A Video Games Review

Wasting time with Final Fantasy XV

Published in

From the Diaries of John Henry

6 min readJan 16, 2017

A few thoughts here assembled after spending entirely too much time playing the new Final Fantasy XV over the past few weeks (50+ hours). I don’t consider the time completely wasted, after all the graphics were impressive, the monsters were creative, and some of the scenery even a little surreal; however the explorations were neutered by onscreen guides, the puzzles were weak, and narrative aspects while ambitious were unsuccessful due to current technical limitations.

Exploring a virtual world is much more fun when you don’t constantly have a direction beacon telling you the exact path to find next target. Just as driving is more boring/mechanical now that we have GPS on our phones, it’s no longer exploration when you just follow directions. This was the case for geographic navigation in the game, but less so for plot arc elements, at least until late in the game. Even supposedly open world role playing games (RPG) require some adherence to a plot arc / path of difficulty. Though an exact path may differ between users, you’re still under some constraint. Challenge of a designer is thus to maintain this illusion of freedom while maneuvering a gamer onto a path.

Throwing out the turn based combat of earlier FF games, in the live action version you often get rewarded just for showing up, in one ridiculous example holding down a single button for hours just to get past a giant turtle. The leveling up aspects of an RPG has same feeling as collecting college degrees. Takes time and effort to accomplish a goal, but usefulness is questionable. Leveling up may open a door, but while kids are leveling up in some walled garden they are bypassing opportunities to think for themselves in the real world. Thus gaming is like most higher ed, a time filler keeping a generation voluntarily occupied instead of putting their time and energy to use of value — except unlike college you’re not even interacting with other students, you’re just a robot behind a screen following a path that has been laid out before you. Extended gaming leaves me feeling this way, just like online degrees: yes you’re working towards a goal, but once reached only left with regret and hunger for the real world.

Could game designers create a narrative structure off of the interactive elements? If Gaiman or Moore could make great literature out of comic books, I’m sure it will eventually be done in gaming, but it’s certainly not there yet, beautiful graphics just aren’t enough. With the interactive elements of gaming I expect it will take AI passing a Turing test for a truly immersive storytelling. Even then will be a hollowness to the medium, just like higher education is no substitute for risk taking, and books are no substitute for conversation.

In an ideal world game designers would find some way to put gamer puzzle solving efforts to public good. Just like bitcoin miners are wasting tremendous computing cycles to solve meaningless puzzles and mine the next block (according to one estimate, in 2014 Bitcoin miners collectively used as much electricity as all of Ireland — all that just to maintain an at the time 20GB ledger), there is an argument that gamers are likewise wasting their time and cognition with little or no benefit to themselves or society. Clay Shirky wrote about this in a more general sense in his book Cognitive Surplus, asking just what would be possible if we better channeled society’s mass cognitive power currently wasted on consuming entertainment.

So how could we repurpose cognition of gaming to greater good? Or is escapism enough in its own right? First we have to find a potential greater good: I think we can agree building community and bonds are possible online. Perhaps that’s the potential for gaming as value-add, creating connections across borders/racial/class lines. Console gaming is missing this potential for forming teams and engagement. Yes there is some twitch gaming with online competition, but is too fast paced for real dialogue and group problem solving. The first console game that can get the real world community aspects right will have real potential for longevity, unlike short cycle of most hits.

Florence and the Machine — Stand By Me (Final Fantasy XV gameplay)

Final Fantasy XV tries to fill this void with artificial camaraderie / canned dialogue of virtual teammates (no Turing test passing here). It’s at it’s most effective in an early cinematic scene of characters with a broken down car and musical accompaniment. This turns out to be a theme of the game, the friendship between an androgynous prince, a stoic brit, a meathead, an effeminate photographer, and a missing fiancé. This is the closest I’ve seen a video game attempt to solicit a buddy vibe using character development, dialogue, and emotion. I expect this artificial social aspect of gaming, as chatbots eventually are capable of passing a Turing test etc, will create an entirely new category of games, one with slower paced challenges and puzzles to flex a different muscle than simple twitch reaction speeds. Currently the most challenging way to outsmart a computer remains in your reaction times, everything else you can just look up in online guides. Perhaps this new slower pace of gaming as outsmarting an AI requires flexing new cognitive muscles could be even more conducive to team competition and thus enable a different kind of social atmosphere in online gaming. Can you imagine? The collective brainpower of our youth verses one masterful algorithm. Perhaps that bodes well for the medium. Or perhaps it will just devolve into chat bots all the way down.