Final Fantasy XVI
Sep. 17th, 2020 09:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingI had to block someone on Twitter last night.
I watched the trailer for Final Fantasy XVI and liked it. I liked it a lot, actually.
(Seeing as how my PlayStation 4 plays DVD and Blu-ray discs just fine, I probably won't buy the PlayStation 5 console, but that's okay. Knowing Square Enix, they'll probably release the "game" as a movie, an animated miniseries, a novel, a short story collection, a manga, a spin-off manga, a mobile-only trading card game, a series of themed deserts in their Tokyo café, and so on.)
I made three tweets about how:
(1) I like the dog
(2) I like the Dark Souls aesthetic, and
(3) I like how this game seems to be developing the themes of the previous games.
Some random person decided that my appreciative reaction tweets about a promo trailer would be a good venue to tell me that I am a bad person for being optimistic about a game that doesn't have any female or LGBTQ+ characters.
First of all, this is a four-minute trailer for a game that's going to come out who knows when. "The next big information reveal is scheduled for 2021," apparently. Although it seems as if the player will control a solitary male warrior, we don't really have a lot of information about who the characters are and what their sexual preferences might be.
Second, how dare this person come into Yoshi-P's house and assume he's not going to have female and queer characters in this game. Naoki Yoshida is famous in the gaming industry for hiring and promoting female staff members, and he's been nothing but respectful of the LGBTQ+ communities that have formed within Final Fantasy XIV. All of the (female and queer-identified) translation and localization staff who have worked with him have nothing but good things to say about the creative environments he facilitates.
Third, although I may have once seen myself in Final Fantasy games in a way I didn't see myself elsewhere, both the franchise and the gaming industry have shifted dramatically during the past ten years, and I think it's unrealistic and unfair to rely on the four-minute trailer of a Final Fantasy game for validation and representation.
Both as a queer creator (and translator) and as someone who works with and promotes queer creators (and translators), I always get defensive when people say that we don't exist, or that the work we contribute to large projects is somehow invalid if the final product doesn't meet certain arbitrary standards of "representation."
When I look for representation - meaning, when I look for personally meaningful stories about identity - big-budget mainstream games aren't the first place I look. This is not to say that there aren't female and queer protagonists in big-budget mainstream games, and this certainly isn't to say that I wouldn't like to see more of them, but I think it's reasonable to expect a more specific type of "representation" from games created by smaller studios that are more invested in allowing individual voices to be expressed with clarity and distinction than they are in appealing to a broad audience. I'm almost 100% certain that there will be female and queer characters in Final Fantasy XVI, but that's not why I would (or wouldn't) play the game.
It's really insulting that someone would look at all the amazing and important work done by female and queer creators in the gaming industry, as well as all the powerful representation in both triple-A games and indie titles, and say, essentially, "That's not good enough because it does not interest me personally."
Like, I'm sorry that you feel the only place you can go for representation is a four-minute promo trailer of a game that more than likely won't be released before 2023.
But I couldn't say all of this in a Tweet, so I just blocked this person. If nothing else, it's super rude to invade someone's space for the sole purpose of engaging in performative wokeness.
That being said, the Harry Potter game can go fuck itself.
I watched the trailer for Final Fantasy XVI and liked it. I liked it a lot, actually.
(Seeing as how my PlayStation 4 plays DVD and Blu-ray discs just fine, I probably won't buy the PlayStation 5 console, but that's okay. Knowing Square Enix, they'll probably release the "game" as a movie, an animated miniseries, a novel, a short story collection, a manga, a spin-off manga, a mobile-only trading card game, a series of themed deserts in their Tokyo café, and so on.)
I made three tweets about how:
(1) I like the dog
(2) I like the Dark Souls aesthetic, and
(3) I like how this game seems to be developing the themes of the previous games.
Some random person decided that my appreciative reaction tweets about a promo trailer would be a good venue to tell me that I am a bad person for being optimistic about a game that doesn't have any female or LGBTQ+ characters.
First of all, this is a four-minute trailer for a game that's going to come out who knows when. "The next big information reveal is scheduled for 2021," apparently. Although it seems as if the player will control a solitary male warrior, we don't really have a lot of information about who the characters are and what their sexual preferences might be.
Second, how dare this person come into Yoshi-P's house and assume he's not going to have female and queer characters in this game. Naoki Yoshida is famous in the gaming industry for hiring and promoting female staff members, and he's been nothing but respectful of the LGBTQ+ communities that have formed within Final Fantasy XIV. All of the (female and queer-identified) translation and localization staff who have worked with him have nothing but good things to say about the creative environments he facilitates.
Third, although I may have once seen myself in Final Fantasy games in a way I didn't see myself elsewhere, both the franchise and the gaming industry have shifted dramatically during the past ten years, and I think it's unrealistic and unfair to rely on the four-minute trailer of a Final Fantasy game for validation and representation.
Both as a queer creator (and translator) and as someone who works with and promotes queer creators (and translators), I always get defensive when people say that we don't exist, or that the work we contribute to large projects is somehow invalid if the final product doesn't meet certain arbitrary standards of "representation."
When I look for representation - meaning, when I look for personally meaningful stories about identity - big-budget mainstream games aren't the first place I look. This is not to say that there aren't female and queer protagonists in big-budget mainstream games, and this certainly isn't to say that I wouldn't like to see more of them, but I think it's reasonable to expect a more specific type of "representation" from games created by smaller studios that are more invested in allowing individual voices to be expressed with clarity and distinction than they are in appealing to a broad audience. I'm almost 100% certain that there will be female and queer characters in Final Fantasy XVI, but that's not why I would (or wouldn't) play the game.
It's really insulting that someone would look at all the amazing and important work done by female and queer creators in the gaming industry, as well as all the powerful representation in both triple-A games and indie titles, and say, essentially, "That's not good enough because it does not interest me personally."
Like, I'm sorry that you feel the only place you can go for representation is a four-minute promo trailer of a game that more than likely won't be released before 2023.
But I couldn't say all of this in a Tweet, so I just blocked this person. If nothing else, it's super rude to invade someone's space for the sole purpose of engaging in performative wokeness.
no subject
Date: 2020-09-17 02:48 pm (UTC)*insert hysterical laughter followed by crying face first in the floor here*
That dog was precious and amazing and more people need to be talking about that Good Boi.
Don't mind me as I stand up and applaud all these points, because same. Like yes, I too want more ladies and queer people in my narratives, but some people - some people - need to be grabbed by the shoulders, turned roughly 45 degrees away from the triple-A games, and look at all the indie games that already feature that quality content.
Also, the aesthetic of XVI is growing on me and I think my main issue with the "grey-ness" is the lack of contrast and intricate lighting. That all could be stuff that gets polished closer to launch; hell, they did it with VII Remake, so why not. Bare minimum, I'm thrilled combat will (hopefully) not involve micro-managing and reminding other characters every five minutes what they're supposed to be doing. We shall see.
AND YES FUCK THE HARRY POTTER GAMEno subject
Date: 2020-09-28 08:27 pm (UTC)I had a few moments of being disappointed that the only apparent player character was a man, because I'm still feeling burned by FFXV, but then I saw Yoshi-P's name and I chilled out a lot, because FFXIV has been such a wonderful place for me to be with regards to women and queer characters, and I choose to trust until I know better that Yoshi-P will not let me down.
And I also agree with you that uplifting smaller creators is where to go to find really personal representation.