Thread by @gregorywitek

The president of Square Enix (Final Fantasy games and more) wrote about play-to-earn and NFTs as upcoming major trend in gaming in 2022. A large part of the letter feels like crypto bros' wet dreams, but a small part there could lead to something positive:

The bad parts are obviously that they want to shove NFTs and blockchain in players' faces, which I believe is a dangerous and completely unnecessary trend.

Also saying that goodwill and volunteer spirit are inconsistend in comparison with willing to make money makes me cringe

I don't think that play-to-earn will make games more exciting, instead it'll turn them into weird worlds with little to no authentic enthusiasm. It's like a party where some guests are there to have fun and some are hired actors, but you don't know who's who.

So now the good part: making games more open might make them more exciting. Instead of play-to-earn we can have create-to-earn. Let creators add new decorative items to the games and sell them. Let them create new maps, and sell them as limited editions.

Those creators won't be farming gold in the games, they don't need to play, they can make the games better by enriching the worlds. Roblox partially does it, but AFAIK does not let creators set any prices, just gives them some cut of the game profits

Final thought: none of this require a public blockchain. A transparent in-game system be effective and it can provide security mechanisms that will protect both creators and the players (something that blockchains delegate to end users with very poor effects)

Full letter here in case you want to read it: hd.square-enix.com/eng/news/2022/…

Warning: a lot of eye-rolling content