A “Project Report” reveals how Square Enix imagines the mysterious NFT game Symbiogenesis. To no one's surprise, the plan is for a monetized hamster wheel hell, giving it a decidedly dystopian twist.
What exactly players can and should do in Symbiogenesis is still unknown, but ultimately unimportant. However, the report by LGG, a “Web3 games guild” from Japan, linked by Square Enix in the game’s official Discord, as far as can be seen a mixture of player association and lobbying, already shows what players can expect in the area of monetization. The concept doesn't look pretty.
Count NFT wins
According to the report (PDF), Square Enix has taken an idea or two from grind-heavy free-to-play games. However, additional purchases are implemented as NFTs and integrated into the gameplay. “NFT-based entertainment” is to be offered here. It works like this: The story of Symbiogenesis is told in six chapters, in which players have to solve tasks and missions based on stories that are published daily. If you solve these on the highest difficulty levels, you can accumulate NFT items that are needed to be allowed to participate in a “world mission”. Here only three individual players can determine the course of the story for all players.
According to the report, this is made easier by information contained in a total of 10,000 NFTs on the individual game characters. They give tips and hints. However, only their owner can see them, and they can decide whether to keep them for themselves or share them – this is how the current tension between monopolization and parts of the financial world is depicted in the game, Square Enix transforms the game into a metaphor for NFTs.
Since later missions can only be solved by increasingly large teams, the “information war” should also become a relevant level. In addition, the character NFTs make it easier to gain higher ranks and new rewards. So they have value, both gamically and financially, as eligibility to join a World Mission, as well as the NFT items required to enter, can be traded for real Ged. Bonuses for daily logins and other tricks of the free-to-play corner should not be missing. Last but not least: If you own character NFTs, it will be easier to get the new NFTs of the next game chapter. The hamster wheel in the design becomes obvious here at the latest.
Pay-to-Win per design
The slides also explain the mechanisms the game uses to keep demand for all NFTs high. It is emphasized that character NFTs are designed to give owners an advantage and increase prices and demand. It is also clearly formulated that players who want to play the world mission are pressured to buy these NFTs. However, according to the report, it is not pay-to-win, because you do not win more automatically that way. This is the usual publisher definition of the concept, which says that no game on the market ever uses such mechanics. Basically, however, the concept meets the general definition of pay-to-win: the achievement of gaming advantages through the use of money.
Who actually asked about this “completely new kind” of NFT-based entertainment cannot be answered clearly from the slides. According to the meaning of the statements, flowchart-supported management levels come into question, because not a word is said about the game, the entertainment. Instead, it describes how players are lured to play regularly, how artificial values and purchase incentives are to be created, which reads surreal at this point, especially since it is the only concrete information about the game that is in circulation: the prospect of maximizing profits through the hamster wheel -Mechanics. It can already be said that Symbiogenesis will be a dystopian cyberpunk game, the NFT concept – who would have thought it – the starting signal for microtransactions 2.0.
CB-Funk Podcast Episode #11 : Annoying account constraints and falling graphics card prices