SE, don't invite that journalist to Fanfest... ever.

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Originally Posted by Stanelis

Aside the fact that what he said about cosplayers was uncalled for (sure we all know a few cosplayers who are on the "peacock strut" side, but not all cosplayers are like that), I think his article was okay. Especially his question about ERP was interesting.

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If you think that was ok then maybe go and read Game Informer's article. You'll see a huge difference where one article doesn't trash or look like they didn't do a lot of research. Also the guy took 10mins of an hour press Q&A where it wasn't just them and Yoshida.

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Originally Posted by SannaR

If you think that was ok then maybe go and read Game Informer's article. You'll see a huge difference where one article doesn't trash or look like they didn't do a lot of research. Also the guy took 10mins of an hour press Q&A where it wasn't just them and Yoshida.

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To be honest I'm much more interested by the RPS question during the QA rather than another one consensual question about glamour like in 95 % of the interviews. Also, they didn't need to do "research" to write their article as it was a mere event coverage. The guy came, found weird stuff from his perspective, wrote about it. As stated, the only controversial stuff they wrote was the part about cosplayers. But the description of Yoshida's and Se's CEO was spot on, as an example (and I also found it cringy).

Actually that perspective should be invaluable to you, because it is how people who don't know anything about FFXIV and RPG s see the community. And most people won't say straight out what they think.

As for the game informer article, it is another perspective. But that is good too, because having different point of views on something isn't a bad thing. If everybody thought the same way, it wouldn't be natural.

What do you find interesting about the erp question?

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Originally Posted by Dualgunner

What do you find interesting about the erp question?

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I'd very much liked to hear about Se's point of view on the thing.

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Originally Posted by Stanelis

I'd very much liked to hear about Se's point of view on the thing.

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Their official stance is in the terms of service as Yoshi stated at the interview.

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Originally Posted by Stanelis

I'd very much liked to hear about Se's point of view on the thing.

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Fair enough I suppose. I don't share that curiosity personally as I fully expect it to be the same grey area that parsers and mods fall into.

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Originally Posted by Hyperia

Their official stance is in the terms of service as Yoshi stated at the interview.

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That's not a very interesting reply though. Especially when nothing is done to enforce said ToS (I m not saying ToS should be enforced on that matter, people do whatever they please)

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Fair enough I suppose. I don't share that curiosity personally as I fully expect it to be the same grey area that parsers and mods fall into.

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There could be a lot of discussions regarding parsers though, especially when endgame is fully designed with DPS checks in mind, and you cannot tell exactly how well you re doing without parsers. There is a huge design flaw in the game here.

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Originally Posted by Stanelis

That's not a very interesting reply though. Especially when nothing is done to enforce said ToS (I m not saying ToS should be enforced on that matter, people do whatever they please)



There could be a lot of discussions regarding parsers though, especially when endgame is fully designed with DPS checks in mind, and you cannot tell exactly how well you re doing without parsers. There is a huge design flaw in the game here.

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Interesting or not that's the corporate response and probably the only one Yoshi could give. If anything the more interesting question would have been "What is the report process, how can it be made better and do gms have the resources needed to do their jobs in enforcing tos?"

Also I mentioned mods in that gray area too. Its a big gray area of "you're not allowed to, but we'll look the other way until you start harassing people with it" since they're not interested in the discussion.

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Originally Posted by Dualgunner

Interesting or not that's the corporate response and probably the only one Yoshi could give. If anything the more interesting question would have been "What is the report process, how can it be made better and do gms have the resources needed to do their jobs in enforcing tos?"

Also I mentioned mods in that gray area too. Its a big gray area of "you're not allowed to, but we'll look the other way until you start harassing people with it" since they're not interested in the discussion.

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Not necessarily actually, what isn't allowed in the law of several countries is the act of paying for sex. But in FFXIV the ERPer don't pay for sex, they only RP it. Hence the act of ERP isn't illegal (else it'd be illegal to shot a movie about prostitution) and it isn't common sense that it would be outside the ToS. Therefore a true discussion could have been had. Even the fact that Yoshida replied that it was against the ToS wasn't something obvious at first glance. Also, if the guy did ask if SE intended to do something to shut down ERPer, now it would actually haven't been a cool question for people into ERP.

As for the mods and/or parser, discussions should happen on the matter given how the game is designed.

Furthermore, I don't really care whether Se's reply is the right one. I'm only stating the question was perfectly relevant.

The game is rated for 12 year olds (at least in germany) and I think 16 in some other countrys. There are underage people playing this game and who can guarantee that they don't get involved in ERP, especially due to the anonymity here? The best thing SE can do to prevent this is to prohibit all forms of ERP, otherwise they could get in some trouble.

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Originally Posted by Tint

The game is rated for 12 year olds (at least in germany) and I think 16 in some other countrys. There are underage people playing this game and who can guarantee that they don't get involved in ERP, especially due to the anonymity here? The best thing SE can do to prevent this is to prohibit all forms of ERP, otherwise they could get in some trouble.

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Hence why the question at fanfest was relevant.

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Originally Posted by Stanelis

Hence why the question at fanfest was relevant.

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Except that it wasn't at all. Anyone with half a brain and some exposure to any MMO's underbelly could tell you that if you keep it strictly private and consensual the GMs won't even know about it. But as soon as you start being public or involving people (regardless of age, sexuality, etc) who don't know or don't want to, then the ban hammer will fall as soon as it's reported. XIV is not unusual or special with their ERP community and how it's handled- WoW has had seedy sections for over a decade and before that you had Everquest, etc. The dude was either playing dumb or really is that clueless when he picked that question to ask. Like Dualgunner said a more interesting question would be about the GMs themselves and how they are asked to judge borderline cases, how high their workload is, and so on.

Also, regardless of YoshiP's personal feelings, the only answer he could give is the one he gave. As a supposed member of the press he should have been familiar with the concept of PR and playing it safe during live events. That prick didn't ask a hard or important question, he just wasted 10 minutes of valuable time with the game's producer and director to have some giggles over maybe possibly getting to write an outrage piece over how SE handles some of it's players proclivities.

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Originally Posted by Moogly

http://archive.is/RTN8a
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...le_journalism/

Litteraly making a fool of ffxiv fans, especially cosplayers, basically treating them as some kind of fetichists...
The most outrageous thing being that he's been interviewing some cosplayers only to later make fun of them in his clickbait article.

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We now have the template for the next Shadowbringers Villain! Step aside Zenos, you've been replaced!

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Originally Posted by Stanelis

To be honest I'm much more interested by the RPS question during the QA rather than another one consensual question about glamour like in 95 % of the interviews. Also, they didn't need to do "research" to write their article as it was a mere event coverage. The guy came, found weird stuff from his perspective, wrote about it. As stated, the only controversial stuff they wrote was the part about cosplayers. But the description of Yoshida's and Se's CEO was spot on, as an example (and I also found it cringy).

Actually that perspective should be invaluable to you, because it is how people who don't know anything about FFXIV and RPG s see the community. And most people won't say straight out what they think.

As for the game informer article, it is another perspective. But that is good too, because having different point of views on something isn't a bad thing. If everybody thought the same way, it wouldn't be natural.

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So the guy coming off like things like fan fests, cosplay and concerts only be came things the day before and seemed to have only read a Kotau article vs another person who also seemed to not know much about fan fest shows a better view? Did we read the same aticle? Also please go read a run down of the other questions that were asked at the event. Most were not about glamour. His question was the only one that made the whole room mentally go WTF and get uncomfortable.

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Originally Posted by Hyperia

Their official stance is in the terms of service as Yoshi stated at the interview.

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I think that's because of how the question was worded. I took a look at the Kotaku article the journalist was getting his question from and it's about people paying gil for ERP services. In a 'State of the Realm' video, those present at the Q&A state the journalist was asking what Yoshi-P's stance was on RMT ERP. So this got me thinking...

The journalist likely asked "what is your stance on brothels in this game? players paying for ERP services" (not specifically mentioning payment was in gil and not in real money). If this is similar/exactly what he said, then it's no wonder why Yoshi-P responded the way he did. He misunderstood the question and assumed he was being asked about RMT.

Again, like I said before, I have a high tolerance for things like this, because I like to see even what people outside the community thinks. Keep your enemies closer right?

I don't want to live in a bubble. Everyone is already writing and reporting the same exact thing, and if I owned a new publication, maybe I would instruct my writers to find a new perspective.
"Report and write from a stay-at-home mom going to fanfest perspective"
"Report and write from a priest going to fanfest perspective"
Anyway, FF fans and even potential fans and readers come from all walks of life.

It's great to hear what the haters think. It's great to hear what the schemers and people who seek our downfall think. So that we will not be surprised in the future. Now we know right? Just let them write out their mind.

(Some crazy examples: perhaps there's a country out there where ERP or cosplay is starting to mobilize public support to be banned in that country because it's sacrilegous. Now we know and wouldn't Yoshi want to know too that there are things like that that exist in this world

Example 2: Maybe ERP has been teetering too close to child protection laws? Who knows, anyway, questions like these keeps Yoshi on his toes. Maybe they should build new tools that can help address potential problems before it became too big? Don't want to get caught in a vicious and downward cycle like Facebook has been going through where they innovated - Live suicide video, live murder videos, fake news, etc, something without the proper tools to address exploiters).

Let them in. Let them attack. It actually helps the community to become stronger than that.

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Originally Posted by Hycinthus

Let them in. Let them attack. It actually helps the community to become stronger than that.

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Dude, it was supposed to be an article on fanfest. It was less informative than a 3rd graders book report is. It was pretty much just ranting and a few mentions and pics to prove he was there. That's not journalism, and even if you look at it as an opinion piece it's still worse than crap tier. It's both amazing and dismaying that he got paid for such a poorly written article.

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Originally Posted by Hycinthus

Again, like I said before, I have a high tolerance for things like this, because I like to see even what people outside the community thinks. Keep your enemies closer right?

I don't want to live in a bubble. Everyone is already writing and reporting the same exact thing, and if I owned a new publication, maybe I would instruct my writers to find a new perspective.
"Report and write from a stay-at-home mom going to fanfest perspective"
"Report and write from a priest going to fanfest perspective"
Anyway, FF fans and even potential fans and readers come from all walks of life.

It's great to hear what the haters think. It's great to hear what the schemers and people who seek our downfall think. So that we will not be surprised in the future. Now we know right? Just let them write out their mind.

(Some crazy examples: perhaps there's a country out there where ERP or cosplay is starting to mobilize public support to be banned in that country because it's sacrilegous. Now we know and wouldn't Yoshi want to know too that there are things like that that exist in this world

Example 2: Maybe ERP has been teetering too close to child protection laws? Who knows, anyway, questions like these keeps Yoshi on his toes. Maybe they should build new tools that can help address potential problems before it became too big? Don't want to get caught in a vicious and downward cycle like Facebook has been going through where they innovated - Live suicide video, live murder videos, fake news, etc, something without the proper tools to address exploiters).

Let them in. Let them attack. It actually helps the community to become stronger than that.

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Misinformation doesn't help communities. Even if it's meant to be a hatchet job, a journalist still has the duty of getting their facts straight. Otherwise it's libel, which is potentially illegal.

IMHO they should never pay for a journalist to visit their events ever. If someone want to attend they should at most give them a free ticket to enter but nothing more.
Something that would have been better. If they invited a somewhat famous person who likes the game, made sure they had the right tool and a camera person and let that person go around and talk with random fans during the fanfest, then finish it with a kind of interview where they spoke with Yoshi-P. Or they could repeat this mess, paying a journalist to cover the event knowing there is a big chance said person will write whatever gets the most clicks.

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Originally Posted by Edax

Misinformation doesn't help communities. Even if it's meant to be a hatchet job, a journalist still has the duty of getting their facts straight. Otherwise it's libel, which is potentially illegal.

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Agree, wouldn't argue with that, but the title of the article already says "what this fanfest taught me" and anyway maybe i missed something but i dont see anything there that is equivalent to a libel / totally factually misconstrued.

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Originally Posted by Hycinthus

Agree but the title of the article already says "what this fanfest taught me" and anyway maybe i missed something but i dont see anything there that is factually misconstrued. The concert is being mentioned as a "karaoke" is not libel. Libel would be in the line like... "we paid for a concert and they did not perform it at all" even though it was performed. It's an opinion piece just to highlight what he learned.

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He goes on a long aggressively negative piece about the housing content and falsely mentions the timers are set at 30 days. This has nothing to do with the fanfest and nor could he argue "good faith" as a legal defensive, given his intention of harming the reputation of SE.
He also states as fact "it’s hard to believe the creators of the game aren’t aware of this most MMO of player behaviours". "this most MMO of player behaviors" meaning he is stating as fact that the most common behavior of MMO players is to solicit sex. Anyone who is not a MMO player would be given an entirely false picture of the game and of MMO players. In essence, vilification with false statements: Libel.

In all probability, SE would not seek legal action because of the negative publicity that that would entail, but I think that "journalist" has put himself and RockPaperShotgun in potential legal danger. Journalists that are reporting on the events should be doing just that, but this hatchet job goes off topic to rant about the game with false statements. He's not even taking about the fanfest when he's ranting about housing and insulting MMO players. If he was only just slamming the Fanfest, he might be legally safe, but he decided to make a review of the games and it's players without facts. I think there's legal issues if a gaming website made a game review that are filled with lies because that stops being opinion.

I don't think SE will actually pursue legal action. However it would not surprise me if Rock Paper Shotgun was never given another review code or press pass to future events due to this article and the behavior of the person that wrote it. That tends to be how most gaming companies operate when a piece of unflattering media, true or otherwise, is published after extending an arm to the one writing said media. Biting the hand that feeds you is never good from a business standpoint.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

It's an excellent example as to what modern journalism has become. Take a look at almost any major news site and I guarantee a good chunk of articles will be things that aren't actually important/genuine news or are designed to provoke outrage and division. The latter of which is exactly what the article linked in the OP accomplishes.

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Exactly right. Modern journalists seem to be more akin to radio shock jocks or just plain old internet trolls than news reporters. Instead of trying to answer "Who, What, When, Why and How?" they instead ask themselves, "Who can I rile up today? What will rile them up the most? How much attention will I get? Why the heck wouldn't I? When do the responses start rolling in LOL?"

Also, even among the somewhat more serious journalists there seems to be a general disdain for people they perceive as outside their social, professional, and/or ideological bubble. Those people are different than me? They must surely be psychologically damaged, biologically inferior freaks who are fully deserving of my ridicule. Are they even people? No! If they were they'd be like me!

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Originally Posted by JackHatchet

Those kind of erotic rp houses are quite frequent on Mateus and Balmung.

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As someone from Mateus who is involved in the roleplay community, no they really aren't that frequent. There's a couple but that's really about all. Most RP houses on Balmung and Mateus are Adventuring Companies or Taverns.

Also here's the thing: Yes, there are some people who are paying in-game gil for possible ERP in a roleplay setting. But honestly who in the community actually cares? It's not really RMT since its literally just two players trading gil between one another without an actual explicit agreement to why in-game currency is changing hands. SE won't just ban people for trading gil. These people aren't paying real world money for ERP (and I feel that Yoshi-P maybe thought the guy's question was specifically stating that they're paying *real money* for it due to how it was worded, which they aren't.)

There's a lot worse and more egregious things happening in-game with regards to RMT stuff - like people paying real money for content clears on Savage and Ultimate content (which also involves people autopiloting your account using your login credentials, which is *also* against the ToS.) The ERPers are basically just keeping to themselves and not bothering anyone, just leave them alone - pretty much everyone in the RP community does. Its honestly not that big of a deal.

Like - the article is gross because it mocks the playerbase and makes a lot of wild assumptions, and his question to Yoshi-P was not only wildly inappropriate but also straight up misrepresentation of the community. But let's be real here: a large portion of this community acts like the RP community is some cringe-y thing they don't want to be associated with. Like, people at FanFest cheered for the Datacenter restructuring specifically because they were happy that both Balmung and Mateus were being moved away from Aether, and there's been a lot of very poor jokes about Balmung and Mateus finally being quarantined from the "normal servers". The community has this obsession with RP and ERP and has turned it into a meme. Are you guys actually all that surprised places like Kotaku and RPS are commenting on it when the community jokes about it *constantly*??

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Litteraly making a fool of ffxiv fans, especially cosplayers, basically treating them as some kind of fetichists...

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Yeah, cause there werent heavily upvoted threads on Reddit and facebook about dudes getting stepped on by the Tsukiyomi's or anything...


His article is clearly written as someone who doesnt play the game and hasnt been to a lot (if any) of fanfests, blizzcons or meetups.

That said, as someone who has been to many and helped organize a few, he isnt wrong about it. He's not in on the running gags, and being not in on it is, uh, frightening.

Also, the entire point of these is to meet guild/fc/raid members, drink a lot (with those people) and have a lot of... "personal time" (with one/some of those people). I can give you numbers from EQ and SWG fanfests, and... experience from some blizzcon's. Have heard and seen nothing to say 14's fanfest is any different. The amount this is ever talked about is downplayed astronomically, ha.

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He goes on a long aggressively negative piece about the housing content and falsely mentions the timers are set at 30 days

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The lodestone lists 30 days as the trigger for auto-demolition.

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Originally Posted by Barraind

The lodestone lists 30 days as the trigger for auto-demolition.

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The loadstone lists 45 days as the trigger for auto-demolition.

https://i.imgur.com/QIFm7G8.jpg

I don't believe Square Enix should EVER pay for journalists to do anything for any reason. If a journalist is going to come, they best come on their own dollar, or their employer's dollar.

That being said, I also don't believe Square Enix should bar any journalists, no matter how shitty they are, from attending. While I don't agree with this particular journalist's methods or behavior, it sets a bad precedent to start consoring journalism.

As far as the ERP part of this discussion. I don't believe he was wrong to ask that. Sure, it's not the right mood for it, but when ever is? That being said, Yoshida's answer was certainly typical, even if not satisfying.
ERP is in no ways small in the FFXIV community. Nor is it at all trying to hide. Nearly 24/7 there are PF's (On Primal, typically from the Hyperion server) for ERP. On Ultros in Limsa Lominsa, I frequently saw people shout chatting about "whoring out ERP". These people do get reported and they do not get dealt with. Simply answering "Not allowed by the ToS" is not a suitable answer to this sort of question in the current state.

The thing about the ERP question is probably the way he asked it (also that it wasted 7 minutes of a one hour Q&A). In one video, those who attended the private Q&A said he was asking about RMT ERP. So that alone made the question no longer about ERP, but RMT and why Yoshi-P likely said "not allowed by the ToS."

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Originally Posted by Barraind

That said, as someone who has been to many and helped organize a few, he isnt wrong about it. He's not in on the running gags, and being not in on it is, uh, frightening.

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The same could be said about any fan festival. But the point is, as a guest and more importantly as a journalist, he should have remained unbiased and respectful to the community.

He doesn't have to like or approve of what people are doing, just report the facts.

All I really got from the article was that the guy couldn't write anything of his own, so he did a hatchet job of taking several other kotaku articles from years ago and mish mashed them till the sort of resembled something he could attempt to call his own.

https://kotaku.com/final-fantasy-xiv...ps4-1827024591
https://kotaku.com/two-final-fantasy...par-1796692020
https://kotaku.com/inside-the-brothe...xiv-1820520915