Forget it – Square is not coming back

by Andrill

Reading most of the recent editorials, primarily those concerned with deterioration of Square RPG quality, about FF series becoming less and less true RPG, one thing that comes to my mind, is total hopelessness of these bashing attempts.

Why?
Here is Square’s simple key to success step-by-step, that explains why Square is not coming back:

1) Mass players bought such titles as Tekken, GT, NHL series, TombRaider, Mario 64 and other, good but simple (comparing to true RPG) games, and their makers made fortune.

2) Square also wants to make such a huge money in international market.

3) So they need to make their games suitable for mass player.

4) So they remove complicated and “boring” (that is – boring for non-true RPGamers) things from their games, such as “dungeon crawling”, exploration, more magic, more armour, more complicated character building, and introduce overwhelming amounts of FMV (great FMV, at that), flashy graphix (great at that), and story “on rails” with that inevitable “bit of love story”, which since “Titanic” is so compulsory that soon even Quake will have some of it.

5) As a result of these “improvements”, we have here games which will be suitable for mass players, trendy, rather easy to switch to, even if the most complicated game you ever played was MetalGearSolid (but hey, some people already call MGS an RPG, and I think Vagrant Story HAS ALREADY approached MGS in terms of gameplay simplicity).

6) These games can now be marketed throughout all of the auditorium since most everyone will be able to play them – even your school’s football team. And – don’t take me wrong – more people will actually ENJOY these games. The fact that true RPGamers will not enjoy them doesn’t bother anyone.

Now put yourself in the position of Square, before you demand for classic true RPG.

Do you think Square spends millions of dollars advertising FFVIII on MTV and in other trendy places – from sports magazines to subway stations to produce True RPG which would be appreciated only by relatively small auditorium of true RPGamers?

Forget it!!

Realize now, that when you ask or hope that Square will make more classic and true RPG, you are asking them to give away their money, cut their profits, and downgrade their company’s market value.
And realize that this WILL NOT HAPPEN.

And do not hope, that by boycotting the games such as FFVIII, true RPGamers can make their point heard, or appreciated – this again WILL NOT HAPPEN, because mass crowd throughout the world still WILL buy millions of copies, and they WILL jump on another bandwagon, and another, and another ...

Post any poll on the net, even on the most elite RPGaming site, and mass players will still vote FFVIII the best game ever made, because this is mass – crowd – majority – that makes polls, makes sales and therefore rules the heart of any profit-driven company.

And, Joshua L. Wesley, don’t hope that bandwagons end and quality comes in the end – bandwagons end just to make way for new – worse – bandwagons. If there is a way to make money on bandwagons – they will keep rolling. It is time to realize, what values are now predominant on the market. Sad to say, these are values of the crowd. And crowd always buys more copies than minority, so bandwagons will always be more profitable.

And let me tell you, that if I was a CEO of Square, I would did same thing, as Square does now, because I also want to have villa on Canary islands and personal yacht.

So here is my bit of advice to all remaining true RPGamers – forget Square. Wake up and realize, that they have already abandoned us for sake of making bigger money, dumped, as they did it to Xenogears – last Square RPG, - and left off for the realm of Tekken, MetalGearSolid and Gran Tourismo.

But we still have many good companies, who still make good RPG’s, and there always will be.

Proof to that are recent releases of VH2, Suikoden2, SOSS, Lunar, Grandia and many other great titles, such as forthcoming Valkyrie Profile, DragonQuest VII and more.

So don’t waste your mental energy on trying to hold on to eloping Square – there are still many good games to play out there.

I welcome whatever amount of bashing or flaming this editorial might cause.