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 |
