Square Enix Doesn’t Think Games Should Be Fun Anymore And That Should Scare Us

thegamer.com:

We’re less than 24 hours into 2022 and a triple-A publisher has already bombarded us with a tidal wave of corporate bullshit. I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised - this isn’t the first time a major company has released a well-meaning letter to ring in the new year filled with tiresome language and trendy terminology focused on a cynical pursuit of profits and literally nothing else.

It’s a load of overblown nonsense, but even by that metric, this new blog post from Square Enix CEO Yosuke Matsuda really takes the cake. I hope I don’t get blacklisted for saying this, but a rhetoric surrounding the metaverse, NFTs, and other damaging concepts as the future of games can sincerely get fucked. This ain’t it, Square Enix.

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Working in games you grow used to the nonsense of major publishers, whether it concerns the abuse of microtransactions or a pandering reliance on nostalgia in the absence of innovative new ideas. Live-service games launch in broken states while misleading marketing cycles result in titles being released long before they’re ready for the public eye. These are all predictable controversies that we’ll see run the track time and time again, but the corporate embrace of NFTs and the metaverse feel different. It feels like we’ve gone too far.

You can read the letter for yourself here, and I’ll give you a pat on the back if you make it past the first two sentences without curling into a ball and rolling off a cliff. Matsuda begins his boomer-centric tirade by talking about the Metaverse, touching on Facebook’s rebranding and how online spaces like this will soon breach the gaming sphere and have a substantial impact on Square Enix’s wider business model.