Ignophobia – Nathan Mallory's Weblog

So the English-language version of FFXII has apparently been leaked onto the Internet. While this in and of itself is of little interest to me — I’m looking forward to playing it in English, but having already indulged myself in the Japanese import months ago, I’m content to wait it out — the online reaction is somewhat amusing. While I’ve never known the gaming press to be concerned with piracy news, the news post at 1Up.com caught my eye:

UPDATE: Since filing our original report, it appears Square Enix has started asserting legal control. One popular torrent site, where many others were linking to as an originator, has already removed their torrent listing completely, a response we may see echoed at other Internet dwellings eventually, but for now, many torrents remain alive and well.

Furthermore, when news of the torrents broke, thousands rushed to download the files before they started disappearing (or anyone took notice of their existence). Our question: what happens to all the people who were inevitably monitored downloading? Will Square Enix press charges against the offenders? It’s too early to tell, but we wouldn’t rule out the possibility.
[Why should they do that? The same kind thing happened with FFVIII, FFX, and probably a host of other Squaresoft games. Besides that, litigation might punish the downloaders, but the leak's overall affect on the game's sales will be negligible (especially considering that these people pirating the game now likely would have done the same after the official release anyway).
On the other hand, this very directed speculation and suggestion about the company's likelihood to "press charges" (has Square EVER commenced litigation on its own for this kind of piracy?) might very well frighten young, would-be pirates from taking the "risk" in the first place.]

ORIGINAL STORY: Yesterday, the rumor mill suggested an early copy of the US version of Final Fantasy XII, not scheduled for a release until the end of the month, leaked onto the pirating scene. Given the especially large download size and the need for torrents to grow a decent number of seeds (hosts who provide the files for “leechers” on torrents), however, there was little to no confirmation on whether the files were legit.

… No, we will not be linking to any venue where a user could download a copy, and any discussion in the 1UP user comments or message boards to that capacity will result in immediate account suspension. [As well they should. Providing a popular location to exchange information of the pirated game would put 1Up at a lot more risk than any single pirate.] Forgetting that pirating is a criminal activity, Final Fantasy XII is supposed to be an absolutely incredible RPG — we strongly encourage gamers to wait a few more weeks for the real game to properly reward Square Enix for their labored work. [Easy for them to say, being already in possession of legitimately obtained copies of the title in question] We don’t mean to be publisher apologists here, but it’s only common decency.

Taking 1Up at its word that it is not a publisher apologist, the question this story left in my head was, “Then why publish such a story in the first place (since I’m sure discussion of pirated material is already prohibited by the click-wrap agreements binding every 1Up forum member)? Is FFXII that good of a game that 1Up feels altruistically inclined to beg its readers not to indulge (despite the fact that posting the story at all probably notified far more people of its existence than if they had remained quiet)?”
No, it’s a scared news outlet covering its ass, and highlighting a major problem with the gaming news “industry” as a whole. The reason: where do you think the pirates obtained the original copy of the game to start the torrents seeding in the first place? Games don’t need to begin replication until a very short time before release. While it’s not impossible someone at a fabrication plant could have pocketed a copy, it’s FAR more likely one of the multitude of review copies Square Enix sent to the news organizations disappeared for a half an hour, and the deed was done. Much like the DVD screeners sent to Academy Award voters prior to the Oscars, if copies are continually leaked to the unscrupulous public, publishers may decide (as I’m sure some do) that the risk of escape is not worth giving the press their advance copies of what is surely to be a mega-seller title anyway. By posting this story as it did, 1Up (and other news sites) have given news of the leak to its entire readership, while still covering its ass in case future publishers put up a stink.  Score one for common decency!
The problem this illustrates is just how beholden the gaming “news” sites are to the game makers themselves. Would the industry covering Hollywood (or, God forbid, REAL press outlets such as Wall Street Journal or CNN) alter their coverage because the targets they are covering might get upset? Doubtful. But the only things gaming sites have are exclusive access (interviews, review copies) and press releases (which everyone receives at the same time). And because so many of them are willing to sell out their reviews, write meticulously criticism-free previews, and post sham news stories like this one, anyone not engaging in the same will be left in the dust. Game reviews are a dime-a-dozen (we even feature them here at Ignophobia, bastion of gaming journalistic excellence), but if you have that exclusive interview with Tetsuya Nomura, you’re sure to get the hits…

The gaming press seems preoccupied with coming across as “legitimate.” For that to truly happen, organizations need to be willing to hold publishers and even developers at arm’s length, stop idolizing them just because they enjoy what they create, and cover the industry in more serious, less “fill our sites with ads and Flash” fashion.

I think I’m capable of handling “more of the same” without losing all interest, but this really just feels like they didn’t feel like put the effort in to make anything new.  I’ve also heard they are planning on remaking the aforementioned GBA game using the KH2 engine (obviously somebody psychicly read my future blog post).  Good for them!  Way to add the ABSOLUTE bare minimum to the remake!  I mean, except for graphics and probably some better music samples, it doesn’t sound as though there’ll be anything new.  Might as well have saved a few bucks and just emulated the GBA game outright.

I figure the only way to let Square Enix know that they are sequeling me to death is to turn away from them when they produce shit, just like any other company.  I’m looking forward to FFXII, but XIII scares me to death.  Other than that, I couldn’t be sadder about the company’s pillaging of FFVII’s good will or their incomprehensible reasoning for turning away from perfectly good series’ like Chrono and Parasite Eve to churn out Valkyrie Profile and Drakengard crap.

See, I think Final Fantasy XIII will make or break the series.  They’ve already put their marketing foot out there with three titles based on it, announced long before anyone cares enough about them to shell out $180-$240 for all 3 (depending on how ungodly the PS3 game pricing is).  Now they have to deliver the goods, and if the last couple are any indication, the series is straying further and further from what anyone who used to play them found fun.  I mean, I want a goddamn RPG not an MMO!  That’s why I liked Enchanted Arms so much… it was so old school it made me tingle…  FFXII retains ENOUGH of its sanity that you can dial the MMO/realtime action of it up or down, and could even do it as an almost completely turn-based game if you so chose.  Judging by the trailer for XIII… I’m not so sure we’ll have that luxury again.

Similarly, Sony’s insulting arrogance in marketing the PS3 is like a parallel to Square’s arrogance with its franchises.  “We’re so good, we don’t even have to try!  Everyone will buy it anyway!”  I’ll probably buy one eventually, but not until several killer titles force it upon me, and not until a price cut or two.  It’s all actually making me feel much better about my Xbox 360 purchase, considering that I felt so badly after impulse buying the 360, that I just got sucked into their hype machine.  I mean, I see myself in 2008 or something owning all three next-gen systems, but if you had asked me a year ago, I would have predicted the complete reverse for my desires — PS3 for sure, probably a Wii, eh on the 360.  That’s how bad they’ve screwed up.  Your move, Squeenix.

If I hadn’t just finished a very enjoyable game, I’d say I’m becoming jaded.

In my search for a game to tide me over in my overly bloated Fall Break, or at least until Final Fantasy XII, I picked Kingdom Hearts II back up from the dustbin of half-completed titles, where it had been deposited before my law summer in Tokyo. Currently clocked at twenty hours, I’m not sure it will climb much higher now… First, please understand — I was a humongous fan of the first Square/Disney doppelganger (finished once in Japanese, then again in English, then the International version almost to completion…. that’s several DAYS of my life to that one game). And true to expectations, the sequel doesn’t stray terribly far from the original’s formula. Let me rephrase that: the sequel doesn’t stray AT ALL from the original’s formula.

The game begins with a four+ hour introduction sequence, vaguely styled as an extended version of the introductory island from KH1, but with a definite theme of “You didn’t play the Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories GBA game, did you? Well, we could bring you up to speed on what you missed, but we’d much rather fill your time with cryptic references and see if we can’t get you to go buy it instead!” By the end of the brief and inexplicable tribulations of Roxas The Sora Look-Alike, my admittedly short attention span was already beginning to drift to the realm of apathy. Fortunately, right about then, Donald and Goofy reappear, Sora gets released from the stasis chamber the designers had placed him in to preserve him for the next cash cow (too bad they could do the same with his decided post-pubescent voice actor), and the game takes a sudden lurch in a new direction. I had the feeling at that point that, “Okay, that first part made me want to give up, but here comes the payoff!” Unfortunately, the game’s lurch was really more like, “Alright! Bring on the Disney IP parade… and give us a skeleton plotline to tie them all together!”

To its credit, virtually everything in Kingdom Hearts II materially improves upon its predecessor. There’s flashier graphics and more onscreen at once than the hoary PS2 has a right to be rendering. The combat consists of more than just tap-tap-tap the X button (but in all honesty, not much more). They even managed to make the embarrassingly bad Gummi Ship sequences less embarrassingly bad! But what good are all those improvements if the locations and underlying story of this Action RPG are little more than a Frankenstein of the first title? You’ll revisit Aladdin’s Agrabah, Hercules’ Coliseum, Little Mermaid’s Atlantica, even Hollow Bastion (yes, they actually managed to make one of the only original areas from the first title into a rehash). After Sora gets his bearings again and reunites with all the purposeless Final Fantasy cameo characters from the last game, it’s not very long before even the villains of KH1 begin coming back as well. All this went largely ignored by me until I realized that one of the main reasons I was continuing to play — the ability to fight Sephiroth who is ohhh so cool and ohhh so tough — was something I had already done to death in the last game!

One of the more unique new areas of the game is Sora’s trip to Port Royal, the realistically created world from Pirates of the Caribbean. This was where things began to unravel for me. Regardless of the locale, KH2 feels to me like a game without any passion. Far more than the first game, the storywriters seemed content with walking the player in barebones fashion through the core events of each movie, and I’m sorry, but no game developer (even you, Squenix) with a couple hundred thousand dollars budget is going to come anywhere near to doing justice recreating a multi-million dollar Hollywood pirate film. As a result, you know exactly what’s going to happen, and you know it’s going to be pretty crappy compared to the source material. It’s as though an interesting concept was born in the bizarre corporate mating that was the first game, but that no one really cared much about making a worthwhile sequel, so they took all the elements of the first game, threw some more money at it, and went through the requisite motions to churn out more familiar worlds for Sora and crew to visit and seal (or lock? or unlock? Hell, I don’t even remember, what ARE they trying to do in each of these worlds besides interfere with perfectly autonomous Disney stories?). In other words, classic sequel syndrome.

And before anyone dares comment that “I keep playing, don’t worry, it gets better, you don’t just rinse and repeat the first game the whole way through!”, stop that right this instant! I should not have to play over twenty hours of any game before reaching a point that it becomes WORTH playing!!

And that’s all I have to say about that.