So my latest Escapist piece is up; it's the story of a tragic love affair a group of enormously devoted fans had with a game they couldn't let go of (sob). More interestingly, though, it's a story of open-source gaming in practice, and how the kind of fanatics who love a story enough to make it their own are also the kind who will probably completely ruin it for everyone else. I'm talking about Final Fantasy roleplayers, some of the most puzzling and intense people I've ever met. It's so odd that any description I could give doesn't really suffice; my best recommendation is to just go read it. [The Aeris is fanart -- apparently, decent Aeris fanart does exist! It's by nanami-yuki and I got it here.]
11 comments:
So thats where all the Cloud and Sephiroth screen names are coming from, I never had much love for FF VII so I completely missed all of that. It's the only game I know of ever that had so much commercials running on TV, it was like every time you turned the TV one there was a FF VII commercial ( pre-rendered movies from the game ) to see.
So yeah naturally I tried the game. It was an ok game but after 40 hours or so in the game I couldn't care less. That gigantic monster was summon and was heading to Midgar thats when I thought that I could fill in the blanks myself and never finished the game.
A few years later I tried FF X after a few hours of that game I realized that FF is not for me. I would say RPGs are not for me but I played and finished Skies of Arcadia and I really enjoyed that game.
So this is entirely tangental, bu am I the only one who about 60% of the time reads the ad for "Fury Challenge" as "Furry Challenge?" Is this a sign I've been on the internet too much?
Holy crap no, I have done PRECISELY the same. And yes, we are on the internet too much.
Remo -- it's a VERY specific type of game; I think people either love it to death or hate it.
Quite an eloquent post delving into the mind of role players. I really enjoy seeing scholastic work upon gaming.
I came across your site on the recommendation from thebrianygamer. I was one of his students that studied video games. Keep up the insightful work.
Just read your article off the Escapist. You, madam, are full of Epic Win.
Never heard of an FFRP till today, then again i never bothered with AOL. It was a great read.
Have a nice day.
Thanks so much, h3lios! Yar, half of those FFRP kids have probably become an hero by now. Appreciate you coming by my site and hope you'll come back!
If things like that happened in chatrooms even ten years ago, is it any wonder that the line between reality and fiction is blurring for many players of full-blown MMOGS?
I don't mean to be overly alarmist, but can anyone really argue anymore that this kind of thing doesn't deserve close scrutiny? Games have always been addictive, but with the advent of the social aspect digital interactions have in some circles become a valid alternative to real-life ones.
This might be a process that can't be stopped, but we damn well better think about the consequences of the ascendancy of non-proximal social interactions.
Farren -- Totally. The more I look at this stuff the more the implications fascinate/scare me.
Excellent article. The kid who called his ShinRa Lt. ...classic. Your comment about how it is a specific type of game is spot on as well. I'm ashamed to admit how much time I spent racing and breeding chocobos - all for Knights of the Round.
Dash -- oh, man, me too. And the funny thing was, while it was for KotR, I became so into having chocobos that I went on doing it. Seeing as how Squeenix is raping us for everything they can get by putting FFVII in everything, I wish they'd come up with an FFVII game that was exclusively a chocobo training/raising sim.
That, and Triple Triad in FFVII. The IX/XI cardgame fucking sucks.
I'm so glad/relieved that someone else had chocobos on the brain. Query: Did you also have a chocobo breeding/feeding/racing notebook? Just me, then?
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