Square Enix looking into Kickstarter and Greenlight for

Publisher Square Enix recognise the need for greater interaction between game creators and the community, with the company looking to Kickstarter and Greenlight as ideal models to study and learn from.

Kickstarter is a way to ”unite marketing and development together,” allowing interaction while development is on-going. Valve’s Steam and Greenlight are ”also very interesting” for that fan connection.

How exactly Square plan on utilizing the growing trend of developer/fan interaction and dialogue is unknown, as it’s unlikely they’d be all that welcome on Kickstarter.

”There is a crowdfunding website called Kickstarter, which does not only serve as a method of financing for developers, but I believe should also be seen as a way to unite marketing and development together by allowing us to interact with customers while a game is in development,” said senior executive managing director Yosuke Matsuda.

”Valve’s Steam Greenlight and Early Access, are also very interesting, in that they raise the frequency by which we interact with customers, increasing their engagement and reflecting customer needs. We are also looking at what initiatives are possible from this perspective. What should we present to our customers before a game is finished, how can our customers enjoy this, and how do we connect this to profitability, is something we are thinking about implementing, and which can improve our asset turnover in the process.”

Customers of Square Enix are treated with a wall of silence by comparison, he said, with investment needing to be recovered in a very short window of time - hurting sales and profitability.

”One could go as far as to say that in today’s times, making customers wait for years with little to no information is being dishonest to them. We’re no longer in an age where customers are left in the dark until a product is completed. We need to shift to a business model where we frequently interact with our customers for our products that are in‐development and/or prior to being sold, have our customers understand games under development, and finally make sure we develop games that meet their expectations,” he continued.

Final Fantasy fans are notoriously kept in the dark for extremely long periods of time, with many left wondering if the project has been scrapped or completely reworked from scratch. Even studios known for their silence are beginning to open up more, like Rockstar with Grand Theft Auto.

Silence is no longer golden, it’s a shortfall in sales.