Okay so I got into a debate with someone today at work about my treatment of Square Enix. that I am being unfair in my judgement of the company.

What the hell do you expect for about 10 years the company (while it has made progress in gaming graphics) has been abusing its #1 well known franchise by creating half ass'd story lines and 1 dimensional characters and sacrificing gameplay to tell these half ass'd stories in a beautiful animated sequences.

Even the producer of FF 13 said they ignored the critics (aka: older fan base) to tell their story that they wanted to tell. If you were so F***ing focused on making your story; write a damn book or make a movie. I don't know if anyone in the industry has figured out. GAMES WERE MEANT TO BE PLAYED WITH LIKE A TOY!. not a bloody art movie that we have to hold down a button to play get to the next cut scene.

The company for the past while has lost much of its confidence from its fan base. Mainly from how it treats it fan base. Yoshinori Kitase partially blames north american audience for the lack of success for their games specifically FF 13.

"Gamers outside of Japan, who hadn't played the game yet, might have had some kind of preconceptions which might have led to a bit of overreaction, possibly. Having said that, the criticism of the game being too linear was sort of true, as well."

Blaming the fan base is not a good way to win customers over. From my understanding you want to win customers over by focusing on what customers liked in the past and how to enhance it. And they act as if they are confused on how this game could be a failure.

Hell look at FF 14, the game nearly bankrupted the company because much of what people were initially seeing was HD conversion of FF 11 with a change to the job system or lack there of, It only has redeeming qualities because now the development team after Square Enix's stock took a nose dive that they finally thought about listening to its fan base on how to make the game more appealing to a mass audience.

Do not get me wrong the company has put out many good games that was not its main franchise. But it seems to show very little respect for the franchise and the fans who made it what it is today. Only now after their stock has plummeted and their CEO stepped down that they are hinting at going back to some grass roots, and by doing this they will rename FF versus 13 to FF 15. why? cause we do not want to give people the impression we were taking too long for a single title and announce this new game in which no way shape or form looks like the previous one we said that would be a seperate game from 13 which took us 3 years to put out after 12.

Now I am going to get the obvious complaints about this: Troy why do you hate the company so much? why not just stop buying/ playing the games?

1. I don't hate the company I followed square enix (mind you I miss Square Soft) for longer than most of the youngsters on this site were even born. Final Fantasy was my second game I ever played. There is alot of nostalgia for me so I would like to see the company succeed at its endevours to pushing innovation. But I will not support any efforts to exploit a franchise or fan base to make a quick buck. games were about having fun to get away from reality, it was never about contridictory cheese dialogue or and cutting out gameplay so you could tell your story. Games were meant to challenge us, mentally and physically (manual dexterity), and yes sometimes give us great visuals. some where along the lines people forgot that is what games were all about.

4. (because I can't count) I stopped buying final fantasy games since 9. I bought 11. but played every other final fantasy game through friends and their consoles. Im not dumb enough to spend $90 on a collectors edition of 13. Ever since 9 ive been noticing a trend in rpgs coming from japan and some from north america is that they are starting to cut back on game play and focus more on cut scenes. It was then that I started to question why would I buy these games if they are slowly becoming interactive movies. so in the end im glad I did not spend money on those games otherwise id be beating my head against the wall. people who buy these games have to try to justify their purchase so they don't feel so bad for buying it in the first place.

In the end I wish nothing but hope for the company to get its act together and sometime just look back at where you came from and maybe improving what worked and fixing what didn't. it is possible to get the best of both worlds. unfortunately SE, is that you dug yourselves a hole when you made each FF game its own seperate universe. its easy to weave exposition into the story when you have a single world you are working on. make less work for you to do in terms of telling a story.

Discussion Question: Do you think the company should ignore the critics and do what it wants? or should they stop and think about what the current market is looking for in a game?