This is what it looks like to completely freefall
Sometime you'll see an old friend going through a tough time and spiralling into a pit entirely of their own creation, a piteous, upsetting sight as the person you once knew and respected is swallowed up completely leaving a torn doll of a person behind. A good friend might reach out to such a person, stand by them in their time of triumph or maybe just support them through whatever it is their going through in the knowledge that with the loving hand of another you might just ease their burdens. I am not a good friend. But then, Square Enix was never my friend anyway, so the entirely analogy is a bunch of moot hogwash. The point is that Square Enix have done lost their damn minds and I am utterly fascinated by it. You've probably heard the big thing, but I want to cover all of it as quickly as possible, how Square fell from a paragon of game development into a merry-go-round on fire.
Starting on this year, but acknowledge this obvious goes back further, things were definitely up when Square Enix made it abundantly clear that they wanted to take a look at developing for this whole NFT thing that the kids were talking about. I covered this. Matsuda declared in a holiday statement that the terms NFT and Metaverse were not fad-like buzzwords, destined to blow away with the wind, but ultimate paradigm shifts to the way that entertainment operates that he wanted to capitalize on. Now, despite evidence to the contrary, and the dissent of the public they rely on to make a living, Square Enix was set in this path towards doom; but I don't think anyone out there knew quite just how off the deep end Square was ready to dive, else all the gaming giants would've hosted a serious intervention within the week.
Then Square published their new live service money maker alongside their partners at Platinum Games, Babylon's Fall, which is sizing up to be a legendary AAA flop. But not to worry, they've got 'Final Fantasy Origins: Strangers ganging up on Paradise' to make up the difference! Oh, that's one of the worst selling Final Fantasy spin-offs in Japan. To quote a regional museum manger from a show about a mentally ill Egyptian avatar; "It's all been a bit of a struggle for you recently, eh?" What were their most recent titles? Chocobo GP? Yeah, that was a PR disaster, as I've talked about. Triangle Strategy? Wait, that's out already? Crap, I need to pick that up pronto... The 'Legend of Mana' Remake, that was a little underwhelming. Balan's Wonderland? Oh boy, one of the worst professional games of the decade. Marvel's Avengers? A flop. Guardian's of the Galaxy? Underperformed. Deus Ex? Hasn't been seen for over half a decade. Can Square make any good games anymore?
And circling back on that Balan's Wonderland thing for a moment here, can we talk about all the controversy surrounding that title for a moment? Yuji Naka, former lead programmer on the original Sonic the Hedgehog, ex-head of Sonic Team and director of Balan's Wonderland, came out to declare the state of the game was largely due to Square's machinations. They pulled him from the game a handful of months before launch and refused to allow for any internal course correction even when it was abundantly clear that this title was a steaming turd. Not for a smatter of bugs that made it hard to endure, but for a lack of core gameplay mechanics at all. It was a finished game with no interesting gameplay. An utter failure of an entertainment product. And Square Enix wanted to publish that thing! Plus, in doing so they may have forced Yuji Naka into early retirement, so no thanks for that one, Square.
But somehow all of that pales in comparison to the most recent news. You've probably already heard about it: Square Enix is selling off three of it's biggest western studios, with their IPs, for $300 million, a vast underestimation of their combined worth from the eye of the largely amateur public. That's Eidos Montreal, Crystal Dynamics and Square Montreal (but not DONTNOD for some reason) going to someone called Embracer Group who I've never even heard of before but they seem to be a decentralised agency of some sort, it seems like a very hands-off organisation in this field. And with the sales of these studios Square is losing Tomb Raider, Legacy of Kain (which they haven't made a game for in a decade) and Deus Ex. As well as the studios behind those two prospective Marvel titles that Square tried and failed to make a buck on.
And what is the reason behind this surprise sell? Well typically one can only speculate, but Square have very much outed themselves in the documents declaring the sale. They want to free themselves up from the Western market in order to focus on building their blockchain technology. Yes, ladies and gents: they're going full NFT. What we're witnessing is a full psychotic break from Square Enix's leadership. For the past few years Square has had no idea how to make money from Western games, which is why they've sold off for so cheap in the first place. And with this utter shift into downright ignominy, it's looking like Square are charging directly off the cliff and willing to end their whole dominance in the video game market altogether chasing a fruitless pipedream.
Make no mistake, this is a sacrificing of their Western audience. Square can try and downplay the utmost disgust that the western world has treated NFTs and unwanted blockchain implementation for 'play to earn' but the numbers don't lie. Of the minuscule amount of the population that even engages in crypto currency, less than a percentage of that group also meddles with NFTs. And within that NFT perusing subset, much of the big money going around is just wash trading, so this is a blatantly futureless bubble just waiting to burst in devastating fashion. I'm no great analyst either, I'm just a hobbyist. This infomation is right out there for anyone to read and people do, or they have it read to them, and it fuels their distaste for this sort of practice making Western fans utterly, diametrically, opposed to Square's new direction. But I can only speak of Western markets given my familiarity, what about the East?
Again I don't know personally, but my limited understanding always seems to assert that Eastern gamers were largely fans of Mobile games that are free-to-play and feature freemium elements. Titles that bleed your wallet with tiny microtransactions here and there, which build up into huge expenditures overtime, but languish as cheap time savers in the moment. NFTs are not microtransactions. They are expensive investment sinks costing anyway from hundreds to thousands of dollars and technological knowhow to even engage with them in the first place. You need to know what the Blockchain is, how to operate a wallet, what gas fees are. Casuals aren't going to be tuned into this world unless it takes over the niche world enough to become mainstream, and the niche world are too clued up on what NFTs really are to except it. The dumb people are too dumb to operate NFTs and the smart people are too smart to fall for it; so who exactly are Square's new target audience?
What we're witnessing could very well be the beginning of the end for Square's leading position in the gaming industry as they chase that White Rabbit all the way down the hole into obscurity. I only pray that some angel investor swoops Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts from their grasp in case they go truly insane and actually sink the company. (Let them keep 'Dragon Quest'; I never could figure out the appeal of that series) Trailblazers and trendsetters can all to often confuse their delusion for pretentions of grandeur and those too timid to stand up and offer genuine logical criticism are doomed to sink and suffer with them. There are plenty of dreamers, but only a handful of revolutionaries in the world, someone needs to teach that lesson to these NFT dreamers so that one day they may finally be able to look at a metal digging instrument with a wooden handle and successfully identify a spade
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