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Nomura no longer directing FF15.

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09.24.2014 9:42pm

(Edited on 09.25.2014 at 1:38am)

Scribe
The Taru

reido said:

Alright fuck it, I'll bite.

I think there is a problem with the current idea of gender equality anyway. It seems to me that the current idea is to treat each gender the same in regards to life quality but to keep them apart from identifying with each other. Almost as if a specific gender was trying to prove superiority over the other.

Don't bother with phobias because I'm well aware of the strong points and weak points of each gender. Now, moving towards a collective consciousness as a species not divided by gender (or race, sexuality, nationality, etc)... now that I could get on board with. Which is exactly what I think all male stories and all female stories help accomplish but more on that later. I'd say there are as many tropes of female characters with superiority complexes out there as there are tropes of damsels in distress. You know the one where the girl rolls her eyes because she has to suffer the ignorant company of a male.

Lastly, I've sat through dozens of instances where I have had to place myself in the females shoes to experience a story. I never felt left out, or like I was being told that I could not be apart of that experience. It bred into me some of the best qualities females naturally possess. Those experiences made me an overall better person. It's just plain fucking stubborn to say that an all male story, told in the depth of FF, could not do the same for both boys and girls alike. There is something to learn in each story and you're dumb to rob yourself of that because there isn't a girl character you could imagine yourself as.

IT'S NOT ABOUT YOU BEING PLACED IN THE ROLE OF THE PERSON, YOU IMAGINATIVE BASTARDS, IT IS ABOUT YOU BEING A GUEST IN THE MIND OF THAT PERSON. YOU ARE IDLE AND CANNOT CHANGE A STORY BEING TOLD TO YOU. IT'S MEANT FOR YOU TO LEARN ABOUT SOMEBODY OTHER THAN YOURSELF AND THROUGH THAT PERHAPS CHANGE YOURSELF.

I hate to be the one to tell someone else how to be a dreamer, but you're doing it wrong. And if it comes down to your way of dreaming or my way of dreaming is more important, I can tell you for the overall benefit of the human race, my way is the most beneficial. And contrary to your most likely defense in this topic: I am not misogynistic. Enjoy the game because we both know SE owns your soul and if they put out anything remotely fun to play you'll pay for it. Good day.

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09.24.2014 10:16pm

Rhaegar
World Warrior 21007

OK. Your rant still doesn't explain why we need a new all-male story in 2015 when there are literally hundreds already on the market. In a series that has traditionally had better representation than most. Also, I am male. As such, I hardly feel the need to be a "guest" in another male's mind when I already know their perspective from real life. And if I ever did, again, there's hundreds of other games and media with such stories that I could turn to, dwarfing the number of any all-female stories out there.

Oh, and I haven't bought or played a Final Fantasy since XIII. Didn't care to try out its direct sequels, since I didn't like XIII to begin with. Safe to say, I'm not a Squeenix whore.

Lexx said:

Finally, I don't like the idea of there being some kind of checklist for games. You need this many women, this many asians, this many blacks, this many disabled, etc. If you don't, people will rage and wish for your economic ruin. The idea of stifling creativity like that fundamentally bothers me. I mean, speaking for myself, I'd LOVE if there were gay or bi characters in FF beyond fucking Mukki. But I don't want that to be a forced requirement in all FF games going forward.

On the contrary, if you feel that this "checklist" stifles your creativity, you probably weren't very creative to begin with. And considering Squeenix's recent track record, that's pretty fair to assume about them.

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09.24.2014 10:47pm

Scribe
The Taru

Rhaegar said:

Also, I am male. As such, I hardly feel the need to be a "guest" in another male's mind when I already know their perspective from real life. And if I ever did, again, there's hundreds of other games and media with such stories that I could turn to, dwarfing the number of any all-female stories out there.

Rhaegar said:

Aaaaaand, we're done. You just forfeited the right to be taken seriously.

You know the perspective of every male ever, got ya. Obviously this is why you and I are in such agreement right now.

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09.24.2014 10:48pm

Rhaegar
World Warrior 21007

Just like you know the perspective of every female ever from playing a few games, amirite?

1

09.24.2014 10:53pm

Lexx
I know how they work

Rhaegar said:

On the contrary, if you feel that this "checklist" stifles your creativity, you probably weren't very creative to begin with.

wat

A checklist of ethnic and gender requirements for any story to be accepted is, by definition, stifling. It forces the creator to form their story around the checklist instead of what comes naturally to mind. A writer should have male or female characters because it makes sense for the story they want to tell. There should be black or asian or disabled characters because the story requires them, not because someone on the internet will scream and boycott the game if they're not included.

In this instance, for whatever reason, Nomura envisioned a story that only had playable males. Maybe he got the idea from a road trip he took with some friends back in his young adulthood. Maybe he had just watched The Hangover. I don't know. But, IMO, it's ridiculous to outright dismiss all the story, all the gameplay, all the music, all the artwork, EVERYTHING that comprises a game of this caliber, simply because you don't play as a female. You remind me of the people who refused to watch The Sopranos because they said it perpetuated negative stereotypes about Italians. They denied themselves one of the greatest television shows to ever air. Maybe they wouldn't have liked it, but they'll never know because they dismissed it out of hand for some imagined slight.

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09.24.2014 11:05pm

reido
(\/)(o,,,o)(\/)

I stand by my overall point:
Dudes are boring. The market is saturated with dudes--the societal market, movies and books and music and comics and video games, is saturated with dudes, and as such, dudes are boring.

Does putting ladies in make a game better? No. FFXIII and its sequels are pretty proof of that. Fuck, they have a female LEAD.

Diversity--on gender lines, on race lines, on ability lines, on body-type lines--is good for gaming culture because it creates more interesting games (or books, or comics, or movies, or music, or whatever) not because dudes are inherently boring or inherently inferior (we're not!), but because they (we?) are fucking everywhere.

Will I buy FFXV? I dunno. It looks boring. The cast is pretty boring looking. I think it's a pretty un-creative looking cast. Generally with FF games the cast is the first thign that sells me on whether or not the game looks interesting (and I've gotten burned here--thanks, FFXIII). There's nothing there to make me want to play it (once, the Final Fantasy name might have been a must-buy selling point, but those days are past, and have been for years). Maybe the story will make it more interesting--some of my favorite games star macho dudes. Those games generally have some kind of hook that pulls me in, though. Fungus zombies and emotional resonance. Gunfights on alien planents and interesting and diverse supporting casts. And so on. But what I've seen of the game so far just from the trailer is

[size=200]BOoooooooooooooooOOOOOORING[/size].

And the biggest thing about it that bores me is the boring, bland, completely uninteresting cast, which is entirely made up of boring dudes who are boring, boring, boring.

(Hell, even the battle system looks sluggish and boring.)

[edit] CURSE YOU, SIZE TAGS

[edit edit] And oh yeah--
Lady characters can be boring too! Thanks, FFXIII. But from a marketing standpoing Lightning--to use a specific exampel--looked interesting... at least, until the game came out, and she turned out to be just about as boring as... well, as the dudes in the FFXV trailer.

I want games that are exciting. I want games that are interesting, and different, and push the boundries, and show us new things we haven't seen before a million times.

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09.24.2014 11:08pm

Rhaegar
World Warrior 21007

Lexx said:

wat

A checklist of ethnic and gender requirements for any story to be accepted is, by definition, stifling. It forces the creator to form their story around the checklist instead of what comes naturally to mind. A writer should have male or female characters because it makes sense for the story they want to tell. There should be black or asian or disabled characters because the story requires them, not because someone on the internet will scream and boycott the game if they're not included.

In this instance, for whatever reason, Nomura envisioned a story that only had playable males. Maybe he got the idea from a road trip he took with some friends back in his young adulthood. Maybe he had just watched The Hangover. I don't know. But, IMO, it's ridiculous to outright dismiss all the story, all the gameplay, all the music, all the artwork, EVERYTHING that comprises a game of this caliber, simply because you don't play as a female. You remind me of the people who refused to watch The Sopranos because they said it perpetuated negative stereotypes about Italians. They denied themselves one of the greatest television shows to ever air. Maybe they wouldn't have liked it, but they'll never know because they dismissed it out of hand for some imagined slight.

Fine, such stories are for the realm of fanfiction or personal journal entries. Not stories you plan to release to the entire world as a AAA title in a billion-dollar industry, whose audience is very much diverse. (To the point where adult women have surpassed teenage boys as a gamer demographic, actually.) And as an RPG in which you play multiple characters.

That comparison to The Sopranos is also rather disingenuous. Excluding a significant demographic, which FFXV is demonstrably doing and we have the evidence right in front of us, is NOT the same as imagined slights from a TV show based on the coincidential nationality of a few characters which in no way represent all Italians. Not that FFXV is going to be the caliber of video game that The Sopranos was a TV show, anyway.

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09.24.2014 11:36pm

Thirdtwin
It's you guys' fault

this topic some white people shit now.

TT

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09.24.2014 11:38pm

Nelfichu
I've been there, hombre.

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09.24.2014 11:41pm

Scribe
The Taru

reido said:

But what I've seen of the game so far just from the trailer is

[size=200]BOoooooooooooooooOOOOOORING[/size].

Leviathan heard that.

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09.24.2014 11:47pm

reido
(\/)(o,,,o)(\/)

There's a joke here about genitalia, but I'll let y'all fill in the blanks.

0

09.24.2014 11:50pm

Thread Creator

Zubis
Registered Member

Out of interest, how would people feel if SE said they're intentionally doing this to target a female audience, in much the same way that Raiden was added to MGS2 because Konami's focus group of female teenagers said there's no way they'd play a MGS game with Snake as the lead?

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09.25.2014 12:13am

Thirdtwin
It's you guys' fault

So I read this wall of text, and I'm just, I don't know what you're trying to say here. Like, I'm not saying this to be insulting or down on you or something, I just want to understand where you're coming from. So I'm just going to try to ask a few questions to maybe clarify what you're getting at here, because I'm kind of curious as to what might be going on. (I have a theory, which I may state in a later post, but that's just going to muddy the waters for now)

So, in order:

1) You think there is a problem with the "current idea of gender equality," but don't come right out and say what that problem is. Would you be willing to clarify?

2) Your statement regarding a "specific gender" is rather oblique. I.E. you do not name which gender is trying to prove superiority over the other. I have an even chance of being right or wrong if I ask, given you only present two choices, so: which gender do you feel is trying to prove its superiority?

3) What do "phobias" have to do with candid discussion about gender and video games? Also, what do you hold are the "strong" and "weak" points of each gender?

4) Are you aware that a "superiority complex" indicates a false front of superiority, whereby the person projecting superiority actually feels inferior deep down? Such that contrasting that with the "damsel in distress" concept as the theoretical empowered counterpart is actually incorrect? If you are, then why bring up two negative tropes in regards to portrayal of female characters?

5) Do you use tropes in the sense that TVTropes uses tropes?

6) What are the best qualities that females "naturally" possess? And to what sense of "nature" do you refer? (As an aside I should think it would be very difficult to breed a quality into a person that has already been born, but if your experience indicates differently then far be it for me to criticize you!)

7) When you begin your all-caps rant: are you using "imaginitive" (sic) as a negative? Certainly I think a quality of imagination would actually help people project into and empathize better with story characters. Or might you have meant "unimaginative?" Not to be a grammar nazi or anything, just that you seem to have said exactly the opposite of what you meant if that is the case. It helps in cases like this to maybe forgo ranting in favor of considering your argument with some distance and rephrasing based on what you actually mean.

In any case I hope you do choose to respond, perhaps after taking a bit of a breather to reposition your thoughts into a more comprehensible framework. I'm interested in what you have to say, and how your dreams will aid the human race. Perhaps one day we may collaborate on further philanthropic achievement.

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09.25.2014 12:14am

reido
(\/)(o,,,o)(\/)

I'd still be bored, and I'd say they're going about it the wrong way, just like MGS2 did.

(This is at Zubis, not Thirdtwin, though that should be pretty obvious.)

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09.25.2014 12:21am

Thirdtwin
It's you guys' fault

Zubis said:

Out of interest, how would people feel if SE said they're intentionally doing this to target a female audience, in much the same way that Raiden was added to MGS2 because Konami's focus group of female teenagers said there's no way they'd play a MGS game with Snake as the lead?

Well, I mean, that's kind of the problem with single-player storylines, is that it IS going to be an exploration of a single viewpoint almost by necessity. One of Final Fantasy's strengths is that, with multiple protagonist characters, there's more potential to explore multiple viewpoints, including those not normally explored within the big-budget current-gen gaming atmosphere. Given that, I view FF15's choice to exhibit only males as a discarding of one of its greater strengths, and would view such an attempt as trying to drop an established strength for a questionable benefit (in that there is no guarantee that, even marketed to girls, a man festival jrpg will find success amongst that market--other female-targeted works generally feature a viewpoint female character, if nothing else). Divorced from all other gender-representation concerns, it seems like a risk that just might not pay off, coming from a company that seems to be struggling recently in getting pay-offs in general.

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