FFVII REMAKE CONFIRMED

[Ite]

I’d be interested in learning more about the ways in which the original FF7 wasn’t produced ethically, or in what ways Square practiced bad faith marketing schemes. Certainly I can guarantee that candy-bar-insentivising micro-DLC wasn’t in the game. Jairus already nostalgically reminisced about when we could actually complete a game by buying it.

The closest thing I can remember is a FFIX Coke commercial, which didn’t insectivise the sale of Coca-Cola by gatekeeping FFIX’s game data behind a code under the bottle cap or anything.

What feels particularly gross about this is that if I want to get every item in the game, I must not only giving my money to the team, but to a candy manufacturer who was not involved in the making of the game, but rather is profiting off of a marketing scheme. It feels very wrong.

Edit: When I said “straw that broke the camel’s back” I was referring to my myriad other concerns about the direction of this project, which, if I do end up deciding to forego the Remake, will be listed in a farewell rant, I’m sure. It’s really scary to think about what will happen if I decide not to get it, but at this moment, going through with playing the Remake feels more like a “stay together for the kids” thing than something I actually want to do.

 

[Jairus]

Mentioning FFIX reminds me of PlayOnline and that travesty of a strategy guide that was the Bradygames guide. It was practically useless since all the information you really wanted to know was locked up on PlayOnline, which hasn't existed in decades.

 

[ForceStealer]

Damn, beat me to it

 

[Clean Cut Chaos]

lol I had the Bradygames guide for the OG7 way back in the day. Full of more spelling errors than the game itself, wrong information, and missing more than a few items. I didn't even realize there was another Ribbon in the glacier caves until a few years ago! I was like WTF guide?!

 

[Rydeen]

Most American candy really is kinda gross. Twix and Hershey's are probably the best that we've done.
Also, I did not know that palm oil production was any more deleterious to the environment than other oils/agriculture - it's not something I've thought about, but I do know that it is a particularly unhealthy oil. When I do buy candy it's usually Italian or Japanese, and I don't think they generally use palm oil. However, there are so many "conflict products" that are imported from countries with no regard for the environment or for workers. Even produce grown in America and Canada is done inhumanely. Can't seem to win.

 

[Clean Cut Chaos]

We all pick our poisons. Things are never as black and white as they seem. Electric cars should be a great thing all around, but the minerals vital to battery production are mined by next to slave labor in Africa. There is always some price to pay.

 

[Ite]

Can't seem to win.

Until the 1% fixes their shit, you’re right. No amount of individual or collective consumer impact is going to make the difference between saving the planet and barreling over the tipping point. But don’t let that dissuade you! Reducing your personal impact might seem like trying to drain the ocean with a single bucket, but every little bit helps. Palm oil extraction is particularly deadly for the rainforests, and you can find palm-oil-free alternatives to most standard products, it just takes a few extra seconds at the grocery store. (Once you start, though, it’s one of those “can’t unsee” things, particularly if you want cookies ).

 

[oty]

I know locking things behind a paywall can be very frustrating, but shouldn't it pale in comparison to the way Square, and most game companies actually, treat their workers and their projects (including in OG7)? That's what's bugging me about this. That somehow this deal with a candy bar shows how greedy Square is, or atleast reminds of it. That blocking things, that may just be equipmentry, for DLCs somehow provokes people's ire much more than the hundred posts about lack of unionization should provoke. Hell, if these financial deals could somehow ease the burden that crunching insues on the development team just a tiny bit, I'd be more than willing to accept them. They atleast provided more resources, even if it's something as crude as just money, to the team. Then of course you have the deal about the candy bar itself, which can go into a very long and difficult discussion, completely unrelated to the Remake and bla bla bla.

TL;DR: We should praise Ubisoft more. It's actually one of the few game companies that has managed to upturn their complaints about treating their workers. Nowadays most people seem to agree it's a pretty good place to go to.

 

[Makoeyes987]

Are you serious?

Holy shit, this is the DLC decision of 2020 that pisses people off?

Pissed about choice DLC?

Where were you in 2008 to 2017??

First off, Square used to be fucking awful with their use of DLC. You're mad over DLC for optional, early game accessories and low-tier summons? You're acting like these are chance-based microtransactions in a single player story game.

Imagine making optional bosses, over 20 pieces of weapons, armor, accessories, summons and a fucking true ending to a game DLC only you had to pay for. With no season pass. Imagine a unique one of a kind summon being time limited DLC where if you don't buy it, it's gone forever?

That happened. And they learned better and stopped.

A lot has changed in modern gaming and development. DLC is one of them. Considering the fact video games take hundreds of millions of dollars to develop (not including advertising and marketing costs) and the cost of video games have not proptionally increased for decades, it creates a huge loss for a company that has to be made up.

Some companies (almost all of them) make up that loss through super expensive collectible special editions that include shit way beyond the game itself.

Some make it up by paying their employees garbage. Western developers are especially fond of this method by using contract labor.

Others make up the profit loss by making a game more than just a game, but a continuous service that you pay for through repeated microtransactions. The latter is especially common and seen in almost all AAA game development.

DLC with up front costs that are optional, non-integral, and capable of being chosen for the player is actually highly old fashioned and not the most profit driven maximization choice game companies even do. This is fucking generous and innocuous. Square-Enix is behind the times with this approach. They choose this option that almost zero companies do now, because it's optional and player-choice driven.

Anyone who expected there to be ZERO DLC in 2020 for a game this massive and intensive in labor resources must forget or be ignorant to game development labor and the hell they go through to meet their wage needs while staying within a budget that allows games to be the only entertainment media that has seen minimal inflation for almost 2 generations.

It's a damn candy bar. If you need to rationalize it to yourself, consider it a tip for the poor career game developers and artists who are in one of the most labor intensive industries that has done everything it could to ensure prices stay low for players while simultaneously giving us options to pay more for things we may want.

They could have done the scumbag choice and made lootboxes. Back-loaded a plethora of DLC summons and items for you to buy at random like a gacha game and gotten away with it. They chose the least scummy choice and you're giving them hell for it? Seriously???

That's beyond unrealistic expectations. That's acontextual and ahistoric. We live in 2020 where if you want to game, you're participating in a system where these games cost hundreds of millions of dollars to develop, market, while wanting the price to remain fixed. Something's gotta give. Don't treat this as if Square became EA and now has you paying for weapon packs and summon tickets in a fully paid for single-player game. Like, what the hell?

Square-Enix just confirmed today that they're still committed to making games for PS4 and not immediately developing exclusively for the PS5, thereby not forcing customers to move to the next gen to play their products.

But sure, Square are corporate vultures preying upon the hapless consumer. Seriously?

 

[Kai Schulen]

Honestly, this is no different from getting a Happy Meal from McDonald's to get a limited edition Pokemon cards or YGO cards, but with less real life RNG involved.

Or, are we going to rag on Nintendo and Konami for that too? I mean, where was the outrage over Dissidia and their Cup Noodle DLC?

Franchises collabing with other franchises to make a profit for both is nothing new and it doesn't necessarily mean that it's inherently evil.

Edit: Also Crunch is fucking delicious as fuck, you guys are missing out on the good shit.

 

[JBedford]

Are you serious?

Holy shit, this is the DLC decision of 2020 that pisses people off?

Pissed about choice DLC?

Where were you in 2008 to 2017??

I think the same people were probably pissed off at all those times when it was a game they cared about too.

This isn't really about microtransactions. Sure, people hate that, but it's mainly about making any sort of exclusive in-game things.

There's a kind of player who wants to be able to get everything in the game. In fact, there are lots of players like that. And publishers know that, and that's exactly why they set shit like this up. They know people won't be able to help themselves but pay for this shit. A similar promotional deal happened with some American company for Crash Team Racing: Nitro Fueled recently. It was just a kart, but people were spending more than the cost of the game for codes on eBay.

Anyway, you may view the content as optional extra content, but others will view it as content in the game they need to do extra outside the game to access.

Some people also tend to be fine if it's just cosmetic, but things with gameplay functions will piss people off more.

 

[Ite]

*shrug* I’m not a huge gamer. I don’t stay current. I don’t buy happy meals.

All the points I have to make, I’ve made. If they don’t resonate with you, that’s fine. It just seems really rich to sell tickets to a show about the dangers of corporate conglomerates, and try to also sell you corporate candy bars for better seats.

 

[Tetsujin]

Just saw this on facebook in regards to the VIIR Orchestra tour:



Composer Masashi Hamauzu will be in attendance for:

New York - Oct 3
Chicago - Oct 24
London - Oct 30
Bangkok - Nov 7&8
Paris - Dec 13
Barcelona - Dec 19
more info at ffvii-remakeconcerts.com

also:

Yosh, original vocalist of FF7R will perform LIVE at:
Los Angeles - June 14
Phoenix - Sept 25
New York - Oct 3
London - Oct 30
Paris - Dec 13
Barcelona - Dec 19

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

I'm mostly in agreement with the sentiment that this candy thing isn't all that egregious -- especially not to the extent of boycotting. But I also think it's good for conscientious folks to pick one hill to die on, even knowing it won't affect much.

That said, this definitely won't be my hill. I'll be enjoying a Butterfinger with FFVIIR.

 

[Kai Schulen]

Some people also tend to be fine if it's just cosmetic, but things with gameplay functions will piss people off more.

I mean, I can understand the outrage if the Remake had an online PVP element with limited one-time prizes for the best ranking PVPers, but since it's a 1 player JRPG, well... I find it hard to get angry over that. It's a few summons + equipment and it's 101% likely that said summons and equipment aren't going to be amazing pieces of gamebreakers.

@Tetsujin o my gawd, I completely forgot about the Remake concert. I'm still debating if I wanna go (and if I go, should I go solo or invite some friends to go with) or not. I wanna go, I wanna go...I think I'm gonna go.

 

[Makoeyes987]

Sure, people hate that, but it's mainly about making any sort of exclusive in-game things.

There's a kind of player who wants to be able to get everything in the game.

. . .

Anyway, you may view the content as optional extra content, but others will view it as content in the game they need to do extra outside the game to access.

Some people also tend to be fine if it's just cosmetic, but things with gameplay functions will piss people off more.

That's a paradigm that simply no longer exists in gaming.

Expecting contemporary systemic pressures to not influence modern gaming is like being angry over the fact movie ticket prices have doubled since 1997.

Costs have skyrocketed. Living costs have increased. Technology has advanced. Standards for gaming have increased. Budgets have bloated.

....Yet the price of games have been kept down. Hard.

Something has to give. You can't expect Hollywood movie levels of graphics, acting, scripting, coding, programming, testing, and more and then expect the price of games to stay the same for over decade. And carry zero means of extra monetization.

That's unreal. Video games, as a luxury good, has seen the most minimal level of inflation of any entertainment goods and service. It's also seen a high level of predatory, anti-consumer strategies to make up for this loss of profit.

And Square has chosen the better option here and to somehow rail against them for existing within the paradigm is just. I don't even understand the logic. It's simply not fair and unrealistic.

It just seems really rich to sell tickets to a show about the dangers of corporate conglomerates, and try to also sell you corporate candy bars for better seats.

.... The game would literally not exist if it didn't incorporate a means of re-couping the loss of profit that is incurred off of initial sales. It is wholly a product and function of leisure goods and services; a product of passion, recreation and creative expression. Not a life-dependent service. Being unaware still necessitates the acknowledgment.

These are employees (not contractual, unprotected workers) who make a living in a luxury goods industry that has continuous exponentially increasing costs, laboring in a worker-antagonistic country, producing a product that has continuously resisted market pressure to rise in price to match costs incurred in production.

For the consumer's sake.

Square, as a profit dependent business, has given players like you the choice to simply not buy the promotional item and still keep a complete and enjoyable experience! You are free to stay true to your goal and not buy something you don't want, and enjoy the game wholly without encumberment.

You've got the freedom of choice. And a choice that doesn't punish you by making the game more time intensive, deleterious or exponentially more difficult.

This is literally the proper balance of consumer respect of choice and acknowledging the need of profit to maintain existence and justification for a goods and service.

Expecting a paradigm to exist within a system that doesn't support it is essentially asking for something to cease to exist. Games wouldn't be able to maintain themselves. A modern video game cannot be supported with a price equivalent from the nineties. Labor and costs exist.

 

[Ite]

I don’t know what to tell you. Candy is bad for you, bad for the planet, and puts money in the pocket of corporate fat cats. Using FF7 to sell candy bars is super tone deaf. That’s my tl;dr. Incentivizing candy sales further by manufacturing scarcity of an item that is in all the game data is worse.

Why you seem to think that getting into bed with Ferraro candy, and giving them a cut, rather than selling the DLC directly to players without manufactured scarcity, somehow benefits the creators, baffles me.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

The artificial scarcity element is definitely uncool, though I expect that won't be permanent.

 

[Makoeyes987]

I don’t know what to tell you. Candy is bad for you, bad for the planet, and puts money in the pocket of corporate fat cats. Using FF7 to sell candy bars is super tone deaf. That’s my tl;dr. Incentivizing candy sales further by manufacturing scarcity of an item that is in all the game data is worse.

Why you seem to think that getting into bed with Ferraro candy, and giving them a cut, rather than selling the DLC directly to players without manufactured scarcity, somehow benefits the creators, baffles me.

Because you're factually inaccurate in your assessment here.

No, the money doesn't just go into the hands of "corporate fat cats." That's simply not true and ignores the struggles game industry faces today. Not the corporate end, but the worker and creator end.

Video games are made at a loss. They should not cost only $60 to make. They are the only luxury media entertainment good that has not adjusted for inflation for over 12 years, and has actually gone down in price.

This is the system and reality that exists. Things like this pay for workers and artists who are living on the edge in an industry that, thanks to consumer pressure and market forces, is operating on incredibly slim profit margins. This is how games are able to be created with S-E level of technological prowess, artistic detail, and labor. It takes sales of millions of copies to make up for the amount of money that's invested in all the facets of development, which is why there are so many other ways game companies try to figure out, to subsidize the exorbitant costs of creation.

What promotional good, service, foodstuff, or capitalistic venture is somehow immune to negative impact on health, environment, climate or all of the above? These are luxury goods. Square making a profit to satisfy the level of work and effort necessary to operate is not the systemic source or problem with any of the issues you listed. Those problems will only be solved by macro governmental and economic oversight from the top down, not micro personal agency decisions independent of the systemic guard-rails necessary to ensure public good.

These miniscule DLC items wouldn't be purchased if sold on their own. They're small in their stat relevance and are simply "value-added" goods/services. No one buys low-tier DLC items for 2 bucks a pop. For them to warrant purchase independently, they would need to be busted and then people would complain because a single-player game would be "pay-2-win" and pay-walling high-level DLC items for cash. Which is a scummy practice. Why would you want them to go that route, instead of giving you and other players the option to just safely skip this, or wait for it to go on sale for $0.99 and let you play the game without needing to pay for high-tier stuff?

The game industry is either going to continue to find balance to offset the incredible slim profit margins and loss to continually exist without being scummy, or it will go full EA, become loot-box gacha gambling, remove all consumer protections, go full-digital, and no one will own any of the video games they buy. This is just simply reality now. Punishing companies trying to do good consumer acts, is only going to incentive bad behavior.

 

[Ite]

You made an excellent argument, and I wanna thank you for taking the time. I’m also an artist and a producer in artistic fields and I know firsthand how shitty and difficult it all is. Like, it’s not easy to get stuff made. I have no rebuttal to your points, except that they don’t entirely refute mine, nor mine yours. I think that this game isn’t going to have any trouble turning a profit, they don’t need to get into bed with an exploitative corporation in order to survive, and if they did, I would rather pay double for the video game if it means the creators can get proper weekends and eat more than boiled sawdust, and leave the candy Corp out of it altogether.

I don’t feel it’s crazy to be whiplashed by this, though. When your story has the message of “Corporate Oligarchy, Runaway Capitalism and Environmental Recklessness = Villainy” maybe don’t also say “Buy 2 Butterfingers To Get The Full Anti-Corporate Experience!”

 

[Makoeyes987]

You made an excellent argument, and I wanna thank you for taking the time. I’m also an artist and a producer in artistic fields and I know firsthand how shitty and difficult it all is. Like, it’s not easy to get stuff made. I have no rebuttal to your points, except that they don’t entirely refute mine, nor mine yours. I think that this game isn’t going to have any trouble turning a profit, they don’t need to get into bed with an exploitative corporation in order to survive, and if they did, I would rather pay double for the video game if it means the creators can get proper weekends and eat more than boiled sawdust, and leave the candy Corp out of it altogether.

It's not so much the game will have trouble turning a profit, it's more how much of one. Because they have to hit a threshold to break even and then another threshold to actually be seen as as success. By having more avenues to generate revenue for profit, that threshold is lowered, allowing the game to exist and not be barely able to manage its own existence.

And that's a fair assessment. There are those who would be comfortable with paying more of an upfront price for a game. However, that's also an extremely risky, systemically shocking move to the industry and consumer, especially the consumer who can't afford it. And which company is gonna have the balls to lay it all down on the line and make their games cost more? Because then competition will be incentive to simply not raise the price, pull a Wall-Mart, and undercut them out of existence.

I don’t feel it’s crazy to be whiplashed by this, though. When your story has the message of “Corporate Oligarchy, Runaway Capitalism and Environmental Recklessness = Villainy” maybe don’t also say “Buy 2 Butterfingers To Get The Full Anti-Corporate Experience!”

I mean, I understand you there completely. That's why I'm hoping that it doesn't actually appear in game. Like, the whole Cup Noodles promotion in FFXV. That was weird whiplash. Granted, the game played it humorously, but it was still awkward as fuck to hear Gladiolus hungering for some Cup Noodle Ramen.

If it just exists outside of the plot, I don't acknowledge it within the universe. But it would be pretty crass to have Tifa going, "Shinra better not lay a finger, on my Butterfinger!" ^_~

 

[Tetsujin]

German Youtuber confirms previews go up on Monday (insta post has since been edited I assume because they weren't supposed to reveal that )

 

[ForceStealer]

I barely understand the point of an embargo that's still up before the game releases anyway, but I really don't understand why the date of an embargo lifting is ALSO embargoed. What is the point?

 

[Odysseus]

Its embargos all the way down.

 

[Sasseli]

Why wouldn't they cooperate with environment-friendly products, though? Why only the bad choices? Because people buy it? Things like this only encourage people further to buy all the crap that's bad for the planet and their own bodies.
They could always make better choices. If they wanted to.