don't even yarr harr them anymore cos they're just not worth yarr harring. Even if I didn't pay for one of these games, it would still not be worth the time price given they're all designed to waste as much of your time as possible. If the market doesn't improve then I would not be at all surprised if for the next 50 years I end up playing the same games I've already played for the last 10 years over and over.
As a kid I couldn't buy games. As a teen I could only pirate games. As a young adult I felt bad having to pirate most games. Next I earned enough to actually Buy most of my games. I finally felt justified in playing the games I bought. I've been getting tired of their abuse over the past years, pretty much stopped buying games.... ..I... Might go full circle. It's funny, that. isn't it?
@@FroggyMosh same
‘I had a more meaningful transition in 2021…ya pricks’
Sterling has such brilliant comedic timing and nuance.
How out of touch can this company be with what actual gamers want!? I'm really happy they're getting so criticized for this letter.
It's amazing how Squeenix promises a future of NFTs, while simultaneously suffering because of NFTs. Or maybe Squeenix forgot that FF14 had to be pulled from sale because they didn't have the chips needed for the explosion in players. Because NFTs
They didn't forget shit, they did the maff.
You have to love the irony of introducing artificial scarcity into a post-scarcity system just for the sake of capitalism.
The entertainment industry already did this 20 years ago with the DMCA.
Apparently Kitase, THE GUY BEHIND FF7, is super into NFTs. The irony is killing me faster than the planet.
I love it when a publisher self-selects to go on my “nah, you’re alright mate, no thanks” list. It’s a big list. I’ve been playing more an more Indy games as AAA guys decide they want to be shitpuffins.
And I’ve never enjoyed myself so much. Small studio and Indy developed games are a total hoot.
Thank you for a most excellent new-word-of-the-day, I shall endeavour to use "shitpuffins" at least once in the next week in casual conversation.
They take more creative risks, and they're more likely to have people who love games at the helm of the decision making (instead of bloodsucking business men). That's why Indie games on the whole are a hell of a lot better.
AAAs are a dying generation as they lose our trust, and Indies are rising in quality, quantity, and popularity
I've seen so many discussions on twitter about NFT's in games, about bringing NFT's into different games, decentralization, play to earn, and whether they will be positive things (spoiler: they won't). But publishers aren't even having that discussion. To them it's as simple as seeing others leverage IP to make money. They have IP, they want money, there you go.
My favorite part was the guest cameo from Future Sterling, who popped in to tell us that the event is at 1 pm.
NFTs are the horse armour paid dlc of the modern day. Extreme outrage at the start then as the years pass they become normalised and accepted as game devs refuse to back down.
Even horse armour DLC, as ridiculous as it was, was still a material thing that translated into a visible, tangible effect on gameplay. NFTs on the other hand are imaginary “rights” to own JPEGs that people pay thousands of dollars for, which I still cannot actually fucking believe is a thing
God I hope not. I just want this fucking NFT trend to die already.
@@Jaxymann Did you just >shudder< disparage pure capitalism??? Shhhhhhh, bro they gonna hear you!
This is what they do. Move the post little by little and making us give in. Now some kids born today wouldn't believe a greying man like me if I told them you once got a full game at normal price and the first DLC was free.
@@Jaxymann I read a really good reply on an NFT tweet recently that made the more adept comparison of "NFTs in gaming are just paying to have your achievements show up in other games," and boy does it sound even stupider when it's put like that.
At this point big corporations are indistinguishable from parodies of themselves. That's Poe's law right there.
4:40, I'm actually tearing up because this is the first video of yours I've seen in years and you look so good? I started transitioning about 2 years ago and I'm just so extremely overwhelmingly happy for you
I always feared the day I become an old man yelling "BACK IN MY DAY" - what's going to be the issue that makes me not be progressive anymore? I've stood up for gay marriage, I've stood up for trans rights, and I am nonbinary, but some people checked out at some points, what's going to be my check out point? Alien rights? Robot marriage? I think I would be fine with it. Turns out, I'm going to be in the "you kids with your virtual hats" and "back in my day, we used to play games for fun" crowd, ain't I
We Used to get our virtual Hats while backstabbing heavies, for FUN.
I even ate their sandvich!
Hell Back in the day, I played original X-COM.... Yes, 90's X-COM .....Get this, For FUN!
And I *enjoyed* it.
Ho god. I'm OLD already!
Edit, the re-editing: Real talk, unexpected Windows XP startup tune had me tear up earlier today.
In my 30's and I am became old.
Yup
oh my god... i cant believe im not even 30 and im already feeling this...
I mean, it's not young people or "the new generation" pushing this, it's boomer CEOs .... Ask "The kids these days" what they think about meta or NFTs, and they'll have a similar opinion about them to us.
@@FroggyMosh 16 bits! 256 colors! only 8 buttons and a D-pad! no internet connection! and we LIKED IT! in fact, we *LOVED IT!*
There was an artist I saw recently who started to make their own NFTs of randomly-generated kobolds, on the basis of "Let's make NFTs that don't look like shit"
And it's like, that's missing literally *all the point* of NFTs. The art is irrelevant, "making good-looking NFTs" is missing the point, because the point is to scam money from dipshits. "The art is bad" isn't even in the top twenty reasons NFTs should stop existing, it's just the funniest to point out.
i think part of their appeal is that the art is laughably bad as it attracts attention, mostly negative but attention nonetheless
it's literally a part of the scam to make it seem like NFTs is about the art 💀💀💀
Never been a better time to get into Retro gaming, and tell these corporations what we think of NFT's and the Blockchain.
4:46 "Abstract"
He literally admitted he doesn't even understand any of this technology lol.
I have a feeling that this man wrote college papers for money before becoming president of SE. You could literally shrink this giant wall of corpospeak into three small sentences and lose nothing.
I work at a place with "gamer guys" who usually play every big release. They've been playing more indi more and more and expressing more criticisms of AAA companies.
NFT's: the unity asset flip of the current age.
But with more money laundering potential.
Tulip Mania for the current age.
Fate help me... Breaking this letter down is just pissing me off more. It's lawyer and corporate speak for "We're jumping on a trend to net money, but it's fake money built on a scam, so we need to basically be quick about it."
I just realized something. I have NEVER bought a Square game in all of my 35 years. I don't suspect I ever will now either.
Sterling and appropriately merciless insights into the hell of the "gaming" industry as usual.
This embrace of "meta" technology just proves how much corporations want to create a imaginary worlds that they own and control, make these fake worlds an inescapable fact of daily life in both our work and free time, and then charge us all for the "privilege" of existing in them.
Welcome to the new digital serfdom. 😮💨
"Sterling" insights indeed XP
It's funny to me that square said that Facebook changing it's name to Meta Is evidence that the so called "metaverse" is gonna be a big thing. You serious!!?
14:32 This notion that there's a limit to "User-Generated Content" is unfounded as it pertains to game mods. However, the real limiting factor of user-generated content is game companies themselves, who have gradually made their games harder to mod.
EA's Star Wars: Battlefront 2, of all games, is the last recent game I can think of that actually has a vibrant modding scene, and all those mods are client side as opposed to server side.
DICE recently released Battlefield Portal which is supposed to let players create all sorts of crazy game modes, but their other recent installments would hugely benefit from increased modding accessibility, especially with private servers.
Frankly, every major game out there would benefit from increased modding accessibility, because modders *want* to go wild with their user-generated content, whereas the real limitations are put on by the companies themselves.
Also, look at what happened to XCOM 2 in terms of mods, how XCOM's The Long War prompted Firaxis to make their sequel far more mod friendly.
They make their games harder to mod, they sue people who make good mods, and then they shrug their shoulders and go, "Why aren't people making MORE mods? It must be not enough capitalism."
The letter itself sort-of explained why there isn't more modding - not enough profit motive. Except they really meant profit for the company, not the modders.
Implementing a moddable/scriptable system represents a serious outlay of resources, and potential liability exposure if the modding can cause harm/obfuscate malware. Companies are only going to do it if they can recoup that investment - it was absurd & disingenuous for the SE president to imply that it's about anything else.
@@mandisaw Yeah, that much is true. Though it also sucks to see even smaller games like Phasmophobia purposefully make their games harder to mod because they disagree with modding.
@@corboy8414 Hmm, I don't know what the case is there, but generally it's more an issue of making a game hard to modify to prevent cheating or piracy. Modding support is usually something that has to be added, not so much prevented.
@@mandisaw Fair! I definitely see your point there, and thanks for the insight!
Between their new pricing model and this NFT scam they are being very upfront and are sending some very clear messages to avoid any of their future products.
Pirating Squeenix products is morally correct, and now they confirmed it themselves
Such a shame.. I was looking forward to FF7 HD Remake part 2 too..
Oh well, Square Enix isn't getting anymore of my money.
Ooh, here's an idea: If you must include NFTs with your games. How about making the purchase of a game into an NFT? That means once you buy a game you own it, and can resell it later too?
Also with the decentralized nature of BlockChain, you wouldn't have to keep DRM verification servers up and running, players could verify their own token all on their own, so we don't have to dread the time you kill a server?
Also, now that there is no more need for expensive centralized DRM verification, make server software available for the community in case they want to contribute. (Doesn't mean you shouldn't provide stable servers for the best experience)
No more killing online modes for games because keeping the server up and running is too expensive when you have the new hotness out...right? I mean that's a great idea if you MUST have NFTs involved somehow?
Ross from Accursed Farms wouldn't have to worry about which game is next to get killed off by its developer for being unprofitable to keep running.
"No, no not like that!"
"NF" in NFT means non-fungible, i.e. the "token" has no exchange value after purchase. You're basically proposing that people try to make money by selling the equivalent of company store scrip or Chuck E. Cheese coins in a secondary "used NFT" market, which by definition is impossible.
@@discountchocolate4577 And here I thought Non-fungible meant indivisible and non-copyable. Not Worthless.
If we go with Chuck E. Cheese coin etc. if they stopped producing them, but you kept hold of a few, it'd still be tradeable to others who for some reason seek them out. Kinda like Stamps which some people seem to want to collect and pay for.
That description of worthless is reserved for the game, being a AAA experience it more and more frequently seems that way.
You are an incredibly brave person. you've been doing game journalism for over 10 years and if it was me in your position reporting on the toxicity of the games industry I would have given up years ago.
But you... you have had the strength to keep going. The strength to keep calling out the predators and the charlatans despite the despondent state of things. The conviction that as horrible as it is to constantly see and hear, someone needs to keep shouting from the roofs. So nobody can pretend that nothing is wrong.
Keep up your good work, you shining star!
No thank you, Square Enix. All I want are good single player games with a one off cost to buy the disc (yes I prefer physical copies of games) and everything I need to play is on the disc for that single price. Have never spent a penny on in game transactions and never will.
I would like more games where the game comes as an actually finished game as well and doesn’t need five billion updates to make it functional
Woah - the marketing team just had a fun day writing this. Just cram as many trendy words as possible in it. I just filled my bingo card with buzzword for the year.
He didn't use "surfaced" my card is not complete :(
Honestly, with how obvious the evil is, I'm not sure this went through the marketing theme. There are quotations marks around the phrase: play to have fun. For. Fuck's. Sake.
So, after the modding community had run strong since the early 90's (in large part thanks to industry support from id Software), where mods even spun off into their own retail games, big publishers decided to do their best to prevent both the creation and distribution of mods in an attempt to maximize their microtransaction profits.
Over a decade later, the Square Enix president is all "why isn't modding producing as many big hits as before? Must be the lack of blockchain!"
James Stephanie 'Cassandra' Sterling. Always years ahead of everyone else and right every time.
They are right a lot of the time. Not always. Don't deify a person. Just thank god for them being here and pointing this shit out.
@@shadowpoetrk The comment is jocular, is a reference to an older episode, and doesn't imply that contrast to normal language patterns, this should be taken literally to the point of a 100% success rate when this type of language typically just means 'extremely often'. But all that said, when has Jim ever been wrong? I'm guessing there's been times here and there, but honestly, I can't think of any.
@@Gaff. Mostly smaller things like individual reviews and minor stories or bits thereof. They were right to call out Sonic Colors's bipolar ganeplay execution, but wrong to see its story as an improvement over those of the other post-Saturn Sonics when in truth, excepting Adventure 1, Shuffle, the Advances and Heroes which did Sonic storytelling right, Colors's story was just shitty in the opposite direction, like a bastard modern take on the DiC cartoon Adventures of Sonic The Hedgehog. And them missing the one-sided tone of the original version of Kotaku's Metroid Dread emulation article (though, knowing them and their anti-corpo view, they'd probably praise that version anyway for that exact reason).
@@CarbonRollerCaco Huh, sadly I can't really engage as I haven't played these games. I will say my favourite game of all time may be Evil Within 1 and I think it should have been praised a lot more for being such a unique game in an industry saturated with games that largely play the same, though that was hardly something only Sterling did.
9:13 I mean even that's not new. They've been in the general entertainment business since Spirits Within with Square Pictures, which got merged with their Visual Works cutscene studio and is now Square Enix Image Studio Division. They're still making the occasional movie as they worked on Kingsglaiive (which is part of the chopping up of FFXV I mentioned in a previous comment...).