Hey, I was playing my FFIX in my PS2 almost non-stop for two days, when it suddenly started acting weird. I pull it out, and tah-da, it's got a lazer burn in it. Keep in mind that it was perfectly fine prior to putting it in the PS2. Is this happening to other people, or did I just get a weird PS2?

-Turnpike Ted

OK. Here I am. I run one of the largest (yet still non-profit) FF-series sites on the net, I have shrines up for five other popular games (with two more in the works) and I usually buy 2-3 games a year. And yet... the truth is, I probably wouldn't miss games all that much if my economic or social position would change. In fact, I've already started planning for the eventuality; within 2-3 years I'll probably be married and won't have time for games at all any more.

Do I enjoy them? Most definitely. Can I live without them? Again definitely. There might be a period of denial, but I'll get over it. The only real reason I play RPGs is due to the interactions of imaginative characters and situations; that's what got me started on them, anyway. Lately, I've been starting to kind of realize that most games are very similar to one another. The sort of sparkling, damn-this-is-cool mood just hasn't been there; nor has the notion of newness and deepness that came with my first RPG, FF6. I'm currently enjoying the Tales/Star Ocean series (which I'm convinced is one and the same, but I can't find anyone besides the music director who works on both games) because it's very entertaining and fun, but again, the story is kind of run-of-the-mill in all instalments. The trend towards games that are more like interactive movies - Shenmue, Shadow of Destiny, etc., might keep me going, because those storylines seem to be far better thought out than recent RPGs. There isn't as much action, but it seems to be much more engaging. It might be more worth a few rentals than purchase, though.

I also seem to be enjoying making websites and programming, and that is slowly eclipsing my love for RPGs. I originally thought of going into video games, and then I spoke with an actual designer, heard about the hours etc., and thought "forget it". 8-) If they go, they will be missed. But eventually I'll be too busy to think about them.

--Cidolfas, webmaster and all-around nice guy

I don't really see there as being a day when I am "no longer a gamer." I plan to go into the gaming industry in some shape or form, and so games will continue to be a part of my life. However, with the increasing demands for my time this evil "real life" thing is putting upon me, I do have to be much more selective about my gaming. You brought a good point up yesterday about this, however, it is one I don't quite see eye-to-eye with.

While you seem to want innovation in the games you play, I want fun. Pure, unadulterated fun (keep in mind, my view of fun often comes off as "tedious" to other people. MMM... FF8... MMM.) I dont want to play a game that is "promising, but flawed." If I picked up Xenogears today, I'd probably put it down after a couple hours, because its not exciting and interesting enough to warrant the investment. Too much dead time. Two prime examples of what Im looking for are the Street Fighter series and the Final Fantasy series. Both have been around long enough that all the "Non-fun" elements have been taken out, and replaced with more "fun" elements. I don't want to have to give a game some time to get fun (just play ten more hours! Then it gets cool!) or change my playing habits or somesuch. Playing ten more hours of a game I don't enjoy is ten hours of my mortality I will never get back. In short, I don't care as much for innovation, just make the games fun, dammit!

DC,

You speak the truth. Five years ago, all that mattered to me in terms of any RPG or game was the length; the more the better. It really didn't matter whether the game was exceptionally fun or not (it usually wasn't), I figured if it held my attention for long enough, fun would follow. I'm now older, smarter, and a bit more jaded when it comes to major investments of my time. I now want more quality, not quantity, of playing time.

Which is why I feel the future of gaming is going to be following the example of Metal Gear Solid. That game had a script of a few hundred-thousand words, and you could get through it in only a few hours. And it made sense. I very much enjoy major projects like finishing/understanding Xenogears, but I also just sometimes want to play a game for just a few minutes before doing something else (like sleeping). Shorter, higher quality games are the key to giving this worthy hobby some better recognition, and for the "rest of the world" to finally accept this medium as mature.

-Red Raven, saying FF9 was a very large step in the wrong direction

Hey Drew,

Excellent rant yesterday, and I can concur with almost everything. However, although you did manage to sum up my thoughts exactly, there was one important fact that you have excluded from the "culprit" list, which being the limitation of modern technology. Videogames, like almost all entertainment mediums, are an evolutionary process, starting from its uttermost primal form -which being now- steadily building momentum and ultimately resulting in some new form of entertainment which can and probably will be accepted by the mass. A good example that coalite to this theory is the entertainment medium we refer to as TV/Motion picture. As I can recall, Motion pictures (films) started out as being some lamebrain's experimenting with a lightsource and accidentally illuminated it through a thin barrier, which he then later found a more profound use for and transformed an otherwise useless occurrence to what we glorify to today as the TV/Movie industry. This same events of happening is also occurring with Videogames. Videogames started out exactly the same way as TV/Movies did, but unlike TV/Movies, the Videogames medium is at its "midage" form, whereas TV/Movies are in their final form. Now the only problem, aside from the maturing process, that hinders Videogames' mass acceptance is technology and cost. If, I'm quite sure the real question is when, we can bridge the gap between low cost games/consoles and high technological advances regarding interaction--probably virtual reality--then we will see the true form of Videogames.

-Weltall, who innately capitalized "Videogames" for some reason

Hey Drew or pod person named Drew! You've become less bitter in your old age! I was reading some of the old columns when I was supposed to be doing my lab report and found that you don't take nearly as much glee out of bashing flamers and idiots as you used to. Have people stopped writing flames or have you just stopped responding to them? Where has the cynicism gone? Has insulting irritating Drew been replaced by "positively positive" Drew? Washington Irving, wondering if he is going to get some of the old bile for asking about this.

Dude,

I think yuo're being unfair comparing games and just ovies. What about novels? People read novels and it isolates them, like you were saying was true about games. But people readthem anyway. In fact, I'd say their pretty damned mainstream, wouldn't you? So as long as somebody makes an intelligent game, I think people woul dbe willing to play it, despite it isolating them.

-Xenographer

Drew,

I understand your dilemma. Once I graduated from high school and joined the Navy, I quit gaming for about 3 years. I felt I had grown up and needed to become a "mature" adult that partied and sought the opposite sex like everyone else. Then I saw a guy on the ship playing FF 8 which got me interested again. I saw the graphics and how gaming had evolved in my few years of absence and was totally impressed. So, I have been back for a little over a year and I am still into it. I do think games will keep growing and become more popular due to the better graphics that games now involve. I do agree with you that it will ultimately remaine a niche market. There's just to much cash and time involved in it. Also, despite the party games such as Mario Party, it is a singular activity. Not that many people get excited watching someone play the likes of FF Tactics. In response to when I will stop gaming, I don't know. I think there will always be something that breaks new ground that will keep me interested. You just have to find it and ignore the crap. For every Bouncer, there is a Persona 2 or Vagrant Story that offers something new. Of course, I don't have children yet. I think a newborn would probably infringe on my game time. I am married but my wife enjoys games too. The only problem is that she is prone to Dragon Quest, but that's another problem.

Drew,

I'd hype up a censored game as being uncensored, fill it with as much sex and FMV as possible (quite often melding the two), and then start some giant ad campaign during reality TV shows offering something better than reality. In other words:

The GIA Videogame.

-Shawn K.

I've been thinking about this very topic recently. I don't know if you've see the VT-racing game on PS2 (you know those four-wheeled motorcycles) but it made me think about the highway chase scene in FFVII. Imagine if a company, like Square for exemple, could just buy the "codes" from another game made by another company, and therefore let that company buy the buyer's own "codes". Now let's go back to FFVII and pretend it is released for the first time in 2001. With what I mentioned above, the chase scene on the highway would be more realistic and of course more fun. It could even be incorporated more than once in the game instead of just being one mini-game. I mean seriously, wouldn't it be great to play an RPG where you start as your avarage RPG hero who decides to enroll in the military and then becomes a pilot (just an exemple)? That way you could have your typical RPG-type battles, sometimes more strategic battles (again codes could be bought from other companies for this, they just need to tweak them a bit), and sometimes dogfights a la WW1/WW2. Sounds like a stretch? Think about it. If you play through the FFVII chase scene knowing that the "gameplay" was borrowed from another game then you might be interested in buying that very game. It would bring companies closer to one another and maybe in the end they would all be happy friendly friends?

That's how I hope the RPGs (and any other games for that matter) of tomorow will be. The story would no longer be affected by the limited gameplay and vice versa. No more FMVs for huge spaceship battle scenes, you actually play those scenes and without having the feeling that it is a "mini-game".

-Phil

Yo Drew,

I was thinking about this today, and I think that there's one way to make the RPG market go mainstream without dumbing down. Certain comic books have become revitalized when a famous Hollywood or novel writer sits down to pen one, usually resulting in a very good literary experience. Wouldn't it be great if some writers would come to RPG's and pen a story or two? To anybody that knows who Tad Williams is, imagine an RPG story from him and weep.

I guess the only things holding them back would be money and a lack of knowledge about how to write a game. The money thing could be handeled, expecially if it's from someone like Square, Konami, Namco, or the like. Even if they don't write the whole script, I think it would turn out great if they just wrote the scenario and let a competent writer fill in the rest.

Or make RPG's that can be played socially, so my friends don't laugh when I run to get a game on launch date, which they don't understand at all.

--The Steve, mad, bad, and full of Dove bars

The funny thing is, game already are mainstream- what we seem to expect is that all these "mainstream" players will somehow be as dedicated as we are. That is not what mainstream means. Deuce Bigelow, Male Gigilo is a mainstream movie. A dedicated movie fan does not expect the general public to watch sit down for an afternoon and watch Gandhi or some Humphrey Bogart classics- they know that the amount of people who are willing to discuss the minutiae of the film techniques used in a great movie is no measure of mainstream success. Instead, they look at how many people saw Dude, Where's My Car.

You say it takes an extraordinary amount of time to play a game. What you mean is, it takes an extraordinary amount of time to finish an RPG. Most people do not play RPGs. Most people play Resident Evil in one or two hour increments. Most people sit around with a buddy and play a half-hour match of Madden 2001 or Tekken Tag Tournament. Most people do not play RPGs (though in music industry terms, each Final Fantasy game since FF6 has gone platinum or double platinum), and even if they do, they play in small increments. Even still, Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time books are bestsellers- reading two or three of them takes as long as finishing most RPGs.

What about the price? Most people do not rush out and buy the latest gaming system (though last Christmas, the hottest item on the market was the Playstation 2). They buy it when its price is level with that of a used VCR or TV- about $99.00. Remember, VCRs and VHS tapes once cost as much as a Playsation 2 and a new game do now. DVD players were initially only bought by the rich and dedicated movie buffs, as their price drops, their ownership amount more casual viewers grow. People don't necessarily all buy Tomb Raider III when it is first released, they buy it when it is a $20.00 Greatest Hit (though a game must sell a considerable amount to reach this status- and dedicated games are not the people who put those sales so high in most cases). Sure it takes thousands of dollars to game in style, but people who can afford those entertainment centers already have them, and many dedicated gamers cannot afford them either- yet are still dedicate gamers.

Who plays games? As my dad (a 50-year old employed in the civil service) says, a large amount of his work buddies' kids have to fight them for the controller. I doubt those families are currently fighting over who can play Shadows of Memories, but 30-year-old men just may be wanting to stop to play some Tetris or NHL 2000. That's what a mainstream entertainment medium is. Will games have their version of The Watchmen? Who cares? The Watchmen and Love and Rockets, and so forth, for all their artistic merit, have not made the graphic novel a socially acceptable medium of entertainment. Games have already given us stories than cannot be properly told in any other medium (Shadows of Memories), and hopefully some true classics will follow in those games' footsteps. But those are not what makes a successful entertainment medium. The fact that the game buffs who dictate the success of niche genres are short on the time it takes to play every game released in those genres only makes it more likely that truly great games along those lines will be released. In the meantime, the general public is here, and they'd like a copy of Conker's Bad Fur Day.

-Davon