Final Fantasy XIV's Naoki Yoshida On NFTs

On Friday, Final Fantasy XIV's producer and director Naoki Yoshida (aka YoshiP) hosted the 68th Producer Live Letter. Before the actual stream, the technical staff conducted some testing, during which Yoshida told a story about an interview with a Japanese business publication. Anyone following my coverage of Pearl Abyss earnings calls can guess the subject. That's right, the metaverse. The lack of NFTs was a surprise.

Of course, Twitch chat was opposed to the idea of NFTs in Final Fantasy XIV. But what about Yoshida? I figured I'd transcribe what I see on YouTube. The first quote directly relates to the interview and starts at 25:16.

We're hearing things. We're seeing the comments in Twitch saying, "No NFTs! No NFTs!" But just wanted to clarify like NFTs and the metaverse are like unrelated to each other. And what we're discussing here [the metaverse] is a bit more interesting that that.

There's no way we are going to be including -- we're not going to be including NFTs in 14. So please, I think we can drop the subject. We need to calm down a little bit.

A few minutes later, Yoshida returned to the subject (at 30:58 of the video).

We did notice a lot of reactions from, especially from the western users about the NFTs. Many comments about how you are opposed to NFTs. I do understand that our CEO Matsuda had commented on the concept of NFT in his New Years greetings, in his messaging. There may be a bit of sensitivity, a little bit of nervousness happening around the topic.  

I did mention it earlier but basically how Final Fantasy XIV is designed, we don't intend on incorporating any sort of NFT element in the game at this point. So if anybody is worried or concerned about it, I can clearly state at this time we do not have any intentions to incorporate that into the game. 

But looking at how people are reacting to the subject matter, there also seems to be a good amount of people who may have misconstrued that this is something like a mining effort that is something you are digging up. And there might be some misconception of what exactly an NFT is. 

If there is an opportunity to speak to the subject of NFTs in an interview that is completely unrelated to Final Fantasy XIV. Because it is an opportunity for a new business model and I do believe that the vehicle itself could potentially be something that makes the concept of a video game a little bit more interesting. But that being said, we would need a specific game design that would accommodate for that concept of NFTs. So if there ever is an opportunity to go into it in deeper detail I would  like to talk about it. There's a potential of utilizing it without going in a wrong direction or a bad direction. 

With any sort of video game, I think before we even talk about the financials or monetary discussions, we need to make sure the game itself is fun. Are there fans of the game? That is a very important piece that we need to keep in mind with games. 

Again, no NFTs in FFXIV so don't worry. 

Honestly, I'd rather write about happier topics like the renewal of the free trial of Final Fantasy tomorrow. Did you know starting tomorrow, you can play through the entirety of A Realm Reborn and the award-winning Heavensward expansion up to level 60 for FREE with no restrictions on play time? Or course, for those wishing for a more solo-friendly experience, they might want to wait until patch 6.1 drops sometime in April. But that's a subject for another post.