Double Agent
Synthesis - December 13, 2000 - Chris Jones

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this column are those of the participants and the moderator, and do not necessarily reflect those of the GIA. There is coarse language and potentially offensive material afoot. Lucia, you're a cute naked anime chick in the snow. I like that in a woman. Don't say we didn't warn you.

Ok, everybody who guessed right can give yourselves a big pat on the back. I'm not trying to make a statement on Hegel or anything, I just figured it would be nice, since I'm only doing 3 columns this week, to work in some sort of pattern into the titles. Next time I get the column for 7 straight days I might have do to Destiny, Death, Dream, etc., or something.

But now that I've called this column Synthesis, I feel the need to justify that somehow. Easy enough, since Monday's column was guys only, and yesterday's was girls only... but to go one step beyond that, I've included a letter from someone from RPGamer, just to really get this Synthesis thing working right. Heck, the only way we could have more synthesis is to have letters written by acids and bases, or matter and antimatter, or Sakaguchi and Horii... ah, heck with it. Let's just get this show on the road.

Onward.

The first
Hey Chris!

Today's column's title is... synthesis, right!? Though I'm probably not the first, I'll take my chances...

By the way, if no one was joking yesterday, they estimate our numbers a bit low... but, to give them their revenge : you divided 100,000 by 50 yesterday, and said it was 20,000. Ha, ha, Chris, don't tell me you, as a programmer, don't even know basic math....

And doesn't that Victor Ireland fellow crack you up? I can see him now : "Please God, give me an excuse to push back Lunar's release date some more, because verily, it is not yet finished, and without good reason to delay it still further, the fans will be most displeased with me...". And lo and behold, the next day, God created a snowstorm to smite those who would think it was Vic's fault that Eternal Blue is not out when it was due.

Sir Farren, wondering if God will do him a similar favor for not having finished his paper

On the contrary, Sir, you were, in fact, the first reader to point it out. Not only that, but you were one of only two people to point out that I was off by an order of magnitude in my order of magnitude calculation. Andrew Vestal was the first to actually guess the title, with Nich Maragos close behind, but they have the unfair advantage of being able to see the minute a new column goes up.

Re: Eternal Blue (great title, btw): interesting theory, but I can verify first hand that the great state of Illinois has in fact gotten a ton of snow recently, so there's no excuses or divine providence at work here. As for your term paper, it's just your own fault for not living in the portion of the country that hasn't been walloped by this blizzard... which is just about all of it, I think.

Threats and extortion, of course
Not to be mean, but how did you get this job if you didn't what Tail of the Sun is? ;) That and Carnage Heart are two great sleepers made by Artdink. I'm amazed they were released in the US at all considering thier oddness. I think they tanked, because I haven't seen much fron the in the US. An I was looking forward to Atrain 6.

Paul

Well, Tail of the Sun came out before I got my PSX, for one thing. And I have at least heard of Carnage Heart, even if I don't share your enthusiasm for the "Take the A Train" series.

And while I'm on the subject, let me just give a small piece of advice for anyone considering going out and buying Carnage Heart on the basis of this letter: I've heard it observed by not one, not two, but three different people, that with the amount of dedication it takes to learn how to play Carnage Heart, you could just as easily learn C++

And C++ pays better.

The Bizarro universe, where the women play games and the guys...
Hey, what do guys do in the Bizzaro universe?
Okay. I know there was quite a large number of people who identified themselves as the sole female gamer.

Even then.

I'm a female gamer who *didn't* reply to the poll.

And for the record, I'm fourteen, slim despite a sedentary lifestyle, live for Literature to the point of willingly going to school for it, and delight in bringing characters' levels up to 99.

The only thing is that I have a complexion that stops absolute strangers in their tracks struck by the urge to give me Chinese recipes for my skin (Note: this is TRUE. It happened before.)

So, as far as gender's concerned, you lot aren't alone, yeah?

Sorry to burst your bubble, though.

And as long as we're on the subject of how many people'll watch Final Fantasy the Movie, I think it's going to flop in Singapore. Why? No trailers, no publicity. While this may be a good thing for you US people, I can't find more than 1 person in 25 who knows of its existence or even plays FF.

Unless, of course, they are industrious Newsweek readers. This is because my school made it compulsory to subscribe.

(Anyway who came up with the name 'The Spirits Within'? It's bloody horrible.)

2 out of the 3 who have been interrogated by me are under the impression that FF the Movie is a remake of an earlier FF (notably FF8).

And the only people whom I know play Final Fantasy are, majority, female.

Before you start wonder what on earth Singaporeans are like, I'll add that I study in a girls' school. That about explains it.

And, simultaneously replying to the question regarding male gamers, I'll also add that no boy I know even *knows* what Vagrant Story is. Or Chrono Cross, for that matter.

Actually, neither do most of the girls.

The one girl that does insists that Serge looks like a twerp and Squall is cute.

I disagree.

Argh.

WindSprite,

wondering why Popular, the most reputable and wholesome bookshop in the country, stocks only, and I mean only, Diablo II, Rainbow Six, Starship Troopers, Warcraft, the Sims and Tomb Raider. I think they sold their one copy of FF8. Either that or they gave up on it and took it off their shelves; it's been there for half a year.

This letter has

a lot of

unecessacary paragraph breaks.

Anyway, this hits on a point I wanted to clarify from yesterday. All day I've been getting letters that state "yeah well I know 50+ gamers in my school alone, so your numbers are way off." To which I say, take some statistics classes, amigo. A Poisson distribution doesn't just suggest, it demands that there be at least a few clusters of gamers out there, but those clusters are the anomalies, not the rule. Just look at the kind of numbers a real hard-core game, like FFT, tends to generate: between 100,000 and 200,000, on average. Yeah, not every serious RPG person had a chance to get FFT when it came out, but not every person who did get it was likely a hard core gamer, so it balances. out. So I'll stick to my numbers, as far as "played-through-Xenogears-four-times-and-own-the-OST-and-Creid" gamers in the US are concerned... although, as Ms. WindSprite's letter points out, there are areas that don't come anywhere near the statistical average. (And yes, I realize she's in Singapore, not the US.)

Incidentally, I'd guess you haven't seen many trailers for the film yet because it's hitting the US before it makes any kind of Pacific Rim appearances, Japan, Hong Kong, etc. included. (Although we can never discount the efficiency of media pirates.) And I can state from personal experience that the drug Acutane does amazing things for your complexion, although the blood work they have to do is a pain and there are some issues with giving it to women.

Yes, but how many female gamers can legally vote?
Chris,

On the subject of yesterday, it made me think. Of all those women who wrote in, I began to wonder: "How many of these girls are over the age of 18?" Then it occured to me, the idea of a 25 year old woman playing video games is next to impossible. And if there are, I haven't met any.

If anything, you should title the next column "antagonist."

That's it.

EdgarFigaro.

There are older women gamers out there - again, this is something I can say from first hand experience. But the odds are against you for a couple of reasons - for one thing, many people lose interest in the hobby as they grow up and get (gasp) real lives, and I'm gonna guess this affects women a little more than it does guys. Add that to the already low guy/girl ratio and you've got an especially rare breed... but they are out there.

And I hope this can end our demographics discussion, at least for a little while, because everybody should be judged as an individual, dammit! Well, that, and I don't want to have to defend my vaguely supported hypothesis anymore.

Only $19.95, plus tax
"New from Riotgear, it's Riot Pants! Perfect for that stroll through your favorite necropolis, they're form fitting and aerodynamic. Great for that intense one on five work-out or when you're grabbing for that treasure chest that's just out of reach, it's like you're wearing nothing at all when you wear Riot Pants! Wiggle, wiggle!"

~Ian P.

The thing is, I wouldn't even mind this so much as an actual product ad. What really makes me wake up at night screaming is the idea of a GAP commercial, featuring the VS cast lip-synching to some forgotten 80's pop song ("Sharp Dressed Man", maybe), while doing some irritating dance moves, and ending with a tag line like "Everybody in S&M."

That, or the old lady from the Old Navy ads critiquing said Riot Pants.... *shudder*

How can you know about Hegel and not have mastered the shift key?
its synthesis my friend. glad to see that the collumn is run by learned Hegelians. umm i guess i should write about something. umm the difficulty of rpgs is something thats been on my mind recently. My video game oriented friends sometimes complain that rpgs have been getting easier.It seems to me that RPG difficulty has largely remained the same over the last few years and we have been growing older and wiser and thus they now give the apperance of being much easier. (ff4 was a bit hard for a 12 yearold but not for a 21 year old) Still that doesn't mean that this isn't a problem. Most rpgs are garunteed wins, if you die or it seems hard just build levels for a while in tedious battle and you will win. I long for more challenge. Not challenge through the creation of super beasts that can only be defeated by finding diamond skill 7, but rather challenges related to creative tactics, combos, decent strategy. With the readdition of a 4th character in ff9 i hoped that perhaps more creative spell casting/tactics would be possible and thus necessary to win. While ff9 is a wonderful game, the extra character didn;t seem to do anything for that aspect of the game (perhaps the secret boss will prove me wrong?). on the other hand i recently purchased saga fronteir 2 and was extremely pleased with the difficulty. Every boss battle i fought had me down to maybe one guy with barely any life and the only way to win was to be smart with you life points, with your use of combos, your extremely limited items, and with your assignments. well thats about it. what do you think? i am not sure there is much that can be done (i can just imagine people telling me to play an ff tactics type game and quit whining) but i liked the saga frontier approach.

-s.c., the final product of all the progress of history. (man hegel was cocky :-) )

I'll second that about SF2 (which I still haven't beaten on Wil's scenario) but not about FF9. The game's not hard, but right now the encounter rate does seem extremely high for some reason... haven't had to level up yet, but I have had to keep a pretty good stock of potions and phoenix downs.

And, of course, if anybody feels differently, you're more than welcome to email Nich about it tomorrow.

Sometimes we all wish we were middle aged Japanese businessmen
It should be "synthesis", shouldn't it? Resorting to Hegelian Dialectics, are we? What, have we run out of witticisms? ;)

*wonders how many people reading this column aren't drawing a blank*

*thinks about something else to do besides being a snot*

Hey, anyone have any thoughts on Yasunori Mitsuda's newest project? I'd love to see him score at least one Final Fantasy, but with FFX still being scored by Uematsu, and Mitsuda filling his schedule with other companies' projects, it probably won't happen for a while... *sigh*... It's not that I don't like Uematsu as a composer, but... God, it'd be cool to get anyone else's musical take on FF at this point... and who better than Mitsuda??? It's at times like these I wish I were a middle aged japanese businessman...

Princess Jemmy

P.S.: But I'd like to see more guys wearing Ashley Riot's attire *pouts*... Of course, they'd have to be as cute as he is =)

Heh... does inducing nausea qualify as a payback? No? Well, it was fun anyway ;)

I'd say about a third of my letters today were from people who knew what the title'd be, and where it comes from, so fear not, Jemmy, you're in equally learned company.

As for Tsugunai, it's still too early to tell how it'll turn out, gameplay wise, but unless I hear very bad things about it very early, I'll be picking up the OST. I'm thinking (and hoping) it'll be a departure from his other work (peppy Celtic music just doesn't seem to mesh too well with tales of post-mortem redemption, to my way of thinking) but if it's not... well, I can hardly fault the idea of a Chrono Cross 2.0 sountrack.

And one more thing, regarding Uematsu's latest - I like it. A lot. I don't have the OST yet, but everything I've heard in the game so far has been pretty good, and I've detected a definite improvement in FF7 -> 8 -> 9. Yeah it'd be great to let Mitsuda score an FF, but I'm willing to give Uematsu one more shot at it.

So close, and yet, so far
Metathesis? Hypothesis? Maze of Theseus? Telekinesis? Supercalifragilisticexpialithesis!

Oh, wait, this is a Q&A column, isn't it. Well, for a twist, how about I give the A. Forty-two! Now let's see what you can come up with (and no operating in base 13!)

Chimerasame
New Media, www.rpgamer.com

Sorry, man, but you lose. Although I admit the first two would have been ok as titles for Thursday and Friday, were I sticking around.

Anyway, thanks for stopping by, and thanks for bringing up my Douglas Adams reference count... it was getting a bit low, now that I think of it. Now all I have to do is work in a definition from The Meaning of Liff, and I'm set.... or maybe we could do it in reverse. Can anyone name a word that means "The unbelievable horror of waking up and discovering that you are still Scotty on Star Trek"?

Closing Comments:

Nich Maragos is back tomorrow for a stint as guest host, and the good news is that he's beaten FF9, so tomorrow will be chock full of all the spoilers you've been so desperately wanting to talk about. Nich also manages to get in a heck of a lot more gaming than I do, so who knows - you may be able to get some Skies of Arcadia discussion going too. But I'll let him take care of that, just remember to drop him a line.

As for me, I've got one last final tomorrow night, I'm packing Friday, and I'll be gone on a short vacation back to Austin for much of next week. I may be here next Thursday or Friday, or I may be back a week from Monday... I'm not sure. Either way, this should be the last break I end up taking for a few months, so enjoy it while I'm gone. Adios, for a while.

-Chris Jones, gone to Texas

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