A letter to Square

I really don't think that celebrating what was good with SE, criticizing what was bad, and asking for more good, is "pandering to the rage".

But hey, to each their own.


(And yeah, that's a cop out. )

http://i193.photobucket.com/albums/z..._House_gif.gif

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Abriael

The difference between me and "The problem" is that I simply don't try to speak for everyone. I have quite a bit of experience, but my opinions are mine, and I don't need to hide behind crutches like "the majority" or "the fanbase" to give them solidity. They speak on their own without the need of made up pseudo-statistics to compound them.

---

...and yet I'm not sure where you are going with any of it.

What I've been saying is that they weren't trying "to speak for everyone."
I can't take you seriously since you started with this "hive mind" thing. lol

Also it took a few bland posts later to find out a minuscule amount of the reason for your comment on the video.

This is definitely a sensitive issue, but I think it is nice to see how everyone responds to this.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Hohenheim

This is definitely a sensitive issue, but I think it is nice to see how everyone responds to this.

---

The only issue now is that apparently multiple people can't share the same opinion. lol
Which apparently results in them trying to speak for everyone and not just themselves I guess.


FOR THE SWARM!!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Xeonerable

The only issue now is that apparently multiple people can't share the same opinion. lol

---

Nope. How dare you have a different opinion Xeon >.<

The gall of these so-called journalists, trying to present what they believe to be what people want to hear! THE ABSOLUTE NERVE!

*cough*

http://kartiksingh1992.files.wordpre...h-laurie-8.gif

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Vilhem

Nope. How dare you have a different opinion Xeon >.<

---

Hey Vil how you been I haven't seen you since 1.0 closed. :P

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Xeonerable

Hey Vil how you been I haven't seen you since 1.0 closed. :P

---

Been pretty good, just here and there, catchin up on schoolwork and stuff >_>b Hoping to have more fun times on Balmung when ARR relaunches <3

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Vilhem

Been pretty good, just here and there, catchin up on schoolwork and stuff >_>b Hoping to have more fun times on Balmung when ARR relaunches <3

---

Yeah I can't wait either, I hope to see most of balmung in ARR too. I have lots of work to do too since its almost the end of the semester. Got a little sidetracked with this thread but it felt like practice analyzing an opinion and giving my own opinion about it. I'm hoping this thread just turns into Denmo's collection of House gifs though.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Abriael

Agreement is no proof of validity. Journalism isn't an election (as much as some definitely interpret it as such, and their articles are more pseudo-political and demagogic for the sake of personal popularity than anything else) A lot of people agreed with the maya doomsday theories, and we're still here.

There's no one way to create editorial content of course. There's the solid way based on facts and balance, and there's the hyperbolic way based on alarmism, fanboyism, negativity bias, fearmongering and false/warped information.

One of the best examples of the second kind is what you can define "pandering to the rage", to which pretty much both videos linked in this thread belong (the first a bit less, the second a lot more). It's a very easy and cheap tactic that consists in encouraging and agreeing with the most enraged/irrational areas of the reader/viewer base in order to catalyze the negativity and gain quick consensus while fanning the flames of ire and controversy, no matter if the positions expressed have any degree of validity or not.

The first is legit journalism, the second is tabloid scribbling. If you want to base your perception of the industry on the second you're free and entitled to do so (it's more controversial, and many absolutely love controversy), but that view will be as warped as its source.

To each their own.

---

Well, why don't you try writing or speaking an editorial of your own disproving the guy's claims? I mean, it's one thing to call an editor's words or expressed opinions "cheap tactics", but in reality, that's just an opinion. If something the guy said was blatantly wrong, then try telling everyone what it was, ans give us the sources that disprove the guy? Otherwise, you end up seeming like you're simply raging at someone for no reason other than you don't like what they had to say.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Xeonerable

The only issue now is that apparently multiple people can't share the same opinion. lol
Which apparently results in them trying to speak for everyone and not just themselves I guess.


FOR THE SWARM!!

---

I agree!

http://fc05.deviantart.net/fs71/f/20..._RyanKasor.jpg

Okay, so inb4lock and also here's my 2 gil on this.

As far as what I can see Abriael has a problem with being spoken for as a member of a fan base. The problem with that is, you will be spoken for by a publicized source whether you give your consent or not. That's just journalism. Using words to describe a population as a whole is easier when you listen or read what the majority of people are saying inside that community.

Let's think about it in a simplified statistic example.

From one of Abriael's posts he mentioned not all gamers use the internet. In a sense this is true. If 99.(9 repeating)% of gamers use the internet, there may be that .(leading 0)1% that does not. From that isn't it easier to make the generalization without arguing semantics to say that "all gamers use the internet"? So given our situation. Most of the community has negative opinions about the quality of play that the franchise has had recently.

So given that majority we as a community are seen as having that opinion and thus are written about in that context.

The loudest of voices will always be heard the clearest. So if you protest about being written about in a majority, stand out. Get published. Make the people hear the other side of the story. You don't need to justify your opinions to have them, just be ready for the majority disagreement.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Denmo

The gall of these so-called journalists, trying to present what they believe to be what people want to hear! THE ABSOLUTE NERVE!

*cough*

---

No such thing as bad publicity I guess.

Too lazy to make a confession bear but: I actually enjoyed FFXIII.
That video wasn't very good. It's obvious he took some real time to word out his letter, but it was way too overgeneralized. He could have just said "Older games were better. This new stuff is crap! Please make betterer games again."
While many of the older 8-Bit SE games have a special place in my memories, it's sort of silly to put them on the pedestal most put them on.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Doki

Too lazy to make a confession bear but: I actually enjoyed FFXIII.
That video wasn't very good. It's obvious he took some real time to word out his letter, but it was way too overgeneralized. He could have just said "Older games were better. This new stuff is crap! Please make betterer games again."
While many of the older 8-Bit SE games have a special place in my memories, it's sort of silly to put them on the pedestal most put them on.

---

I liked 13 and 13-2 myself but while the video doesn't 100% speak for me it's not entirely off. I agreed with a lot of it except that one part. I understand a large part of the player base really hate the direction SE is going with FFs and I cannot say FF is doing fantastic but I can say it's not the best or the worst.

I am saddened at the lack of SE games and the milking of Hitman and Tomb raider, I mean come on there is only so many times I can stare at Laura Croft do her fancy climbing and that ship sailed years ago. I was pleased with some of their older released in the past 10 years like Lost Odyssey, Kingdom Hearts and so on but they were few an far between. I mean looking at the games they put out in the last 7 years 90% of them are spin-offs or iOS re-releases of older games with a few good games.

The link is a bit passive aggressive I think.. Narrator seems a little hung up on not having an appreciation for FFXIII. They mention that SE shouldn't be scared to try new things, however when you think about that FFXIII was "different" and that is what people were up in arms about, it kind of negates their point I think.

I agree that they should be free to try new things however I think as players we have a part in this too as far as our own enjoyment level. Those nostalgic rose tinted glasses are hard to get past sometimes, but we need to be objective enough to know that if we ask for something "new and different" then we shouldn't be surprised by what we get, and we shouldn't expect to automatically love everything "new and different" that they come out with.

The idea that if we don't "love" everything they put out somehow means that SE is failing is requiring a bit much in my opinion. The reason why Final Fantasy has touched so many is because not every title is the same.

My opinion matches that of the OP video. I didn't find it pretentious and condescending at all (though half of the rest of this thread surely is), and I don't see why "Square" would either.

I'm fully confident ARR will reaffirm S-E's place in the MMO market. I'm hoping that XV returns with excellent game-systems, characters and storyline (which I sadly missed in XIII).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Valkyriesin

An interesting and in-depth look at the gaming industry trends right now compared to the past. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZxXEidtxHk

---

It was interesting, but several things bothered me about this.

First was the length. 33 minutes? It didn't have that much info, and it repeated video segments and revisited previous statements a lot. Second, it presented various facts but seemed to draw dubious connections and conclusions.

It was sort of halfway between a TV "fluff piece" (i.e. light info, entertaining presentation) and persuasive argument, but did neither very well.

Compare it with this blog/article, which presents much of the same relevant info but focuses on a coherent point in far less time.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Denmo

The gall of these so-called journalists, trying to present what they believe to be what people want to hear!

---

And here I thought that Journalists should present things as close as possible to what they are, and not what some people "want to hear"

But what do I know...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Xeonerable

The only issue now is that apparently multiple people can't share the same opinion. lol
Which apparently results in them trying to speak for everyone and not just themselves I guess.

---

There's a difference between saying that "multiple people" share the same opinion (for the law of large numbers, multiple people will share almost any opinion) and trying to represent a majority or a "the fans".

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SkyeWindbinder

Well, why don't you try writing or speaking an editorial of your own disproving the guy's claims? I mean, it's one thing to call an editor's words or expressed opinions "cheap tactics", but in reality, that's just an opinion. If something the guy said was blatantly wrong, then try telling everyone what it was, ans give us the sources that disprove the guy? Otherwise, you end up seeming like you're simply raging at someone for no reason other than you don't like what they had to say.

---

May want to reread my posts. I'll repeat the main point for your convenience. His whole video is based on a comparison between two extremely different situations and painting them as the same to try and show it as a doomsday scenario.

The situation with the game industry crash had basically everyone (including a large number of companies that had nothing to do with games subcontracting to amateur coders with no support, professional skillsets or tools) churning out extremely crappy/non functional games and saturating the market with a large percentage of games that either had zero longevity (you had to perform basically one action, over, and over, and over) or simply didn't work as intended. And I mean to the point that basically they were nothing else than a not-really-interactive screensaver.

He compares it with today's situation in which there's a sizable percentage of mediocre (at least mediocre for today's standards, that see a 7 as a bad score) games (like there has *always been* mind you), but how many absolutely crappy games with no redeeming features or completely non-functional ones do you see around? Hell, even FFXIV that had one of the worst launches of the latest generation had quite a few redeeming features.

He goes on comparing games that simply *did not work* with games that had an ending he did not like. I'm sure I'm not the only one that sees an enormous logical fallacy there.

Hell, for some reason he goes ahead and puts Battlefield 3 between the failures in order to compound his idea that EA is the root of all evil ('cause they can't make good games, right?). Which is quite funny since BF3 has been received extremely well both by critics and the general public. I'm not completely sure of what he was smoking there, but it definitely looks like the good stuff. That's evidence of an obvious bias right there.

When one bases his whole reasoning on comparing apples to escalators, that reasoning tends to crash and burn.

If I had to write editorials to disprove every random dude that puts something on the internet, I wouldn't have time for the relevant topics, which aren't "OMG The sky is falling!"

Hrmm there is always so much hate on FF13 and FFXIV 1.0 but to be honest I loved both. I am probably a SE White Knight, but what draws me in about Square Enix games is not so much the gameplay but the amazing stories that they can create. That is my reason for playing Final Fantasy games. When thinking about the current FF games in this perspective, not so much the gameplay perspective, I believe that the current FF games FFXII+ has done an amazing job keeping up with the level of story telling of their predecessors. I actually enjoyed FFXIV 1.0s storyline, even before the miracle update of 1.23 that began the umbral era storyline(Which btw was amazing). Unfortunately there just wasn't enough of it to see where it was going to go. I guess I'm the type of person who can overlook gameplay mechanics if the story is well told enough to completely immerse me in the game.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Pebe

Hrmm there is always so much hate on FF13

---

Eh, a lot of people love to talk for "the fans" trying to descrive FFXIII as an untold horror, but fact is that quite a lot of people liked it. You don't sell 3 million copies of a sequel if "the fans" didn't like the original. Some fans did, some didn't.

Was it the best Final Fantasy ever? Not at all. Was it as terrible for "the fans" as many try to paint it? Not one bit.

And I personally didn't like it much, but I don't talk for "the fans".

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Abriael

Eh, a lot of people love to talk for "the fans" trying to descrive FFXIII as an untold horror, but fact is that quite a lot of people liked it. You don't sell 3 million copies of a sequel if "the fans" didn't like the original. Some fans did, some didn't.

Was it the best Final Fantasy ever? Not at all. Was it as terrible for "the fans" as many try to paint it? Not one bit.

And I personally didn't like it much, but I don't talk for "the fans".

---

I can agree with you on this. I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with XIII. I know I'll buy the next one too because I'm curious in the way their going to end the story line.

With regards to the letter, I enjoyed it a lot. It said exactly how I feel and I know many of my friends feel.

I am honestly curious as to what it is about FF13 story that people seem to like. Having read quite a few lengthy books over the years i feel like i know story progression decent enough to say that in FF13 it was done terrible. It was from what i remember being a few years ago now, shallow and pushed rather than believable and relatable. Hope being an uninteresting whining (with of course good reason) kid was still the most acceptable character in terms of growth. I have found over the years many people saying the same variety of things about the game, but when ever i see someone say they liked the story and it was good it never really has any explanation as to what aspect about it they liked so much.

Well here is why I like FFXIIIs story (There will be a lot of spoilers in this post)

First I will touch on the overarching theme in FFXIII:
1. Minority vs Majority - Is it morally right to sacrifice a few in order to preserve the majority (The Purge/The world vs La'cie). Thinking about this from the opposite perspective, is it truly wrong to put others in danger to save the one you care most about? If so, then do you just give up on said person? (Vanille/Fang and Serah/Lightning/Snow)

2. Forgiveness - If one makes a mistake, what does it take to forgive said person, or for that person to obtain forgiveness. It is often said that the use of words such as "I'm sorry" is not adequate enough, but then what is? (Hope/Snow and Snow/Lightning/Serah)

There are more but these are the two main themes that pop out at me right now. (Trying to do this fast need to go to class soon. I apologize if my thoughts don't have a flow to them because I am rushing)

Now lets take a moment and consider the concept of Orphan. Orphan is basically the "god" of Cocoon and his one and only desire is to die and have Cocoon destroyed, in order to bring back the true god/goddess known as the Maker to have the world remade. To accomplish this, Orphan gives our heroes their powers, turns the entire world against them, and enslaves their loved ones in crystals. There is also the overlying threat that if the La'cie decide not to follow Orphan's plan, they will be transformed into thoughtless monsters. Orphan does all this just to make our heroes as strong as possible so that they can kill him. I find this story interesting because it literally reverses the usual heroes vs villain story line. Also, the main characters are being put through constant mental stress and moral conflicts. All of this is going on, and this only touches the surface of FFXIIIs story.

This is what Orphan says before you fight him, which pretty much sums it up:
"A haven, yea. Yet it must fall ere we be saved. Too frail a shell, and humans should not thrive. Too stout a shell and they would not die. Slaughter and salvation! Two irreconcilable Focuses we bore. Yet bound were we in a cocoon prison, impervious to our power. And so we thank you for granting us our longed-for birth. We are the Abandoned One, born but now to die. Our name is Orphan. By our hand, the world shall know redemption."

The music - Like all of its predecessors, Final Fantasy has always had outstanding music. I personally loved FFXIIIs music, although I agree that the battle theme got old sometimes :P. But as we all know, when there is any important moment FF always uses music that just makes the moment, FFXIII held up to this standard. Here are a few examples:

Oerba - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLa0N7kVlfo
Nascent Requiem - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-jpwEd4KSY
Born Anew - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qyavbSmxW4 (read the translation in the comments. Simple but powerful)
FFXIII Main Theme - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxSXm8qGjS8 (Has a few names, the wish, the promise, has many different variations used throughout the game)
Barthandelus Theme - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbMbQLUr9cA (Everyone hated this villain, but i thought he was awesome. Every time he spoke I got chills.)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Explosive

I am honestly curious as to what it is about FF13 story that people seem to like. Having read quite a few lengthy books over the years i feel like i know story progression decent enough to say that in FF13 it was done terrible. It was from what i remember being a few years ago now, shallow and pushed rather than believable and relatable. Hope being an uninteresting whining (with of course good reason) kid was still the most acceptable character in terms of growth. I have found over the years many people saying the same variety of things about the game, but when ever i see someone say they liked the story and it was good it never really has any explanation as to what aspect about it they liked so much.

---

Hyperbolechu! I choose you!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Pebe

Snip

---

For these exact reasons I loved FFXIII and FFXIII-2 and they both rank among my favorites

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Pebe

Well here is why I like FFXIIIs story (There will be a lot of spoilers in this post)

First I will touch on the overarching theme in FFXIII:
1. Minority vs Majority - Is it morally right to sacrifice a few in order to preserve the majority (The Purge/The world vs La'cie). Thinking about this from the opposite perspective, is it truly wrong to put others in danger to save the one you care most about? If so, then do you just give up on said person? (Vanille/Fang and Serah/Lightning/Snow)

---

That's not the interpretation I got at all. According to the official Ultimania book, Cocoon was designed to be like the USA, a melting pot of people and whatnot. Given the political climate in the real world at the time, I see Square-Enix making a much more direct insult to their American audience with this game.

The citizens of cocoon are overly-complacent with their oppressive government with the exception of a handful of, let's face it, stupid rebels (you don't go into open conflict with a huge military with no plan, no army, and no real weapons. NORA is stupid like that.) The people are also deathly afraid of a boogeyman they know nothing about that they think is coming to get them, and the government uses that to its advantage to keep the people in line. Seriously, the people actually get into a mob armed with lamps and other things at the mere thought of a L'cie being in their city. They're all agreeable to having hundreds, if not thousands of people sent to their deaths for simply being vaguely near the Fal'cie in Bodhum even though there's no real cause for that action.

Everyone, even Sazh, is under the influence that just because you're a Pulse L'cie you're a murderous psychopath who must destroy Cocoon. Why? You'd think he'd realize that hey, despite his brand, he DOESN'T feel like slaughtering everyone he sees. He still feels normal, or at least he acts normal and rational. Seems to me like the people of Cocoon are so ridiculously brainwashed that the government can simply do whatever it wants and its people will just nod their empty heads in agreement. And remember, this is supposed to represent America.

Quote:

---

2. Forgiveness - If one makes a mistake, what does it take to forgive said person, or for that person to obtain forgiveness. It is often said that the use of words such as "I'm sorry" is not adequate enough, but then what is? (Hope/Snow and Snow/Lightning/Serah)

---

What mistake did Snow make? Hope's Mom could have simply not taken up arms and stayed with the other civilians and her son, or heck she could have taken the gun and protected the civilians when Snow asked. She got herself killed, not Snow. Snow didn't get over to her and say "Get up woman, I need me a meat shield!" She just got up and followed him.

Plus you'd think Hope would understand that without Snow's rather sloppy intervention that they would have all died anyway. Remember, Hope said Pulse was "Hell on Earth" (there's an Earth somewhere?) so he obviously knew that they were all essentially dead. Snow sorta saves them (at least temporarily), his mom gets herself killed, and Hope blames Snow like a petulant little brat. I could understand if he was upset for a little bit, being a child who lost his mother, and he was emotionally unbalanced at the time, but he keeps this attitude up a LONG time, and he actually intends to murder Snow. That goes way beyond being upset at the general death of a loved one and extends into "needs to be seeing a psychiatrist twice a week" mode.

I'm not sure what your point about Serah/Snow/Lightning is and who should be sorry for anything between those three, aside from Serah being kind of an idiot by not telling Snow what was going on for a long time.

Quote:

---

Now lets take a moment and consider the concept of Orphan.

---

Oh let's please do, this is the worst part of the entire narrative.

Quote:

---

Orphan is basically the "god" of Cocoon and his one and only desire is to die and have Cocoon destroyed, in order to bring back the true god/goddess known as the Maker to have the world remade. To accomplish this, Orphan gives our heroes their powers, turns the entire world against them, and enslaves their loved ones in crystals. There is also the overlying threat that if the La'cie decide not to follow Orphan's plan, they will be transformed into thoughtless monsters. Orphan does all this just to make our heroes as strong as possible so that they can kill him. I find this story interesting because it literally reverses the usual heroes vs villain story line. Also, the main characters are being put through constant mental stress and moral conflicts. All of this is going on, and this only touches the surface of FFXIIIs story.

---

I get that he's unable to kill himself. OK, fine, I get that. But he's able to manipulate others into killing him? OK, I can get that too. But why go with such a silly roundabout way of doing it? Given how they can make people absurdly powerful pretty easily, why doesn't he just "level up" the heroes, transport them to himself, and have them kill him immediately? Why didn't he do this years ago if he'd been planning this all along? Why not send them the best weapons possible (like dozens of rocket launchers and whatnot) and billions of gil to upgrade their equipment? Is he not able to? Why not? He's freaking GOD and has a massive following of brainwashed, expendable minions and he's in complete control of the government. He also seems to be perfectly able to move about on his own and manipulate things directly to help out the heroes, so there's apparently no rules against that.

Or for that matter, why not trick some of his brainwashed followers into stocking tons and tons of high explosives right outside his door, then having one of the poor saps "accidentally" blow it up? Is it too simple and he could escape? The dude can't escape 3 yokels with a gun-sword, a spear, and a toy ****ing boomerang and yet he can escape a hundred tons of C4? Give me a break.

Or maybe he can't do that because it'd be too similar to committing suicide, which he can't do. So he can't just blow himself up with explosives, but he *can* get a group of fighters together, directly challenge them to make them stronger, intentionally put them through all sorts of problems to level them up, and then tell them to kill him? How is that any less of a suicide? I understand that in his final moments he's supposed to fight tooth and nail for survival, but if he goes from "perfectly OK" to "completely obliterated by a hundred tons of C4" I don't think there'd be anything he could do against it, similar to how he couldn't stand up to the strength of the heroes in the end.

The tl;dr version of why Orphan sucks: he's poorly defined. He has constantly shifting limits to his powers and what he's allowed/able to do. It creates a laughably unrealistic villain who's either incredibly stupid, or the writers are going to go with the laziest possible explanation and say "he's so beyond us that his plans CAN'T make sense to us!"

Quote:

---

The music - Like all of its predecessors, Final Fantasy has always had outstanding music. I personally loved FFXIIIs music, although I agree that the battle theme got old sometimes :P. But as we all know, when there is any important moment FF always uses music that just makes the moment, FFXIII held up to this standard.

---

Some of the music is pretty good. The problem is that a lot of the general audio cues we've come to expect from the Final Fantasy series, like a victory fanfare after winning a fight, are simply missing. It's one of those tiny details that made the FF series so great that's simply not here.

Of course I have other problems too, but those seem rather nitpicky or are unrelated to the story.

Oddly enough though, I still didn't hate my time playing FF13, and I never felt that I had to beat the game just to see the ending; I kept playing it because I was enjoying myself. Still not really sure why though.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Powercow

Oddly enough though, I still didn't hate my time playing FF13, and I never felt that I had to beat the game just to see the ending; I kept playing it because I was enjoying myself. Still not really sure why though.

---

Permit me to hazard a hypothesis: That's because the game was a pretty good game.

The main problem is that a few factors turned judging games into a matter of black and white, awesome or completely crappy.

Nowadays either a game is exceptional, or if it's just "pretty good" you'll see (at least on the internet) armies of people bashing it into the ground like it's the worst blight upon Earth, especially if it's part of a popular franchise.

If a game gets a 7 or even a 8 (especially if it's a popular franchise, again), it's considered an utter failure, instead of a "pretty good" or even good (in the case of the 8) game.

Nowadays if a studio makes a game that ranks under 8 on metacritic there are high chances that it will held against them by publishers the next time they pitch a game project.

Why is that? several factors. A main one is the internet (try doing your observation on this, and I'm quite sure you'll discover that this doesn't really happen between gamers that don't roam around the internet much or at all).

And within the internet there are two main factors: Press and discussion environments.

Discussion environments like newsgroup first (but at that time they were still small) and forums after contributed a lot in polarizing opinions between "awesome" and "completely crap", because in written discussion hyperbolic and extreme opinions simply are more effective to attract attention on one's position, giving people the impression that they're winning a discussion just by shouting louder than the opposition. In internet forums you'll very often see positions so extreme that if you just sit back and think about it, you'll wonder what the person smoked to get there, but it's very easy to be dragged into it instead.

The internet gaming press is another major culprit. Printed press is a lot less competitive that the internet. Magazines can keep argument more balanced because they don't need to resort to big headlines in order to "sell". Once the reader gets to the headlines he already bought his copy, so the selling point of game magazines is entirely different.

On the other hand the internet press relies a lot on extremes and hyperbole in order to attract readers. An over exaggerated tabloid-like headline or a polarized (either very high or very low) review score will simply draw more clicks on an article than a balanced one.

And on the internet "hits" are money. Straight and direct conversion. The more pageviews you get, the more impressions your ads get, the more you can get higher paying ads.

Of course (unless someone stoops so low as to write misleading headlines, and it happens) the body or the article needs to reflect the headline, so you see a ton of attention grabbing extremized articles. Check places that aggregate articles and rank them by "Hotness" like N4G.com and you'll notice this trend very easily.

Extremized and controversial wins and balanced loses.

Add to that the fact that the internet press often houses a lot of people with absolutely no journalistic background, to which no one even went near to teach the idea of journalistic integrity, and you get the full picture.

As in every environment there are opinion leaders, and when the opinion leaders polarize their opinions, and turn the place into a cesspit of negativity, hate, rage and fanboyism, a large part of the rest will inevitably follow.

(which is, mind you, another large difference between today and the game industry crash. Invalidating the video posted a few pages back further. At that time there was no internet making things look a lot worse than they are)

So yeah. Final Fantasy XIII is (in my opinion) actually a pretty good game. It's production values are exceptionally high and it has quite a lot of likable elements. It's also (again, in my opinion) not an exceptional game.

But telling what a blight on earth it is, and how it's a "slap in the face of the fans" will allow people to feel that they're shouting louder (and more effectively) during their beloved forum discussion.

Just like, if you're a journalist on the internet, giving it a 4 (without even getting anywhere near to finishing it, and I won't name names) gets you a lot more attention than giving it the 7.5-8 it (IMHO) deserves. Especially if it gives you a chance to bash a large and popular franchise or a large publisher like Square Enix. Shouting "the king is dead!" turns a lot of eyes.

Its metacritic score sits at a quite nice 83 (with a still very decent 7.9 user score) yet what are the reviews many remember? the 4s and 5s. What are the opinions many remember? The extremely negative ones on forums and on websites/blogs

Are those artfully (or often not even intentionally) polarized opinions a realistic expression of the actual quality of the game? Not a chance in hell.

i think the best SE could do right now is releasing a FF game with cuddly FF characters like in FF7 oder FF9.

http://livedoor.blogimg.jp/kaieda21/...e/6eb6205f.jpg

static camera points and not thousands of camera driven "dramatic movie" cutscenes.
sometimes its better to calm down a bit.
FF13 was just too much of that "boom boom* blockbuster movie presentation". thats why it was so linear.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Abriael

Permit me to hazard a hypothesis: That's because the game was a pretty good game.

---

Game? Yes. Final Fantasy game? Not so much.

Metacritic lists it as the joint eighteenth-best Final Fantasy game. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a new Final Fantasy to hit the top five every time and top ten should be a given. Less than that and the game is surely not up to anyone's expectations.

Now, of course, this is also opinion. I happen to agree with it. A lot of others do too, and I say that not because I'm trying to speak for the majority, or because I look at what people write on internet forums (I don't), but because the physical evidence shows it. Second-hand copies of the game are plentiful and available at incredibly low prices for a game of its age (£5 to £10 here in the UK). Compared to other Final Fantasies and other RPGs released in the same year, this shows that a larger proportion of folk who have bought the game consider it near-worthless.

If you thought that the Paradigm Shift, Crystarium, Item Upgrades and Cie'th Stone missions were good game mechanics then good for you. From the perspective of past Final Fantasies (and present if we include FFXIV here), my opinion is that they are weak and uninteresting, like the characters and the plot. I love the style, the graphics, the music, the lore/bestiary and the UI, but that's not enough to make me want to play it for 100% completion.

As mentioned briefly before, FFXIV is looking to tick all of my 'expectation' boxes and set the FF series back on track, if not at the least for me, hopefully for all fans of the series. Its current Metacritic position at #60 (yes, 1.0) will hopefully be forgotten as ARR takes the #1 slot until the release of XV, and maybe for some time after.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Abriael

That was the very definition of pretentious and condescending.

---

I'm fully aware that you have six years' experience in the industry, but in this thread and others in recent weeks, you would do well to consider your own posts if you percieve others have put across their opinions in this particular way.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Abriael

Permit me to hazard a hypothesis: That's because the game was a pretty good game.

---

Aye, it wasn't bad, but for a Final Fantasy game people have certain expectations that this game didn't quite deliver on. I personally would have given it an above average 7/10 overall, mostly due to graphics, environment (visually, I'm a big sucker for things having a large general scale to them and FF13 does have some big set pieces) and combat design.

Oh and I apologize for the length of my previous post. I trimmed it down about 30%, and I could rant about so many more little bits of this game that bug the hell out of me, but that just comes from me being nitpicky when it comes to games. Hell, I did a pretty long rant against FF7's terrible story and still said I liked the game overall. Even FF9, which is one of my top 10 games (largely due to the characters) has a story I can rip apart into tiny little bits. Take any big game and it's going to happen if you think too hard.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Powercow

Aye, it wasn't bad, but for a Final Fantasy game people have certain expectations that this game didn't quite deliver on.

---

A reasonable approach would lead to judging a game according to what it is, not according to "expectations".

It also helps enjoying games a lot more, which is something many forgot in the past decade.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Mjollnir

I'm fully aware that you have six years' experience in the industry, but in this thread and others in recent weeks, you would do well to consider your own posts if you percieve others have put across their opinions in this particular way.

---

Six years of experience were in the voice acting/localization Industry, that unfortunately I had to leave due to the shrinking of the market. I've been a game writer for 15, both on print and web. But again, I don't talk for everyone, nor for "The fans". Regardless of experience.

I write my opinion in a very blunt, honest and clear cut way, and yes, some hate it. They're entitled to their opinion and it never really bothered me that much. I prefer to be disliked by saying things how I see them than to tell people what they like to hear or pandering to irrational rage in order to be liked.

By the way, thought I'd link a blog post in response to one of the usual "pandering to the rage articles" on Kotaku (the usual suspects for that kind of pandering). It touches on quite a few points discussed in this thread, some directly, some indirectly, and this one is written by a very experienced game developer and not by a clueless writer that thinks he knows it all and that needs hits to survive or by someone hiding behind anonymity (like the one he refers to). It also shares a point of view on the industry that you hear very seldom among the endless "publishers are ebil!" whining.

http://criminalcrackdown.blogspot.co...k-you-are.html

Blunt, frank, clear, insightful and very realistic. And yeah, it's not the stuff people like to hear. Just as I like it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Abriael

A reasonable approach would lead to judging a game according to what it is, not according to "expectations".

It also helps enjoying games a lot more, which is something many forgot in the past decade.

---

It's fine judging a game for "what it is" and all that. But the thing of it is, FFXIII was a Final Fantasy title. Fans of the series have come to expect certain things from an FF title. It's really not our fault, it's just what we've been given for years as Final Fantasy fans. You can't not put that there in a big roman numeral production of a Final Fantasy game and expect fans to just "go with the flow". No, we're going to nitpick about reasons why the game isn't "Final Fantasy" enough. Again, it's not our fault, we were given games for years with little repeated details in the series that have come to define the experience of playing Final Fantasy games. Many of those details are reasons that Final Fantasy fans are, in fact, fans of the series.

I, personally, think that FFXIII deserves a 6 out of 10 as an rpg, but as a Final Fantasy, it deserves maybe a 5. It was an okay story (I guess) and the visuals were pretty. But it didn't have the feeling of a Final Fantasy. It was closer to being a Final Fantasy than "The Spirits Within", but only barely.

Responding to Skye, can you explain to me why FFXIII isn't a final fantasy. I never understood this concept, of a game not being final fantasy enough. For each Final Fantasy explored something new and different.

Example: The Abilities
In the beginning we had jobs (1-6)
Then we left jobs for materia(7)
Then we went from materia to junction(8)
Then we went from junction to learning abilities from gear(I forget what it was called - 9)
Then we had Sphere Grid(10)
Then we went back to jobs (11)
Then we went back the a Sphere Grid like system (12 and 13)
Lastly we had jobs again (FF14)

Example 2: The summons
Every single FF game had summons to this date iirc. Perhaps this one of the aspects that made FFXIII less of a Final Fantasy (The summons were done different than what we usually expected)? Although, in my opinion 13 summons are done almost exactly like FFXII. You fight with you summon for a bit, and then do a super move, and then it ends.

The only thing FFXIII has against it that comes to mind that would make it any less of a Final Fantasy is the lack of interesting level design.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Pebe

Responding to Skye, can you explain to me why FFXIII isn't a final fantasy. I never understood this concept, of a game not being final fantasy enough. For each Final Fantasy explored something new and different.

Example: The Abilities
In the beginning we had jobs (1-6)
Then we left jobs for materia(7)
Then we went from materia to junction(8)
Then we went from junction to learning abilities from gear(I forget what it was called - 9)
Then we had Sphere Grid(10)
Then we went back to jobs (11)
Then we went back the a Sphere Grid like system (12 and 13)
Lastly we had jobs again (FF14)

Example 2: The summons
Every single FF game had summons to this date iirc. Perhaps this one of the aspects that made FFXIII less of a Final Fantasy (The summons were done different than what we usually expected)? Although, in my opinion 13 summons are done almost exactly like FFXII. You fight with you summon for a bit, and then do a super move, and then it ends.

The only thing FFXIII has against it that comes to mind that would make it any less of a Final Fantasy is the lack of interesting level design.

---

I never said FFXIII wasn't a Final Fantasy. I merely stated that it didn't really have the feel of a Final Fantasy, at least not as much as other Final Fantasy titles did. It's true, each Final Fantasy had their own version of the franchise that it brought to the table. But they each still had that distinctive full flavor that said Final Fantasy. Imo, FFXIII was lacking on that flavor.

Firstly, it was horribly linear. Yeah I know, it's a common whine people use to describe FFXIII. But it's a valid one, nonetheless. The other Final Fantasies were known for having expansive worlds to explore and run around in at your leisure. In XIII, you could only be in the place where your current part in the storyline wanted you to be. It was a "connect the dots" path that didn't rub off too well on fans. Secondly, where the hell was our airship? It may seem like a minor complaint to you, but it's one of the things that people have come to love about the FF series. Not that it really matters all that much, since there really wasn't too much we could do with an airship since the game was super-linear and didn't allow for real exploration. And the so-called sidequests seemed to be so... small. I mean, they all took place in Pulse which was a lot more open as a world than Cocoon, or at least, let you run around a bit more. But the thing is, for being such a massive world, where could you go in it? Only certain areas. It felt more to me like I was exploring a huge valley than a world. And then there's the towns. Every FF before had at least some populated towns to look around in and explore, something to make the world feel alive. The towns on Cocoon had you going a straight line from point A to B. No looking in shops, no talking to people, no none of that. And on Pulse, the only town you could freely walk around in and explore was full of monsters! All the people seemed to be dead! Well, there's cheerful for you. -_-"

I guess what made it seem less Final Fantasy than the others is the linearity of the game and what they didn't include in the game that was included in so many others. Yes, the game had chocobos, monsters to summon, whiny teens (well, one of them at least), annoying perky girl (again, at least one of them), and some angst and a decent storyline. But what it didn't include, while maybe seeming minuscule when it is there, was a point taken off as an FF title when it wasn't there.

Oh yea, that was the other main argument that i had forgot about, the lack of towns. Which I agree with.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SkyeWindbinder

It's fine judging a game for "what it is" and all that. But the thing of it is, FFXIII was a Final Fantasy title. Fans of the series have come to expect certain things from an FF title.

---

Final Fantasy XIII was first and foremost a game. It has to be judged as a game.

If you've "come to expect" certain things from a FF title, then it's only your responsibility if you're displeased when those certain things don't appear.

Game development is (or should be) a creative process, not a matter of going through a checklist of things that you MUST put in your game to avoid displeasing a segment of your fans (notice, you're talking for "the fans" again).

If you think that a series that has given you something "for years" has to give you those same things "forever", then you're just holding the evolution of the series back, that in a market that does evolve, means condemning it to irrelevancy sooner or later.

Yay for creative freedom, mh?

I found the letter and the 33 minute video interesting. And yes I was nodding along with quite a few of the points

"WHAT DO YOU KNOW NOTHING OF THE INDUSTRY!!!???"

Probably not as much as "experts" but I know that there has not been half as many interesting games coming out that I have played in the last few years. Maybe i'm growing out of gaming (I hope not) but I think it does have to do with companies trying to make quick money and produce games at an alarming rate!

I also think they should introduce a 1 post every two days in a thread. I know this is a heated discussion but it is bordering on people trying to force their opinion on each other. Why not just make a point and leave it at that? Would take a lot of the "hate" out of the thread!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by shane239

I found the letter and the 33 minute video interesting. And yes I was nodding along with quite a few of the points

"WHAT DO YOU KNOW NOTHING OF THE INDUSTRY!!!???"

Probably not as much as "experts" but I know that there has not been half as many interesting games coming out that I have played in the last few years. Maybe i'm growing out of gaming (I hope not) but I think it does have to do with companies trying to make quick money and produce games at an alarming rate!

I also think they should introduce a 1 post every two days in a thread. I know this is a heated discussion but it is bordering on people trying to force their opinion on each other. Why not just make a point and leave it at that? Would take a lot of the "hate" out of the thread!

---

Funny how you talk about "trying to force one's opinion on each other", and then you'd force people not to express theirs.

This is a discussion forum mate. That's what it's made for.