Rebuttal to Claims of Square's Betrayal

by Patrick Chipman

It seems to me that many of the people who send in editorials really don't have a clear understanding of the video game industry and would rather yearn for the "good old days" instead of realizing -- and appreciating -- where the market is going. In particular, I'm referring to the attackers of Square and its newest offerings, FF7 and FF8.

In order to truly understand where all the new game elements (non-stereotypical characters, steampunk/cyberpunk plotlines, gray areas of alignment, FMVs) are coming from, one needs to understand the purpose of the video game industry. That purpose is, as some might have guessed, to make money. The best way to make money with software, as any good developer will tell you, is to create a good looking product that works properly and appeals to the largest section of the populace. In a world filled with games such as Zelda 64 that have a considerable amount graphical and sound "flash", a company cannot compete by releasing a game with a flat background, superdeformed sprites, tinny music, and stereotypical characters. Square seeks to compete with the other gaming companies for the money of the largest groups of players. These groups are, unfortunately, not RPG players! To make an RPG competitive in the gaming market, it has to have hooks. Square's most recent (and controversial) hooks to differentiate their flagship series from the other RPGs -- and other video games in general -- are characters with depth and FMVs.

Yes, characters with depth! The older Final Fantasies had characters with personality, certainly, but those same characters were very stereotypical. Kefka -- the typical insane overlord; the (evil) Empire -- like we hadn't seen that before (Secret of Mana, Final Fantasy 4 (Baron), Star Wars, etc.); the female wizard and the male samurai -- ho-hum. While these stereotypes had the potential to be something more, the raw number of characters in FF6 made it extremely hard to give any of them a substantial amount of depth. At the end of the game, Gau remained the "wild boy with a heart of gold;" Mog remained the stereotypical cute fuzzy animal; and Terra remained the "girl who learns her place in the world." Those themes have already been explored in other games; you can't make money rehashing what people have already seen. Instead, Square took a different approach. They created fewer characters and made them more human and less stereotypical. How many times in other RPGs have you seen the cool, calm, and collected warrior suffer from a mental disorder? How many times have you seen a headstrong female lead quietly suffer because she's too conflicted to express her true feelings? The characters in FF7 were unique and human -- instead of appealing to those who wanted a AD&D style alignment posterboys (very few players), they appealed to those who wanted to see characters with the types of conflicts that affect all of us at some point (many players). Characters with greater appeal provide a game with greater appeal, and games with greater appeal make more money.

"But nobody wants FMVs," the old school players then state. "FMVs sap the space available to a game and shrink the world/kill the plot/destroy the graphics/insert current vogue complaint here." Unfortunately, this doesn't hold up either. People like movies. People also like more realistic graphics in games. Since the current batch of game systems don't have the power to render movie-like scenes in real time, designers fall back to FMVs. Yes, FMVs take up a lot of space. No, this is not a terrible concern for the PSX, the chosen platform of Square. With a CD-based system, you can continue to add FMVs without screwing up the rest of the game because you both have more space and can simply add another CD when the first runs out of space. Square doesn't have to sacrifice the game for the FMVs -- and, in my estimation, they haven't. The only betrayal of the old school players that Square has done with regard to FMVs is forcing them to buy a new, superior game system to support a more realistic game -- instead of holding them to backwards technology (N64 cartridges) that prevents the designers from creating a better product.

In the end, then, Square has done exactly what a wise RPG game design house would do. They have broadened the appeal of their games by moving away from the AD&D style characters of the past, and they have added FMVs to create a more realistic experience to attract more players. As a result, they are the most successful console RPG maker overall. My advice to the old school players: perhaps you should reevaluate your stereotypes and consider what truly makes a good game. Then, look at Square's latest offerings in an objective light, unclouded (no pun intended) by past nostalgia and a stilted view of the industry. You might just decide that the new Square isn't as bad as you thought.

-- Patrick Chipman (pchipman@memphis.edu)

Original Editorial: A Report on Square's Betrayal and FF7