Anonymous User asked: your silence on the matter of the pokemon parody game that looks like pokemon is deafening, yuuko from nichijou. state your stance at once
just kidding. how's FFXIV?
my palworld stance is i think its success is depressing and true. the people simply want slop. i think there's a lot of words being spilled to talk about its quality, the decisions it made that contributed to its succes, to kind of impose a meritocratic order onto the chaos of culture, which obviously doesn't exist. it did not blow up because it was actually super thoughtful about how it integrated all of these popular things, it blew up because it was crafting + pokemon + guns. it doesn't have a backlash because of a principled stance against plaigarism or whatever, it has a backlash because its cynicism has been richly rewarded. your favourite artists labour unnoticed, the pokemon slavery guys are overnight millionaires. it is maybe the simplest and most obvious gaming discourse we've had in a hot minute, the waters only muddied after the fact by people on all sides trying too hard. attempting to find some deeper truth or moral there is just going to drive you crazy you gotta make your peace with it somehow.
my ffxiv stance is i'm only done with ARR but i am enjoying the MMO well enough but the story is truly a disaster. which is very funny considering i hear the game talked about in the opposite terms. i wrote a review on backloggd that you can check out if you want. i'll keep everyone updated as i go through the expansions over the course of the year. the game is fucking long bro it'll take a while. but my quest to beat every final fantasy game continues
