What does it mean to play to earn instead of playing to have fun?

I’ve been mulling this one over ever since the president of Square Enix, Yosuke Matsuda, penned this missive on the subject, and I’m no closer to a real understanding of how it is a good idea to move away from the model of people playing games because they are an enjoyable pastime and towards a model that says you should be playing games to get a tangible reward. Never mind the idea of ‘play to contribute’ that is brought up in the open letter — the whole goal seems to be to release a game where the majority of content is created by users, in an attempt to be rewarded for that creation in a token based economic system, rather than for players to engage with a game in the hope of enjoying the game or out of what he calls ‘inconsistent personal feelings of goodwill and volunteer spirit’ — in other words, making games a job.

We joke about games being like a second job, but I never thought I would see the president of a company currently making one of the biggest MMO’s in the world come right out and say that yes, not only should games be a job, but they should be a job you’re paid for in magic beans. And even more confusing for me is the notion that people playing games because they like to play games is some trifling inconsistency and that it is better to make games deliberately for the players to actually do the work of creating the gameplay — I mean, why would you even make a game if you felt like it should be toil for the player?

But I’m willing to admit I do not really understand where President Yosuke Matsuda is going with this. What kind of game is he envisioning? What kind of game do you envision when you see phrases like ‘play to earn’ or ‘play to contribute’ used as a descriptor? What will gaming look like if this is the future of gaming?