Why Steve Bodga Should Be the Blueprint on "How to Not Write About Video Games"

A video game journalist or sportswriter has never found a hyperbolic statement they didn’t like. It’s become such a pandemic, that even up and coming, wannabe journalists have slipped in their vernacular. Eschewing years of proper writing, just so not to stick out of a very large herd of bad writers. You wouldn’t even have to throw a rock to hit some of the laziest written articles to every grace the eyes of mankind and they‘re either about sportsball or video games.

That being said, to couple this with the notion of arguing whether one thing is greater than the other. “I will tell you why something you love is flawed, and you will spend the next moments telling me I’m wrong“. So it’s not really an argument because no one’s going to walk away more informed or enlightened…just angry. This is the very reason I rarely ever harp on poorly written articles associated with video games. It’s one thing to mock an established editorial writer for the occasional poorly constructed argument, but it’s beyond Sisyphean to take a fan boy to task about their flaming troll ramblings. That aside, I will hold my nose for this farce and try.

Steve Bogda, “Editor-N-Chief” (his words not mine) of The DamnLag.com’s recent article “Why Final Fantasy IX Should Be Square-Enix’s Blueprint” is less informative to someone at Square-Enix to use a template and more to what it really is: flame bait for fans of Final Fantasy XIII. You’d think an article attempting to show how Square-Enix could use an older title in their vaunted Final Fantasy series would acknowledge a growing number of modern trends that shape the Japanese game development landscape. Nope, Mr. Bogda just starts flogging Final Fantasy XIII as some of the only evidence that Square-Enix has lost it’s artistic edge and forgotten how to make good games.

Mr. Bogda could’ve saved everyone the trouble of reading this poor thesis of an article by just saying “Hey, I didn’t like Final Fantasy XIII…but I do love Final Fantasy IX and Final Fantasy VI!” and call it a day. Instead of focusing on one game company’s loss of artistry, perhaps shed light on the notion that most of the Japanese video game developers are having a helluva time serving two masters: the Japanese and Western Markets. Instead of equating length of development to overall game quality/awesomeness, Mr. Bogda could’ve mentioned that the original director of Final Fantasy XIII had a mental breakdown and had to quit, throwing the project in to limbo and adding more time to development. Nah. Final Fantasy XIII is a horrible game, that ate children and wore puppies as shoes.

Japan’s video game developers are having a hard time trying to pinpoint what American gamers want. For a time, in the 80’s and 90’s they were pretty much the taste-makers for game development. They set the trends and the tone for what gamers wanted. Recently though, Western developed games have come in to their own, a new generation of gamers has begun rising up to play games and Japan has found themselves on the short end of the stick they help propel after the West drove video games into ground. They see that American gamers love them some fast paced, explosive, linear game play. They see the bulk of their video game output being relegated to niche fan bases and the vast majority of handhelds, where they once ruled the living room television with an iron fist. In the case of Final Fantasy XIII Square-Enix could only look to what Final Fantasy XII was having held against it as the litmus for what the next title should be. Perhaps they could finally crack the code and regain the throne.

When reading the reviews for Final Fantasy XII and then looking at what Final Fantasy XIII brings to the table, you can see where Square-Enix took those notes to heart. About Final Fantasy XII people complained of an expansive over world, with little direction. They complained of a lofty narrative with too many characters (aside from the main cast) and sociopolitical minutia. Wait, you mean the main characters actions and buffoonery aren’t the entire focus of the whole story? Nonsense! They complained of a plodding battle system with too many metrics and things bogging down the flow of the game. Indeed many of the complaints are valid, and what company who makes iterative franchises wouldn’t want to fix “problems”?
I bring up the hyperbole crutch because Mr. Bogda wastes no time whipping it out to make his point. If you look up “How to be an Internet Troll” this article would be the most recent entry. In fact, I hadn’t even realized the inflammatory nature of his OPENING SENTENCE until I read the comments. Wherein a commenter said they failed to read anything else after that sentence, as it didn’t matter, his point had been rendered moot. So much for this blueprint idea, huh Mr. Bogda? If it was indeed the point of the article to say to SE that they should repressively adhere to an outdated game and it’s mechanics. Who’s going to read anything you write if 2/3 or your article are essentially why you didn’t like Final Fantasy XIII?

Final Fantasy IX is a decent Final Fantasy game, it’s by no means the best thing ever produced by SE. SE made it’s bones by being a progressive, dynamic RPG factory. Especially in the Final Fantasy franchise, with each one only having very little to do with the previous titles in the series. As with any creative output some people are going to love some titles more than others. Like Mr. Bogda, I adore Final Fantasy VI, but do I want them to try and recreate something close to it for a future FF title? Hell no! That’s not what FF does. You could ostensibly change the titles of every FF and no one would ever notice the connective tissues that bind the titles. Each FF game has a different story, villains and battle system, and is what sets it apart from the dozens of other RPG’s that saturate the market in its wake. While SE isn’t the vaunted taste maker it was a decade ago, it’s still taking risks and attempting to still be an original developer of genre. That’s something you can’t say about many Western game developers.
Yes, I am a defender of Final Fantasy XIII, but that doesn’t mean that I’m sooo in love with it. The game has problems, as most do. Especially with the time commitments these types of games demand. You can boil down any game ever released in to a derivative argument if you wanted.

For me, Final Fantasy XIII got rid of a LOT of the things I hated about Japanese Role Playing Game’s. I don’t need towns populated with tens of non-player characters that I MUST talk to or I’ll miss out on story developments or side quests. The supposed linearity didn’t bother me because a lot of Final Fantasy’s are linear in their structure. Sure, there’s an “open world” to explore in past FF‘s, but it’s there for grinding, and is more filler to pad out the narrative than anything substantive to the overall game. It’s “omission” from the game until the final hours bothered me very little.

The one thing I can’t really defend (ever) is the characters in Final Fantasy XIII. Mr. Bogda does have a point that they’re “annoying, terribly written” characters. From what previous reviews and criticisms were laid at FFXII, I’m not really surprised they went back to the overwrought, heavy-handed Anime approach that has inhabited the series since Tetsuya Nomura took over after Final Fantasy VII. Mind you, SE did glean some successes with this sort of garbage with their Kingdom Hearts series. A LOT of that game series is disconnected, derivative, emo-kid bullshit with Disney and Final Fantasy characters mucking about. So you can see where SE would recognize dollars with this MO and move to put it in to their flagship role-playing series. But that didn’t matter to me because I loved the battle system of Final Fantasy XIII, and that’s what the good Final Fantasy’s boil down to.

The battle system in Final Fantasy XIII could be as simple or complex as you wanted to make it. You could mash the “auto attack” button and not really have to do anything. The problem with that was you had to do it for about two-thirds of the game. Final Fantasy XIII was a little precious about it’s ATB System overhaul and was a tad (like 25 hours of game time) hand holdy. Which isn’t to say it was the worst thing of all time, but not even having the ability to skip large swathes of it, was annoying. After the 25 hour tutorial you’re eventually loosed out onto an open area to explore, but more importantly, grind. But even grinding was unnecessary as Final Fantasy XIII wasn’t really that hard in terms of Japanese Role Playing Game’s of yore, which is also not particularly a bad thing. The frustration of Final Fantasy XIII and it’s battles was the uneven difficulty. I’m not one to grind out levels in Final Fantasy’s, but I did a fair bit in Final Fantasy XIII so it was astonishing to breeze through three different forms of a boss battle, then moments later get my ass handed to me by a lowly group of minions. Some just had my number it seems.

Mr. Bogda’s article is systemic of what is wrong in video game writing. Wherein the thesis and the article fail to line up, and there is a failure to deliver up a salient point. Aside from the flaming troll nature of his intent, it’s poorly written and lacks clear focus of why his affinity for Final Fantasy IX is what made Square-Enix artistic merits remain intact, yet Final Fantasy XIII is the worst thing ever because he didn’t cotton to it.

I would rather Square-Enix continue to do what its ALWAYS done with the Final Fantasy series and take risks and experiment. Not every game in the series has been a smash hit, and a lot of them just don’t hold up anymore. Like anything with a fan base, however, there will be fans that adore one over the other, or find one severely lacking. But gamers need to keep in mind that there’s always going to be a new generation of gamers that do not have that knee-jerk reaction to nostalgia, and want to be entertained. We cannot squash their demands because we fill encroached upon, and we cannot demand that developers cater only to the older generations of gamers.

Mr. Bogda also forgets to mention that Square-Enix has unashamedly re-released every Final Fantasy title on a regular basis for the past decade. If he could just hold out, I’m sure SE would release an High Definition remake of his favortist game, Final Fantasy IX. Finally, if Mr. Bogda demand that SE look to the past to make all future Final Fantasy’s play the same, he needn’t have to: SE has a game series like that named Dragon Quest, perhaps he’d be more fond of those?

Steven Bogda’s mentality to video games is the whitewash viewpoint that lots of developers see when it comes to making games. That video game players demand cookie cutter iterative franchises, dipped in nostalgia. Mr. Bogda’s lack of enjoyment in Final Fantasy XIII is not even a remotely cogent argument as to why SE has lost it’s way…commercially or artistically. Final Fantasy XIII sold just fine, and mostly on it’s name alone. The great thing about the Final Fantasy series is that each title in the franchise is so unique and different from what’s on the market. Final Fantasy XIII was an experiment in to the modern tastes of what a Japanese Role-playing Games should or could be.