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Comment by pavlov | Hacker News Reader

"Investments in blockchain, AI, and the cloud" sounds like they have absolutely no idea what they should do, and will spend most of the money paying very expensive consultants who produce delirious slideware about web3 metaverse opportunities.

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I think that's just pandering. The markets expect to hear this line and will punish the stocks of tech companies that don't show some kind of investments into this kind of stuff.

They'll make some NFT-based card game with advanced self-learning AI opponents just to tick all the right boxes.

Why? Because enough VCs/Hedge Funds have bought into the lie that is crypto or “AI”. Is this some kind of economic extortion?

Yes, precisely. Executives want to pump the stock price because it's a large part of their compensation. Many Hedge funds/VCs want to invest in "innovative" companies .

Famously: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/21/long-island-iced-tea-micro-c...

More recently, insider trading and pump-and-dump charges.

https://www.sec.gov/litigation/litreleases/2018/lr24201.htm

https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2021-121

Penny stock frauds like that are more about ripping off retail.

Traditional values are gossip based pseudoscience. The majority will never dig deeper, so it works, but what’s more they’ll never understand the nuance so why bother? Stick with gossip.

VCs reward investments into all that horse hockey, because VCs reward investments into it. It's greater fools all the way down, a weird self-fulfilling prophecy.

I still remember when companies proudly claimed their software contains XML and therefore is worth unicorn dollars

Crucially they don't need to buy the lie themselves, they only need to believe others will.

More like a race to the bottom. If everyone else is e.g. using Bahamian tax shelters, and your company explicitly states that it won't do that, then your company's stock price will go down, because the market predicts that without those "table stakes", your company is not going to be competitive with all the companies who are willing to do that. (Whether that's true or not is irrelevant; it's only about whether the market believes it's true.)

The most distressing aspect of the current bull run has to be that it's difficult to point to concrete examples/products that use the best buzzwords.

Web3? Show me an application which isn't just trying to sell some other crypto scam. Why can't I know simply access a web 3.0 web page, is the web 3 not the web?

AI? I see lots of ML in products these days, but calling it AI is ... extreme. Products that look like they could match the description are relatively far from commercial viability.

The market and real estate systems in FF14 are indicative that Square Enix's creative units either have no idea whatsoever about how economies work, or no interest in making theirs fit for purpose. Their efforts in this direction are easily derided as painfully limited, crude, naive, and dysfunctional, certainly one of the least well designed aspects of the experience. This stands in stark contrast to the thoughtful, detailed design evident in gameplay and world-building exhibited by much of the rest of the game. The supply-chain economies and sophisticated markets found in some other MMOs put it to shame.

The buzzword vomit from their CEO is simply a continuation of this trait.

Except that the other MMO economies are horrible to play in. FFXIV is a lot more fun than say GW2 economy driven game.

Subjective you'd say? Maybe but it does show that maybe they know better about what a game needs than you think.

Subjective perhaps, but I don’t think the soft soap stands up to scrutiny. Case in point, witness the absolute fiasco of this month’s “property lottery”. A shitshow of bad design, disastrous implementation, and consequently failed rollout, which somehow won’t be resolved for weeks. As for the market; anyone who tries to run a shop is in for a world of pain, forced to micromanage their listings using the clunkiest of tools, in an unstable market with limited price signals and irrational competitors. Fun? No sir. It’s a pain in the ass.

I can’t speak to GW2, but cherry-picking something you clearly think is worse sets a very low bar. I don’t accept that meeting a low standard is a reasonable expectation. A long long time ago I used to help run an Eve:Online corporation, and there the sophisticated economy and market systems made for a vastly richer player experience.

The point being, Square Enix can’t be taken seriously when they talk about in-game economic structures. Their track record is one of incompetence and indifference.

FFXI had a better economy, but it comes down to the fact they don't seem to want money to matter in FFXIV. The game hands it out like free candy but it's only really worthwhile on cosmetics unless you buy into day 1 gear. Couple that with vertical gear progression and nothing is exciting - it's all the same items with different names and higher numbers. I'm not sure how they can even improve it with the game being how it is.

Housing is another matter, they mention server strain but given their past comments on what is and isn't possible (like showing what items you own), coupled with their terrible netcode, I'm inclined to not trust them on this one. As you say they are great at the game side of things, but seem to struggle with the tech side.

Those seem like obvious areas of research for a next generation game developer. Perhaps you are overreacting because of a culturally normative skepticism toward the word "Blockchain"

Veteran game developer here: What makes "ai" and "the cloud" obvious areas of research for a next generation game developer? Games have had "AI" for decades and we've had neural net hardware on GPUs for years and years now which gets used for things like upscaling, global illumination, etc. "the cloud" has been available for ages and games already use cloud hosting extensively where it makes sense.

All I see here are buzzwords and abstract terms that mean literally nothing as an investment unless your goal is to impress investors and specialist press. The blockchain is not going to do anything to streamline game development or improve game quality, all it can do is provide new monetization options... but traditional gacha games already make a truckload of money, so it's questionable whether the cost of moving into blockchain is reasonable for a company like Square Enix that can already rake it in via microtransactions.

"games have had ai for decades and the cloud has existed for years" is not a reason why research in those areas is pointless.

Your failure to, as you admit, see these topics as anything other than "buzzwords" all but confirms my original opinion of a cultural skepticism.

I don't think the OP said those things were pointless, only that they are already actively used in industry standard approaches.

FWIW I agree with the assessment, the terms are broad, generic and have no specific connotation for gamedev. It's not oriented at anyone in industry since you'd talk about specifics and not the "cloud", "ai", or "blockchain".

For AI, it's mostly machine learning that's attractive today. physically based animation will probably be the next big breakthrough to finally reign in the increasingly burdensome costs of asset production. It's been around for years in various white papers, but it's only recently starting to show up in commercial products.

Cloud is simply what it is in other media: having your device be a thin client that the developers/hardware manufacturers deliver your media to. I know it's a thorny topic for enthusiasts, but it's very likely in 2 decades' time that most players won't be using a dedicated console nor gaming computer to play AAA games. "Netflix of Gaming" is too attractive a title in this multibillion dollar industry to not pursue.

Square Enix may not be looking to host those games, but it's had this tech around for a while and probably wouldn't mind being a middleman: https://www.destructoid.com/project-flare-square-enixs-cloud...

>so it's questionable whether the cost of moving into blockchain is reasonable for a company like Square Enix that can already rake it in via microtransactions.

TBF Square Enix's MO for the last 30+ years is to try and be on the cutting edge as a market leader. It may not make financial sense, but they've constantly made huge gambles. Some paying off huge, some bombing hard, and a few almost bankrupting the company.

As an engine programmer, I can't help but admire the ambition in an age where so many studios seem to instead rely on Unity or Epic to leverage that for them. But it also makes me wonder how long until the company flies too close to the Sun.

>"Netflix of Gaming" is too attractive a title in this multibillion dollar industry to not pursue.

"Netflix of Gaming" title has not aged well from years ago. Today's perception of Netflix is very negative and trend is negative as well. Tbh, negative perception of Netflix did not came from Netflix as tech company. It came from content production side. Game industry is a content heavy business and giving up IP and studios is net perceived loss. Its very strange when real value is replaced with buzzwords.

As engine programmer myself i cant pretend i understand content side of the business well. And as someone who finally cancelled Netflix subscription I am biased ofc.

Pick a hapless MBA-equipped middle manager at Oracle or IBM or some other washed-up corporate hell, and ask them what are important technology trends. The answer will be some variation of “blockchain, AI, cloud.”

It’s not encouraging if high-level leaders at a game studio can’t articulate their vision any better than that.

again, you are making casual comparisons to your existing impression of companies using buzzwords. this reveals a cultural bias, as i am trying to explain.

you are not directly impugning one of the best game development studios in history in any way, despite seemingly thinking so...

what you are revealing is merely your sentiment about these terms

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