The 2022 Furnishing Design Contest for FFXIV has finally closed and, perhaps not surprisingly, lots of players really love interior design. So much so that Square Enix actually selected 153 winners for the contest (over 50 more than planned) and showed off all the new concepts. You can see them for yourself right now by going to the winner page on the official Final Fantasy XIV website.
I personally don’t love it when major companies request free design work from fans (Square Enix receives the rights to all submissions and may decide to implement them in-game in the future, win or lose, though the winners did receive a free in-game item). And there’s no doubting that much of the winning concept art is truly exceptional; many of the pieces have the professional quality you’d expect from concept artists already working on their own games.
At the very least, it’s still nice to be able to see so many awesome decoration designs in one place. Hopefully the artists involved will also be able to use the attention for future opportunities — at the bare minimum.
There’s a lot to sift through with so many winners. Though some of my personal favorites include the “Cactuar Punchingbag” by artist Med, a virtual oden stall by user Mireille, and a “magic armor dock” by Sakura (please note that many of the entries and artist names are written in Japanese and I apologize if I’ve gotten the translation slightly wrong in some cases).
You can see all the entries for yourself on The Lodestone, too! Just be aware that most of the art is extremely high resolution. That means it might take a while for certain images to load even with a fast connection. Feel free to let us know if you have any particular favorites from the contest in the comments below, too!
