Thanks for the thoughtful blog. I'd like to expand on some comments you made about FFVII and it's sequels. [Spoilers, obviously, for FF IV, VII, X, and XIII -- but I'll try to be ambiguous myself]
For me, the ambiguity of the ending of FFVII wasn't the main draw. I had always assumed that humanity was judged and destroyed. What grabbed me about the ending was the way the notion of sacrifice. Many games involve a hero sacrificing to save the world, but few manage to make you feel the impact of sacrifice like Final Fantasy does (when it's at its best). In VII, all of humanity was being sacrificed along with all the player characters. For me, this was completely ruined by the movie.
The same can be said for FFX and XIII. X had my favorite ending of any in the series -- again emphasizing the notion of sacrifice and loss. I can't think of another game that communicates a feeling of loss so well. And again this was squandered in the sequel. I know there is a lot of controversy about the quality of FFXIII, but I felt the ending was comparable with the best in the series. The sequel (as far as I can wrap my head around it) seems to revoke the sacrifices made by the characters at the end of the original.
I haven't played the sequel to FFIV, but at least its existence makes sense given how IV ended (no last-minute deaths of the player characters, the world still seems to be intact). Perhaps, in light of your blog, the difference is that the ending to IV isn't ambiguous. So there's no magic to spoil with a sequel.
@MasterManiac772 @StammBladecastr No law but there is peer review. Unfortunately politicians (and citizens) rarely require peer reviewed studies, and when they do they often overstate the results.
I bet the shooter also ate bananas. Let's ban bananas. post hoc ergo propter hoc.
What's needed is a good study, if one is possible. What I fear is they'll keep doing studies until one finally goes their way (and then ignore all the studies that show no link between game violence and gun violence).
This statistic is pretty much useless without controlling for the quality of the games (if that can even be done). Like the author points out, games with high sales expectations are less likely to have demos. And we shouldn't be surprised if games that have higher sales expectations tend to sell more copies than those that don't.
It's like saying that people who undergo chemotherapy are more likely to die of cancer than those that don't (including people who didn't have cancer in the first place). It's no reason not to undergo chemo if you DO have cancer. Likewise, there may still be good reason to put out a demo if your game doesn't have the same sales expectations as Call of Duty.
Damage done. Microsoft showed what's in their heads, and the kind of future they want. Even if they don't do it now, they will eventually sneak it in somehow. I'm actually a little creeped out running Windows now... Maybe Sony can start making PC operating systems...
StammBladecastr's comments