Jaffe we will have two favorite past guests on the show to talk about it in a moderated discussion.
I am perhaps calling your shot a bit here on who the guests are going to be and, thus, what the overall tenor of the discussion is going to be, but if the panel will include a guest whose name rhymes with Gita Jackson (the way Ozzy Osbourne rhymed “masses” with “masses,” you understand), I have a few questions that could probably be summarized by just asking “what the hell is wrong with videogames?” ten times in a row, but, maybe you can amalgamate them better than I can, or pick whichever ones you like best/don’t conflict with what you’re already asking otherwise or what others are asking:
Has the culture surrounding videogames gotten cumulatively better, or cumulatively worse, since Gamergate? Or is it roughly the same?
I don’t think I really need to prompt Gita to talk about this in general, so, I’m going to try to zero in on a parts of it I’m most interested in hearing a public, moderated discussion on–how much is Final Fantasy XVI’s racial homogeneity problem a videogame issue, and how much is it a Fantasy (as a genre) issue? What are some other factors at play (corporate structure, maybe?)
What do you have to say to anyone who tries to justify antiblackness in Japanese media by saying it’s fine because Japanese people are simply culturally ignorant, and can’t help being antiblack? Are Japanese people somehow uniquely incapable of educating themselves to be anti-racist? Ok, that last part is a rhetorical question, but, you know what I’m getting at here.
Fantasy, being a genre defined by reference to history, is, for better or worse, a genre bound to the concept of human cultures (whether or not the work in question incorporates/examines/critiques cultural plurality or even intercultural conflict). At the best of times, this can involve meaningful attempts to portray cultural and ethnic differences within its own universe in a way that lends them the appropriate richness and complexity, and, in turn, does right by real world cultural diversity, if not anti-racist struggle. At worst, it ends up meaning there’s a distinct lack of melanin in the character designs because it’s apparently “historically accurate,” and this just ends up reproducing fascist revisionist history. Assuming we all know that not even pre-modern Europe was as racially and culturally homogenous as is depicted in, not all, but a lot of fantasy, and, well, asking this assuming that this episode will either be deliberately advertised as being Spoiler Hell (or at least try to quarantine its spoilers within a designated time range), how badly did Final Fantasy XVI muck this aspect up?
Follow up, how does Final Fantasy XVI compare to other games? For example, Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together has a lot of narrative structure similarities to FFXVI, as in, it substantially involves warfare between ethnically similar peoples within a relatively isolated geographic area. Does Tactics Ogre do enough (or anything) to get off the hook? Or, is it due its own re-examination? Another example, did Creative Business Unit III like The Witcher series too much?Did The Witcher mislead them about Fantasy being primarily about fair-skinned Europeans?
Without giving it too much credit considering it has its own problems in this regard, why is it that Final Fantasy XIV did noticeably better in this respect? Did it, even?
For, perhaps, a more positive way to talk about this overarching subject: How can the developers, designers, producers, artists, etc. at Square Enix do better for Final Fantasy XVII? How can we all acquire more literacy and compassion on this subject more broadly? What do we all gain when even our fictional worlds are constructed in such a way that is informed by the fascinating reality of how human culture has manifested, or even ideally by principled anti-racist struggle?
For a purely gameplay centric question:
- Regardless of whether it truly is one or not, how do you feel Final Fantasy XVI fares specifically as an introduction to the “character action” format, if one is not acquainted (or not well acquainted) with the genre?
Final Fantasy XVI adjacent, but, again, if I called your shot accurately here:
- What are some of your favorite Fantasy and Science Fiction works in any medium that go the extra mile in portraying the complexity and beauty of cultural and ethnic plurality?
Alex @Jaffe, as always I trust you implicitly to cherrypick/editorialize/abridge my questions in any manner you see fit, up to and including slam dunking them all into the circular filing cabinet, particularly for this I trust you to do whatever will be best for the eventually discussion and show. I guess doubly so if I am completely off-the-mark on anticipating who half of the guests will be.
Postscript - Bonus goofy question:
[Seinfeld voice] What’s the deal with JRPGs having you do something so a guy can fix a bridge?
