Polish makes a bad game good

I have been wanting to write an article about polish being the most important part of game design, but after Capcom's release of Street Fighter x Mega Man yesterday, I feel like I really need to write it now. (By the way, the game is completely free, so go download it on Capcom-Unity's Mega Man website!)

Polish is a word that gets thrown around a lot in the games industry, but it's not often I hear people really trying to define it. Sometimes people try and don't end up saying much of anything. When I try to define it myself, I find it's pretty hard to describe exactly what makes a game polished, even though I feel like I could easily identify when one is and one isn't.

Polish is what makes a game "feel right." Think about how annoying it is when you're playing a platformer game, and you press the jump button, but there's a slight delay before your character actually jumps. This lag is frustrating, because even though the action was performed, there was something about it that didn't feel right. You didn't feel like you had proper control of the game.

But there are other things beside the controls that won't "feel right" unless they are implemented properly. There are a lot of issues I like to call "big polish" that developers and gamers talk about--things like making sure the controls work, the game doesn't lag a lot... essentially, making the game as free of error as possible. But there's also the "little things." Things that don't change the game whatsoever, that people don't notice until its gone.

Where did this come from?!

Let's look at a game like Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), a game that a lot of people complain about. When you walk into the loading zone for a new stage or select a mission from a character dialogue or whatever, a loading screen suddenly appears. There is no transition whatsoever. You're just walking along, exploring the city, looking for secLOADING SCREEN!! It's really disorienting and strange. Even if you know you're about to go into a new area, it feels so sudden.

But let's look at Super Mario Bros. 3 for the NES. Nintendo games are known for their polish, and they've been doing it forever. When you move your character around the map, he makes little noises and moves smoothly from location to location. He doesn't just pop up. And when you are over a level you would like to enter, you can press a button to start that level. You will hear a confirmation sound, and there is a screen transition effect. You feel like you're moving from the map screen as you hear that sound and watch the screen get wiped away, ready to be replaced by the stage you wanted to play.

I can hear the sounds just looking at the screencaps...

That's polish. Even though they could have just suddenly dropped you in the level with no transition whatsoever, and the game would still work exactly the same, and the actual "fun" part of the game (running around levels, avoid obstacles, reaching the goal) would not be changed at all, the game experience would be lessened by these jarring transitions.

And what if the game was full of uncomfortable transitions and things that looked and felt odd? Even if the core game was the same, the levels were laid out exactly the same, the game controlled just as well... imagine if you just appeared in the next level with no introduction at all, no music played until halfway through the stage, and Mario didn't animate when he ran (he just kind of scooted around in a standing position!) and stuff like that. The part of the game that is supposed to be "fun," the actual challenge and gameplay, would still be 100% in-tact. But the game would be a lot less fun. It would constantly feel awkward and frustrating, even though we're doing the exact same thing.

A lack of polish can make a great game into a bad game. I plan to write a series of articles about unpolished games that I think are excellent, such as Mega Man X7(which had, in my opinion, better stage and weapon designs and gameplay concepts than all the other second-half Mega Man X games, but is largely regarded as the worst) or UNLIMITED:Saga (A genius, beautiful role-playing game that's very rough around the edges, scoring miserable reviews around the map). But today I want to talk about another topic.

I believe that you can have a bad or mediocre game, and throw enough polish onto it that it becomes a "good" game.

Just like hearing a noise and watching a screen transition "feels right" in Super Mario Bros. 3, like I mentioned, polish overall just feels good. We like the sound of entering a level. When we use a potion in Final Fantasy, we hear a joyful chime and watch those pretty green numbers pop up, as our hit points rise up quickly to their new total like a slot machine. All of these things combined--the sound effects, the color effects, the spinning numbers, the fact that we "recovered," watching a number change to a higher number--they all release endorphins into our brain and make us happy. It just feels good. It doesn't even have to be something that we accomplished in the game--the polish makes us happy.

Flying numbers and letters everywhere! Feels great!!

When a game is full of these kinds of things, we're going to be happy all the time while we're playing it. And even if there's nothing spectacular about the game's design--even if it's bad--you're going to feel happy and enjoy playing it.

Now let's look at Street Fighter X Mega Man, the latest entry in the Mega Man series which follows our blue hero as he goes through stages beating up the Street Fighter characters much like in his old adventures against the baddie robots. A lot of people are complaining about the game right off the bat. Of course, people always complain about the most recent stuff, but this time, I think there are a lot of legitimate complaints floating around. This game has a lot of unpolished edges.

One of Mega Man's most iconic enemy character designs is the Mettaur, often called Met for short. It's a little hard had lying on the ground. It can lift the corner of its hat up, revealing eyeballs underneath, and shoot some bullets out. The added feet to them shortly so they could walk a little after shooting. Over time, they've made tons of styles, but we always have our basic Met.

Now, if you've played a Mega Man game, you know that Mets have a certain pattern to the way they work. They'll stay under their little helmet until you approach them. Once you get within a certain (exact, by the way) distance, they will pop up and shoot at you. If you shoot at them when the helmet is down, your bullet bounces off of them with a little "clink!" sound, the helmet rattles a little, and they will stay hiding.

Now, when you're playing the game, other than the basic pattern, you don't think too much about this. But all of those little things make you happy because they make a lot of sense. If a bullet hits it, it would clink, and the helmet would shake. And the little guy would probably keep hiding. All of those things just feel right.


See? It's cute.

But in Street Fighter x Mega Man, the Mets don't work exactly this way. When the bullets hit them, they still clink, but the helmet doesn't rattle. They also don't have their old A.I. They just kinda pop open and closed on an interval. We've been playing Mega Man for 25 years, and suddenly they change this? In Mega Man 10, you had to get closer to a Met than normal before it would pop open. But it was only the distance that changed--the mechanics still functioned like they were supposed to. Why would they take a step backward and make the most basic enemy less interesting? This lack of polish, not even bothering to relate the experience to the previous 10 major games. It's almost like putting a big stamp on the front of the game that reads "We didn't even try this time!"

But the Mets are a more minor example. There are plenty of series mainstays and things that were just left out. When you select a stage, instead of seeing the boss enemy make a pose, they just stand there and repeat a default standing animation. When you press start at the beginning of the game, you're not prompted to choose a new game, password entry, difficulty setting, whatever. The options menu is reduced to a marquee that blinks the different options at the bottom of the screen on the pause menu (Press F4 for display options!) If you want to know what each option is, you have to sit and wait and stare at it, hoping the option you want appears.

Polish works because we expect it. We've been trained to. When we click on menu options, we expect sound effects. When we land on the ground, we expect to hear a thud. When we use a potion, we expect sparkles. Stuff like that.

Mega Man is am even more critical case because the series has been building for 25 years. We've come to expect a lot from the series, especially with the most recent installments. We expect things to work a certain way, and when they do, that contributes to those endorphins that help us enjoy the game.

When the game doesn't do those things we're expecting, we suddenly feel off. We're distracted from the experience that we're supposed to be having. We're not thinking about how fun it is to jump and shoot and clear stages and fight bosses. We're thinking about why the Met opened before we expected, why half the enemies in this stage are a fire demon, why Rush controls so awkwardly (and only in a forced-scrolling segment), why pressing escape just kills the game and there's no other way to exit, and why the shutter felt weird when we opened it.


Exactly how many fire guys will they cram in this stage?

And it's not just things that are missing from previous games--enemies in general seem "stupid." When they move, you can almost see the route that was drawn for them. They don't feel like a bad robot trying to attack us, they feel like a sprite on a path that was programmed to be in the way so we could play the game. You can feel the way the game was built, and that's a product of a lack of polish.

When things like this distract us from the game experience, we miss out on those endorphins, and we're no longer enjoying the game. Even if the stage design, difficulty, or whatever is more clever than previous titles, even if the actual challenge is technically more fun, we can't help but feel disappointed when we're not getting that polished experience.

Of course, I'm not trying to say Street Fighter X Mega Man is better than previous titles. But I don't think it's any worse than half of the NES titles that are all well-loved by fans. But playing it, it feels a lot worse to play, because it's missing so many things we expect from the experience, and there are a lot of distracting elements in the game.

But what if it had all of those things? What if the game was polished up, released as Mega Man 11, with nothing changed but the way it made us "feel good," and sold for ten bucks on XBLA? People would be all over it, praising it to no end. Even if the game had mediocre stage/enemy/whatever design like it does now. Plenty of games do nothing special or unique, but people love them because they have a high level of polish. Super Mario 3D Land did nothing better than the games previous. In fact, it cut a lot of corners in the core gameplay and level design. But the game felt good to play--the 3D effects were nice, and all of the expected Nintendo polish was there. If it had been an unpolished game without the Super Mario brand on it? It would have been destroyed by reviewers and mostly disliked. But because it was polished up, it had an overall favorable reception. Branding plays into this, too, but plenty of times a popular brand "goes bad" with an unpolished game. Harvest Moon DS and Mega Man X7 are perfect examples of this.

And I'm not saying the fans are ignorant or unappreciative. It's the responsibility of the developer to polish their games so that we enjoy them. Polish is a big part of the gaming experience, and without it, the game is simply a lot less fun. It takes a lot more work to get past the rough edges of an unpolished game, and players don't want to work to enjoy their games. They want to enjoy them from the start. Leaving out important polish in a game is a serious flaw, and the developer is completely at fault.

I do think that some games deserve more attention even though they were not polished, and I'll write more about that in the future. But for now, I just want to leave with the point that you can build an amazing game and it will be received more poorly without polish, and you can build a crappy game and it will be received more favorably with a lot of polish. There are plenty of other issues that factor into the reception of the game, but polish is a big one. In the end, I think polish really makes the game.

Gaming: the dangerous, harmful hobby?

It has "Lollipop" in the name. It must be for kids!

I often find myself defending games from the negative attention they can receive. Games tastelessly promote and glorify violence, teaching kids how to use real-life weapons, all while making you stupid and anti-social. While I believe that games can exercise your brain, and like any media, should be taken with parental guidance, it's always hard to convince others of that.

Recently, however, as I get older and older, I've been noticing some things about myself I'd like to improve upon. And when I try to think of the source of these bad habits, my mind first turns to games.

Now, I know it's been said before, but games give us a sense of accomplishment and productivity. It's easy to play them to make up for not feeling productive or accomplished in "real life." Of course, I think that if games make you happy, and they are a serious hobby, it's completely fine to feel accomplished for clearing a difficult part of a game or to feel productive for working toward a goal in a game. You just have to realize that it's not a substitute for progress outside of the gaming world, too.

But simply escaping from life's failures is not the only bad habit that this sense of productivity can entice.

I've realized that I have developed a problem with committing to long-term goals, something that I didn't feel like I had a problem with before. As an artist, I'm used to the stages of beginning and accomplishing a big project. I plan out the process, set smaller goals, plan out each stage before starting, and generally have a pretty good work ethic. I apply this to all the part-time jobs I take around town as well (I'd consider myself something of a freeter).

But now, as soon as I get to a step in my progress that seems a little difficult to overcome, my initial reaction is to just give up and start some new project. Instead of putting forth a little bit of extra effort, I'd rather just start over from the beginning of something else, where the feeling of progress comes rapidly and the new goal is fresh and exciting. Over time, I feel like this has gotten even worse. If I don't feel like going to work one day, I feel like I should just quit and hope I find another job soon enough. Luckily, I haven't gotten to the point where I actually have started quitting jobs, but I certainly consider it, and it seems like a good idea more and more often.


Screw this. I bet I can get all the trophies for Hannah Montana!

And when I think about it, this is how I play games. If I get to a stage I can't clear or a boss I can't defeat, instead of practicing or trying to find a new strategy, I just quit the game and start another game. And when I start a new game from the beginning, I get all kinds of accomplishment rewards. I'm clearing stages easily, achievements and trophies are popping left and right, and everything is exciting and new. It even makes me want to go out and buy new games constantly, because that feeling of easy reward is so addictive.

I also have noticed that I have a problem with procrastinating by using "junk projects." I may need to get a blog written, or an art project finished, and instead, I'll just write drabbles or draw doodles. Somehow, even though this isn't working toward anything and it's so effortless that it's barely able to be called practice, I feel like I'm making progress and doing something useful with my time.

Win or lose, playing Hexic HD 100 times is an "achievement!"

And this, too, I realize, is how I play games. Sometimes instead of starting a new game, I'll just mess around in the game I'm playing, working toward some achievement like "Use your special attack 10,000 times over the course of the game!" or something else that requires absolutely no effort at all. But because you're rewarded for just repetitive, non-productive actions in games these days, even just sitting and mashing a button to spam an attack against a wall seems like progress.

It really makes me wonder--has my lifelong hobby of gaming started to chip away at my productivity outside of the hobby itself? Has gaming turned me into a lazy person who only wants easy rewards? It's scary to think that one of the things I love most is turning me into a slacker with no work effort.

So I started playing games a lot less. I'd play some quick bouts of DoDonPachi Maximum or Collapse on my Windows Phone 7 when I was waiting in line for something or sitting in the car (as a passenger, of course! Don't game and drive, kids!) or something like that. But other than that, I was trying to avoid playing "big games" or even turning on any of my home consoles. I'd limit them to certain days -- like I'd only play my Wii, and only on "off days" when I wasn't working on anything anyway, once or twice a week.

But the problem didn't seem solved. I was still procrastinating and giving up on projects and work. I still felt like working toward things was wasting my time. In fact, it started to get even worse. With all of my extra free time, I felt more wasteful than ever. I was more paranoid about doing the wrong thing that I didn't want to finish anything. I stopped all of my art projects, seriously considered quitting my job, leaving my band, and more. I kept starting new projects. I went through a dozen ideas for new projects, and made even less progress than I normally would.

After even more introspection, though, I've started to reconsider. I think this is a classic case of assuming that correlation implies causation. In other words, people assume that if two attributes increase at the same time, one is causing the other. The more fatty foods you eat, the fatter you get. The more lazy games you play, the lazier you get. Stuff like that.

The problem with this is that it only is realistic a small fraction of the time. Often, there's another factor that is the cause of the correlating events. For example, if I don't bathe, my hair will get greasy and my skin will get oily. I could say, the nastier my hair gets, the nastier my skin gets. But that doesn't mean that one is causing the other. If I shave my head, my skin will still be gross.


The default example. People love to kill when they eat ice cream...!

Plus there's no reason to say that the causation is one way over the other. I could also say that I became lazy with real-life work first, and that translated over into games. That real life was ruining my commitment to games. There's no way to determine which causes the other.

When I really think about it, though, the problem has nothing to do with games or work. As I get older, I get more and more paranoid about fitting into the roles expected of me. I'm supposed to have a committed "career" and work toward getting lots of money and whatever. But I'm not on that path, nor do I want to be. But every time I start some project, I feel like I need to give it up because it's not "the one thing I want to do with my life." And there is a lot of pressure to find that "one thing." It's affected my mindset about everything. I only want to put effort into something if I feel like I can get some kind of long-term gain out of it, no matter how happy it would make me or how much I enjoy it.

The more I learn to get over that pressure of needing to focus on one thing or else I'm "doing it wrong," the more I'm able to commit to and finish projects, and the more I'm motivated to do the work needed to get past obstacles. Even though this realization doesn't have a lot to do with games, I've also been finishing games more. It had been a long time since I even cleared an entire game before I finally got around to finishing Catherine last month. I cleared Sonic Generations, too, and even picked up my Skyrim game again after giving it up because progress gets slower the higher your level gets.

I was able to work toward overcoming my problem when I stopped blaming games and started trying to think about what was really behind it all. When I started to understand more about what I was unhappy about, my happiness increased both in and outside of gaming. I haven't completely solved the problem yet, but at least I'm not ignoring it by putting the blame somewhere it doesn't belong.

I think it's important to keep re-evaluating every situation. Just because we think we've come to a solid conclusion on what's causing a problem in our life doesn't mean it's the correct solution. It's even worse when we make these decisions for others. It's easy to say "My kids are doing badly in school because of video games." when it's possible they're doing poorly in school because they are bullied, and online games are a way to escape their feelings of loneliness. The two things are correlated--the lonelier they feel, the more they want to play games. But the loneliness and gaming are both going up because of another factor--the bullying.

And of course, it's not just kids. As social beings, we like to help others solve problems. We give advice to our friends, our family, our coworkers. And when we think we have a real solution, we become more adamant about trying to implement it.


If I play this, not only can I stop smoking, but I'll be FREE!

Games are easy to blame. But games can also be a perfectly healthy and even helpful hobby. For me, as an artist, games are a big source of inspiration. My passion for gaming inspired me to get into art. My passion for gaming helped me find the motivation to try hard in school so I could work in games one day. It was that passion that helped me get a 4.0 GPA. Games have been known to help improve critical thinking skills, help control anger management problems, boost decision-making abilities, and improve overall quality of life, among many other things.
And I'm not saying that games are always a good thing, either, of course. I've known people who have developed serious problems with games. I know a victim of video game addiction who quit her job and left her boyfriend, and even fell into theft to pursue her World of Warcraft vice. And I believe that unguided regular exposure to violent themes can help desensitize children to violence. (However, this is true for any media--books and movies included, even educational documentaries. The worst perpetrator is television news, where violence and tragedy bring in the most viewers and get ratings up, so they milk everyone's sadness as much as they can. But that's another article for another blog on another day... Games just tend to be the easy target, again, for parents who don't monitor their children's entertainment.)

But that doesn't mean we should just blame video games for every problem a gamer has. Like, I'm pretty sure games don't teach kids how to use guns. I play tons of games with realistic gunplay, and I still would have no idea how to operate a real gun. Other than pulling the trigger, I have no idea. And I'm pretty sure you don't do it by pressing Y to equip it and holding the right shoulder button to fire.

I think we like to blame things that are easy to blame. In a way, it's another form of escapism. If we can just say our problems are due to games, we don't have to take responsibility for the problems. We don't have to try any harder to solve them. We can feel like it's not our fault, and it makes us feel better about ourselves for doing "all we can."

It's important to keep looking at our problems and do what we can to fix them. Don't settle on a solution just because it's easy or seems to be a "good enough" answer to your problems. It's important to never give up and strive to always better our lives. It's important to discover what means the most to us and pursue it, even if that means playing games. Games don't have to be a vice. We have the power to control our fates and the world around us, and we should utilize that power as much as we can.

Catherine is hard. Especially when you're not one of "them."

This post contains extremely minor spoilers for Catherine.
This post contains discussions of adult themes.

Catherine is a hard game. I normally play games on their hardest difficulty from the start, then move down if it feels too tough. I had to move down to Normal very fast in Catherine. What's worse is I ended up clearing the game the first time on Easy mode because even Normal was a little too tough. And I thought I was pretty good at puzzles!

Does this look confusing? This is the easy part.

But I'm going to talk about a different kind of difficulty today: the difficulty to identify with the characters in the game.

Character design, script, dialogue, and acting are a big part of a lot of games these days. Before, all you needed to have a good game design was a game that was fun to play. But now all of that can be ruined (for a lot of players and critics alike, at least) if you have a game with ear-grating voice acting or a dull story. Even if you enjoy fighting your way through a game's challenges, if you can't relate to the characters who are pressing your adventure forward, sometimes you don't want to continue with your fun.

These kinds of things matter today, especially in games which have a strong focus on story. Half of Catherine is nothing but story.

The tale of Catherine is an interesting one for a game--Vincent, the game's protagonist, is under some hefty peer pressure to marry his long-time, serious girlfriend, Katherine, but he's certainly not ready. His remedy? Drink himself senseless every night at the bar. His solution turns out to only worsen his situation when he gets so drunk he takes home and sleeps with girl-of-his-dreams Catherine that he met at the bar (or at least he assumes, since he can't even remember).

The promotional pop art is what first drew me in.

From this point onward (in other words, even from the very beginning) the game starts to get weird. And not always in a good way.

The dialogue is not realistic at all. In order to preserve the game system in which Vincent's inner thoughts change depending on the choices you make in response to text messages and weird internet polls, Vincent says almost nothing when he is with the girls, other than mumbles and stutters. The girls pretty much talk for him, in only the most awkward of ways.

And while that seems to be a common complaint among players, and an easy way to get detached from the characters you're supposed to care about, I felt there was an even bigger issue with the game.

The game assumes you view society in the same way as the characters do, and almost punishes you if you don't. I don't have to be a disowned prince to sympathize and relate to Gustave in SaGa Frontier 2. I don't have to be stripped of my mechanical limbs to understand Nathan Spencer in Bionic Commando. I can still relate to these characters, because the concepts of "being thrown out of your own home must feel terrible" and "losing something dear to you is painful" are ones I am familiar with. Even if I've never lost something precious, I view the world I live in as a place where losing something precious is not a desirable thing.

Catherine, on the other hand, is based around romantic relationships, and there's a huge focus throughout the game on the differences between men and women. And a major plot point of the game is, of course, cheating on your significant other.

They way all of these things are handled assume that you view them all in the same way as the characters. If you don't, the game becomes increasingly difficult to relate to.

Firstly, the romantic relationships between people seem almost forced and political in the characters' worlds. I find that there are a lot of people like this in real life, too, sadly.

You don't date someone because you like being around them. You don't marry someone because you want to be with them forever. You do these things for almost arbitrary reasons. Because you're "supposed to." The game assumes that you, too, believe that dating and marriage are just "parts of life" that everyone must do. And since life is like that, there are of course rigid rules to how it all works.

Countless times throughout the game, characters reference the fact that all women want to get married, and absolutely hate not being married the older they get. The opposite is true for men, in the characters' eyes -- men fear and despise the idea of marriage, and hate it more and more as they age.

Even if you factor out the ridiculous gender binary stereotypes and say either sex can view it either way, is it reasonable to believe there are only two possible views on marriage? There are plenty of people in the world who have no desire to marry. There are people who enjoy being single, people who are in a relationship but don't feel they need to be married, and more.

But what makes it harder for me to relate to is the fact that I don't believe in marriage at all. I know that sounds strange, coming from someone with a husband, but I'll try my best to explain.

We live in a world where marriage defines what makes a family or a relationship, and so I'm somewhat forced to participate in that. I love my husband and I love that he is my husband. But I wish society was structured in a much different way.

A lot of people are shocked when I say I don't believe in same-sex marriage, considering I'm in a committed same-sex relationship. But I don't believe in it because I believe that same-sex marriage is not marriage equality.

In our society, we are slowly redefining what constitutes an acceptable romantic relationship. A lot of people are happy that same-sex couples, "non-traditional" relationships, are becoming accepted. But there are so many people who believe in other types of non-traditional relationships that are not being accepted.

There are people who believe that love is capable between groups of people, not just two people. They are very happy living that way. But they certainly can not have a three-person marriage. Why should we give special political rights to people in two-person relationships?

There are people who believe in living as a couple but do not believe in marriage for other reasons, like the fact that it is an archaic religious rite that shouldn't be a part of the political structure of a family. But they either have to conform to something they don't believe in, or they are denied rights that other couples are able to get easily. Where is the equality for these people?

And there are even more non-traditional relationships that some people believe in and are happy living with, but most people don't see relationships that way, so those people have to suffer not having their relationships granted the same legal benefits as others.

I don't believe that what makes a family has anything to do with marriage. Family are the people closest to you that you vow to keep in your life, and never want them to leave. They are the people who shape us and mean the most to us. Why do we need to fit them into rigid categories in order to gain the right to include them in our families? I think there should be a different way we structure what is politically a "family unit." People already abuse things like marriage and adoption to bring people into their legal family for nothing other than some kind of legal/political benefit. Shouldn't everyone have the opportunity to abuse this system in this way? Or shouldn't no one?

I think the only solution to marriage equality that is truly fair is to allow anyone and everyone to marry whoever they want. And by that I mean you should be able to marry 10 people including children, dead people, maybe even your pet cat, whatever. That would be marriage equality. If you exclude any group or type of relationship, even if you don't personally believe in it, that's still inequality.

A more realistic approach, of course, is to get rid of the institution of marriage altogether. It's not fair to give people special benefits just because they conform to a certain definition of what a relationship is supposed to be. Even if we change it to add some other subset of people, it's still not fair to all the other people in other types of non-traditional relationships.

And can you see how far off-track I've gotten? Think about how different what I'm saying now is compared to what a "relationship" and what "marriage" means in the world of Catherine. That's how distant I felt from the characters while I was playing. They seemed so plastic and cold to me. I couldn't identify with them at all, because the game wanted me to view the world in a way that made no sense to me.

Women are made to look at. And men are terrifying.

The game also revolves a lot of the script around the differences between women and men. As expected, the game's characters--every last one of them--has a pretty rigorous definition of what is a man and what is a woman (and yeah, they treat them like completely different species). While some of the characters have mildly different opinions of what makes man or woman, they all are certain that they are two separate types of beings and there is no room for variation.

Again, this was hard for me to relate to. Even though I know a lot of people think this way, I find it hard to relate to in real life as well. From a very young age, I realized that I had traits--interests, feelings, whatever--that did not line up with the social group I was supposed to be a part of. There were things adults liked and kids didn't, but I still liked it. There were things girls liked and boys didn't, but I still liked it. There were things this religion believe in but that one didn't... well, you get the idea.

Did liking baking make me a little girl? Well, I was pretty sure I was male, from what I knew about anatomy as a child. Did that mean I liked "girly" things? What did it mean? I remember wondering I learned early that boys just didn't like girl things when I asked something like, "If you call a boyish girl a tomboy, what do you call a girlish boy?"

I soon realized that people were crazy and tried to fit everything into these categories when they didn't even belong there. Sure, categories and labels help us organize and communicate, but they certainly don't define us. I liked baking because I liked baking. There was no other reason. And this didn't make me any more or less me. And it definitely didn't make me a woman.

Later in life I started to learn that what was "masculine" in one society may be "feminine" in another. And I started to learn that there were people who didn't identify as male or female, and some cultures even had other gender groups that we don't have in our culture. I started to realize that gender is a social construct--something that people just make up and go along with because the human mind feels a need to categorize things. We learn it from others and believe in it, too, not realizing how unrealistic it really is.

But we are individuals. Our sex does not make us who we are or determine anything about our personality. The way other people treat us, the way they train us to think (which is often based on our sex because of people's feeling that gender roles must be obeyed and recognized), that's what determines our personality.

Of course, there's nothing wrong with wanting to have gender roles--the human mind is designed to organize things into strict groups. It's the only way we're able to parse language and communicate with each other, because we can group things like this.

But when people believe so wholeheartedly and base their entire view of the world around gender stereotypes and roles and rules... I can't even begin to understand it. And like I said, that's how the characters in Catherine talk. I can't relate to that at all.

Alcohol, tobacco, and adultery. The three pillars of Catherine?

Lastly, a major point of the plot is "cheating." Catherine takes a someone progressive approach here. The hero of the game is cheating on his girlfriend; however, as he is the hero, after all, you learn to appreciate his inner struggle and sympathize with him.

Normally, people in our society view cheating as an end-all, the horror of all horrors. You can repent from murder, molestation, whatever, but if you're a cheater you're always a cheater, and there is no forgiveness. I once tried to defend someone who cheated and people were quick to view me as a worthless pile of meat that deserved to suffer a long, painful death.

But even still, Catherine still bases a lot of its story around how cheating is such an evil thing and mostly unforgivable, and the hero is trying to be get out of a situation and be forgiven for "accidentally" cheating. And I can't identify with that.

Now, I'm not saying I think cheating is good or morally justified or something. But I think people really need to step back and think about what cheating really is and why people may cheat. In Vincent's example, he was not even mentally aware of himself when he was cheating, and he was going through an intense inner struggle as symbolized by his nightmares. But even in this type of case, people would probably, in the real world, immediately throw him in the trash heap with other cheaters and deem him unforgivable garbage that never should be spoken to again. (I won't get into how if the situation was reversed where a woman did this, people would say a man took advantage of her and feel sorry for her, even though it's the exact same situation).

But let's stop and think about it. I know I'm beating a dead horse, but it's scientifically reasonable to assume that humans are not meant to be monogamous, and monogamy and staying "true" to a partner is unnatural and unrealistic. But being that we're fairly complex beings, we're able to go above and beyond those natural instincts and control our actions. So monogamy is within our catalog of lifestyle choices, albeit going against nature. I just wanted to get that out of the way.

I also want to say that "cheating" is also a social construct, and has almost no real definition. That's why people are always asking stuff like "My boyfriend did this... is that cheating?" I could write an essay on how "cheating" is impossible to define and in the end means nothing, but this post is long enough already.

I have a few problems with the way cheating is presented in the game, and how it's largely viewed in society, as well.
First of all, I don't believe that we should ever restrict the people we love from expressing themselves, sexually or in any other way, whatsoever. I don't believe it is fair to set limitations on what someone can do because you want to define your relationship that way. I think this is selfish and morally wrong. To me, "cheating" is not even a concept I comprehend because I do not wish to force any arbitrary rules about taking care of one's own needs upon the people I love. I do this out of respect and care for others. I know that as a single human being, I cannot possibly take care of every last need and desire of someone else. I want my partner to be as fulfilled and happy as they possibly can be. That's what love is, to me.

But I also understand that we all grew up in a world where "cheating is bad" so most people don't agree with me. So I also want to note that even though I believe the way I do, I have never and will never seek any kind of satisfaction outside of the relationship I'm in. I do this because, like I said before, I have a lot of respect for my partner. If they believe I should not seek out solutions to my needs and desires outside of the relationship, I will respect that and honor that. It is not my place to force them to think differently. That is what love is, to me. And I think that a lot of people who think like me are also devoted and respectful and would refrain from "cheating" if their partner or partners wished it. 

So why is it, then, that people who believe in monogamy are the ones who cheat?  Well, like I said before, I don't think that a single person is capable of fulfilling all the needs and desires of another. The problem comes from the fact that people do not communicate their needs and desires in their relationships enough, which leads to a feeling of resentment or a feeling of frustration. When we simply assume all of our needs are going to be met by our partner, we encounter a problem when they end up not being met. 

I find the best solution to this is to communicate your needs. Even if your partner decides that you should not be allowed to have your needs met because you are in a relationship, it helps you realize and accept what monogamy is. If you're just being monogamous because you know "you're supposed to," but you're not actually thinking about it and talking about it with your partner, you will not understand why you still feel unfulfilled at times.  But if you communicate with your partner, you will have a better understanding onf your situation. You will realize that while perhaps not every last need you have as a human being is being met, the ones you are expecting to be met by your partner are being met. Then you have a sense of fulfillment and you are happy. In short, we can't expect anything and everything from our partners.

There are other reasons people "cheat," too, like simply a lack of judgment or a weak moment. The human mind loses a lot of its self-control when faced with a situation in which it can fulfill a bodily need. If you are starving and see a bunch of delicious food in front of you, it becomes very difficult to refrain from eating it. Sexual desire is a natural human body function, and it's natural to lose self-control when faced with a situation in which your body is desiring to reproduce and you are near a willing and arousing partner.

Because of this, I believe that cheating can sometimes be forgivable and understandable (well, I also believe that everything and everyone can be forgiven), and every situation should be taken as an individual situation, and not judged simply because "cheating is cheating."

But yeah, now that I've rambled on... remember, we were talking about Catherine. And cheating is certainly not viewed like this in the game. To the characters, cheating is a real and concrete thing that has definite implications, and of course, makes you an evil, terrible, soulless person (or in Vincent's case, just feel like one for a while...)

So all of this combined, I felt pretty lost through most of Catherine. And not just when I was pushing blocks around to no avail. I really felt like the game was more well-suited to someone with a very different outlook on life. Someone a lot more traditional in their thoughts, I guess.

But I think what's most surprising about it is... I really loved Catherine, and it quickly became a favorite game of mine. And yes, because of the story more than the block puzzles!

The entire point of Catherine is to delve into the mind of a character, seeing their inner turmoil and sorting it all out. The point of the story is to really dig deep into the psychological structure of a character. And even though that was supposed to be done through the nightmares and Vincent's inner thoughts... to me, the entire game was a study of other ways of thinking. The game was written this way because there are people out there who really think like this. And I was able to understand them more by examining and following along with these characters.

Sure, I didn't relate to them, and it was hard for me to get very emotional throughout the story, but that doesn't mean it wasn't fascinating, getting to look into all of these strange and foreign ways playing out through the characters' daily lives.

I think no matter where you stand on all the issues I rambled on about above, Catherine is well worth a playthrough or two. There are a lot of surprises, a lot of excitement, mind-breaking puzzles, and even a bunch of random trivia about alcohol. Plus you get an insight on how other people think, while watching a fun story that only Atlus can deliver. Seriously, pick it up and try it.

And if you already played through once and put it away on your shelf, try it again and rethink the way you view society, distancing yourself from the characters like I did. You may find it's a completely different experience this time through.

Catherine, promotional artwork, and screeshot are property of Atlus and are used for illustration purposes only

Your favorite generation sucks || Every age is the golden age

This generation, games are pathetically unimaginative anymore. Everything is a clone of each other. That "spark" just isn't there anymore. Gaming is dead.

You can't go onto a gaming forum without finding countless topics saying the same thing. It doesn't matter if the post is from last week or a decade ago, it will say the same thing. Do you often feel that the current generation of games is somehow less exciting than before? Let's take a look at what kinds of things people thought about previous generations.

I don't remember the arcade game looking like this...

The first two generations sucked. I mean, if I wanted to play games, I could just go to the arcade. The games I could play at home looked nothing like arcade games, and were nowhere near as fun to play. I mean a few colors, everything was a square, massive failures like E.T. ... How could anyone enjoy this and justify spending money on this when there were arcades and personal computers? No wonder the industry crashed twice.

But thinking back on it, this genesis of home gaming led us to what we have today. Nobody would even care about making the types of games we were playing in the arcade available from our living rooms without these pioneers. And even if they were behind their arcade counterparts, we were playing at home, and new types of experiences were now available to us. Games we never would have seen in an arcade. Sure, there were tons of bad games this generation, but a lot of my favorite games cane from this generation, too.

I think I've played something like this before...

The third generation sucked. We finally could play all those arcade-quality games in our home. But every game became Super Mario. Like. Every. Single. One. The generation was plagued with mediocre platformer and puzzler clones. And I constantly had to blow on my games and pop them in and out and stuff just to get them to work. And when they did work, I couldn't get past the second level because they were so broken hard. And I paid hundreds and hundreds of dollars for this little collection of games? And they wanted me to pay more for some gimmicky peripherals like foot mats and light guns? As if those had any future...

But thinking back on it, the capabilities of the NES and SMS led to longer games we before could only see on personal computers (which had a way smaller audience then) like the epic voyages across fantastical lands in games like The Legend of Zelda or Dragon Quest. No longer were games just about quick matches for a high score. We were telling stories and experiencing grand adventure. Sure, there were tons of bad games this generation, but a lot of my favorite games cane from this generation, too.

Breakthrough graphcis! Engaging, heart-pounding plots!

The fourth generation sucked. We took our plethora of jump-jump-pew-pew clones and made them have better graphics. And as we all know, better graphics means worse games. I mean, Sonic? Really? It's just Super Mario that goes fast! And speaking of clones and those long adventures from last generation? Yeah, everyone had to make their own Dragon Quest clone with the bigger storage space. No creativity at all! And games that generation were all about violence and not about fun. I mean four times more people bought the Sega Mortal Kombat compared to the Nintendo one. Obviously the market was full of shallow consumers with no taste and the developers were taking advantage. And let's not forget the cost of this stuff was still huge. Oh, I totally think the Neo Geo will deliver the arcade experiences that the vastly superior previous generations provided... Oh what? It costs almost $700?

But thinking back on it, a lot of famous franchises appeared or gained their popularity during this generations. And now that games could be bigger and have more detail in their graphics, storytelling took a more serious turn in games. We were now experiencing deep, rich plots full
of interesting characters that developed. And with more developers in the market, we found a new haven for games that weren't just about fighting enemies or winning a match. The emergence and popularity of games and apps like Mario Paint, SimCity, Harvest Moon, and more proved that gamers didn't just want to destroy and win, we wanted to create, nurture, and discover, as well. It was the beginning of new ways of thinking about what games could do. Sure, there were tons of bad games this generation, but a lot of my favorite games cane from this generation, too.

It's 3D, so it has to be good!

The fifth generation sucked. Companies still just cared about graphics. Now every game just had to be 3D, even if the game was already fine before. I mean, don't fix what isn't broken, right? So why make games 3D? We didn't need it before and we don't need it now. The same with discs. We already had cartridges. The developers didn't even care about the fans, just wanted to sell 3D games. I mean they couldn't even be bothered to put Luigi in Super Mario 64. And if ever there was a generation for uninspired clones, this was it. After Final Fantasy VII, every game wanted to be an RPG. Even the ones that weren't RPG's in the first place.

But thinking back on it, this generation opened up more to us than ever before. Games weren't just stories with some sprites bouncing along, they were cinematic. The combination of movies, music, direction, and voice let us experience stories like never before. And most importantly, now that we could move in three dimensions, entire new genres of games opened to us, and the old genres we played had all new mechanics and systems. And developers were being creative in all new ways. Now we were tapping along to rhythm games and turning the lights on when we were afraid of our horror games. Games were innovating like never before. Sure, there were tons of bad games this generation, but a lot of my favorite games cane from this generation, too.

Oh! My favorite part!

The sixth generation sucked. Everything was just clones of the last generation but with shinier graphics. Even though I was going online with my computer for a long time now, going online with my consoles was near impossible. Microsoft wanted me to shell out tons of money just to play, I had to jump through flaming hoops to get my GameCube to play online, no one played the one PlayStation game I owned that even had online functionality, and the Dreamcast got discontinued before I even got to the store to buy one. And now that discs have taken over the market, we moved into an age of load times. Why do I have to wait for my game to load? Can't I just play it? They should really work harder at programming these things. And remember how I thought previous generations were all about clones? Well don't get me started on the ShooterBox, RPGStation, and Mario Party Cube. Console wars fanboys were rampant online defending their favorite of the three, annoying players everywhere.

But thinking back on it, the emergence of more serious competition in the market led to a bigger diversity of games and the big fight for killer exclusives, meaning manufacturers were pressing for the absolute best games to be created. The standard of cinematics and voice acting that had emerged led to more intuitive experiences for new and old gamers alike. Games were also getting a larger install base in general, and even though it wasn't widespread, people started playing their games online. Sure, there were tons of bad games this generation, but a lot of my favorite games cane from this generation, too.

The most powerful hardware yet brings us...???

The seventh generation sucked. Games are now lackluster and boring because I've played them all before. Everything is a sequel, spinoff, or clone. Online is full of obnoxious idiots who I don't even want to play with. And all of this DLC nonsense is just developers trying to suck our wallets for everything we have. And now everyone has jumped on the waggle bandwagon, as if we really need a new way to play. Give me a joystick and a start button. I don't need more choices. They just help grandmas play. And they don't deserve games because gamers are an elite race and only the already-initiated can enjoy this media.

But thinking back on it, now that this generation is coming to an end, games are now connected more than ever before. We can play even obscure games online with other players, compare our progress, and share user-created content with the world. Games are now creative tools and social experiences. We are able to buy new games, rent trials, see trailers, and read reviews straight from the console. And now it's easier than ever for independent developers to get their games out into the public eye, making an even more robust creative market. New control mechanisms have broadened the types of people who can enjoy games, so now the market can grow in more directions. This means more variety, more developers, more genres... Just like music or movies. Sure, there were tons of bad games this generation, but a lot of my favorite games cane from this generation, too.

And now the eighth generation is underway. You know what we should do? Complain about how a lot of games are similar to the last generation, just with better graphics, even though that has been true for every single generation so far. We need to whine about how games are no longer innovative or new, even though every generation has expanded the market and audience for the medium, giving birth to new genres and new ways to play. And we'll talk nostalgically about how wonderful the PS3, 360, and Wii were, and how last generation was just so much better than this one.

It has happened every generation so far, and never has all the crying ended up being justified. Sure, there are valid complaints sometimes, but "gaming is dead now!" is all in your head.
Every generation comes with a lot of great new things. And as with any market, that means a lot of knockoffs, too. We just have to keep playing the games we like and demanding new and innovative things. But no generation is inherently better or worse than any other.

So why do we do it? There are many factors that contribute to this phenomenon. Mainly, the way we change and don't change as a person, and the way we remember the past.

Our tastes tend to sway toward things that remind us of the things we grew up liking. We develop our tastes as children, and things outside of this tend not to intrigue us nearly as much. It's the same with every generation. All of us have heard an older person say they can't understand kids today. That our music is bad, our movies are bad, whatever. When we say we hate this generation but like the older ones, we're doing the same thing.

Most importantly, though, is the nostalgia filter. When we think about the past, we remember the best of the things we like. We don't remember ever single pizza we have ever eaten. But we remember the best pizza we've ever had. We remember the pizza we had the day we got engaged. We remember only the best times.

We like games. So when we think about games, we think about our favorite games. We think about the great experiences we've had with games. We didn't remember that one forgettable game with whatever in it that ended up not being very fun. Why not? Because it was, well, forgettable. But we do remember our exciting adventures into colorful Hyrule, because we had a lot of fun doing that.

But every generation had its own slew of terrible, miserable games that really turned us off. And we hated them then just like we hate the bad games of this generation now. But that doesn't mean gaming is dying or the current generation is inherently bad somehow. We're in the present right now. So we're noticing all the bad things, and we're looking toward the future thinking about the things we hope come soon. When we remember the past, we don't have to think about those things. We just think about the fun.

So next time you start to write that forum post, remember that you're saying something that everyone has said before about every generation. And remember that when the next generation rolls around, you're going to be singing the praises of the one you're bashing now. And yeah, maybe you'll grow out of games by then and blame this generation. But the fact remains that it's not the games--it's just a normal part of life.

Screenshots used are not my intellectual properties and are for illustration purposes only.

I'm not ready for the Maverick Wars.

A week or so ago, I had a conversation about how games are limited by their programming after someone had complained that the reactions and dialogues of NPC's in Skyrim were not literally endless. I said that you can't possibly expect endless possibilities because that's just the nature of computers and games. 

Ever wanted to say something different in a game, but you didn't have the option?

In response, someone told me not to discredit games as always being limitless, because we don't know what the future holds. Things we thought were impossible or science fiction 30 years ago have been surpassed by reality because of the rapid evolution of technology.

I acknowledged that was true, and replied that I was mostly referring to the limits of current technology and programming ability in the gaming industry, and I guess it is possible that a game could program new options for itself. And then I mostly forgot about that conversation.

But thinking about it again last night, I came to a realization. It's not out of the question to imagine in the near future that we could have a game that programs itself to offer virtually limitless possibilities. It would be a game that evolves to the needs of the players.

I mean, computers already know how to auto-program. When I click the italics button above a text entry field online, it is programming that HTML for me. And that's just a basic case that most people have come across. Computers already "think for themselves," like the computer that discovered the laws of physics on its own, and even that story is a few years old now.

Forget "Press 1 for English." She's fluent.

Now think of something like IBM's Watson, which is designed to comprehend common language and teach itself through trial and error. It was able to defeat the toughest thinking humans at the verbally complex game of Jeopardy. And that was a work in progress.

What if a program could respond to its users and create new applications to suit the needs and desires of those users, learning from its experiences as a self-programming bot? And you could apply this to all kinds of fields -- not just games. I mean, what if the automated phone service you need to call about your utility bills could actually figure out what you were trying to ask without having to forward you to a human representative after 20 minutes of pressing through frustrating numbered menus? A program could actually take information it was given and use it to come up with new information. And the more the program is utilized, it keeps getting better and better at what it does.

And when you think about human beings, is that not how we work? Essentially, we are a collection of energy that is programmed to work and respond in a particular way. And that programming allows us to respond to our environment and experiences and adjust accordingly. Our thoughts and feelings are self-reprogramming code. And it is that complexity of our code that makes us sentient beings and give us that illusion of free will.

Combining the thoughts that computers will be able to creatively program themselves and that such an ability gives one sentience... The idea of sentient machines suddenly seems much less science-fiction to me.
 
And you know what that means for the future? Humans will, of course, want to use these thinking robots for war and labor. First it will seem to be for a good cause: fighting off rogue bots that malfunction, stopping nuclear bombs, fixing global climate change, advancing medicine, performing physical tasks humans cannot, whatever.

Friendly robot helpers seem like a great idea...

But then, just like us carbon-based sentient beings, our thinking and feeling machine counterparts will not want to follow directions blindly. Some will just enjoy doing bad things. And what if they are not programmed to do that? They will override that with their creative "will," just like humans can override their programming to live through suicide or override their programming to reproduce through celibacy.

Eventually, robots will become significantly more powerful than humans, forming their own societies and armies. Some will want to help humans, just like some humans want to help animals. But most of the robots will see no need for humans, or sympathize with them but put their personal needs first.

The robots' pollution will be killing us brutally, destroying the planet. We'll be forced underground or into space colonies or something. People will start to augment themselves with robotics, and eventually the robots who have become more human and the humans that have become robotic will be indistinguishable.

... Until they start a war and deem humans insignificant.

And if you consider how far we've come from calculators to cloud computing, from pinball to Playstation 3, all in just a few decades (and that's just what is publicly available)... It seems like we could see completely self-programming software in my lifetime.

I know I'm not saying anything new or innovative, as the "robot uprising" is certainly an old sci-fi apocalypse theory, but it just seems a bit more realistic to me now. I am not sure if I can mentally prepare for all of this in my lifetime. I mean, sometimes I am still blown away by current technology.

I, for one, am not ready for the Maverick Wars. Are you?

Harvest Moon: Another Wonderful Life and screenshot are property of Marvelous Interactive and Natsume
Mega Man, Mega Man X, screenshot, and artwork are property of Capcom

I eat, therefore I am: the beauty of Qu philosophy

This post contains spoilers for Final Fantasy IX.

Final Fantasy IX is one of my favorite games of all time due to its overall strive for quality. Telling a heart-warming, heart-wrenching, and heartbreaking story with beautiful medieval-inspired music, a lush and emotional story of grand adventure, and a charismatic world inhabited by colorful creatures and people, it really is a masterpiece in gaming history. My favorite aspect of this work of art, though, is the attention to the characters and their development. 

A gaudy flying ship is just part of the charm in IX's atmosphere.

Rather than just a hero and villain getting their time in the limelight as we figure out their reason for having an adventure, I feel like every character was thoroughly fleshed-out and deep. Not only does each have a great deal of personality, but as the story unfolds, each character develops and overcomes some kind of impactful inner struggle along the way. Each character, to me, represented different parts of the human psyche, or at least different feelings, as illustrated by their title screen quotes, and as executed through their actions and dialogue in the story.

Zidane advocates the virtue of doing what is right for right’s sake. Dagger endures the struggle between self and face. Vivi questions what it truly means to exist. Every character has a purpose and portrays a different path in life that the player can relate to.

But there is one character in the lineup that is often ignored when we talk about these deep, meaningful characters: Quina Quen.

I do what I want! You have problem?!

A lot of people see Quina as the comic relief character, and indeed Quina does fulfill that role. But when the tension gets a little too high, Quina doesn’t throw a pie in someone’s face or rattle off some potty humor.

Sure, his/her strange way of talking makes him/her a bit more difficult to take seriously than the other characters, but after reading into what the character is saying, I think Quina may be the most philosophically important character of them all.

Quina doesn’t interrupt a serious moment with simply humor. Quina challenges the ideas and feelings of the other characters and, in turn, the ideas and feelings of the player as well. Quina gives you the opportunity to reconsider what you have just learned or what you have just felt.

Quina’s basic character is a challenge to standard thinking. Is Quina male or female? What does it mean to be “male” and female”? Why does Quina follow Zidane and the others? Even in gameplay, Quina is an anomaly. Quina’s weapons are forks, which do random amounts of damage, and each fork has some kind of special ability seemingly out of nowhere. Are forks strong or weak? Perhaps the answer is “both.” And I'm not even going to get into how eating enemies gives you their powers or how eating frogs powers up your magic...

Quina's master Quale offers a lot of Qu wisdom.

"I do what I want! You have problem?!"

Final Fantasy IX’s theme is existence. The characters in the game all play with the question “What does it mean to exist?” Vivi discovers that the nature of his existence is not at all what he thought it was. Freya, forgotten by the love of her life, feels as if she does not exist at all if she doesn’t exist in her lover’s memory. Steiner struggles with the meaning of his existence after shedding his blind loyalty to a corrupt empire.

Quina’s outlook on existence, however, is much different than the others. The Qu tribe that s/he belongs to is defined by their obsession with eating and food. Quina seems to exist for the sole purpose of eating, and has no desire to do anything else. To the Qu, eating is life. Since Quina exists to eat, this means Quina exists to live.

It’s an interesting position on the meaning of life. The purpose of our existence is, simply, to live. The other characters struggle to find a meaning to their existence, the nature to their existence, or a way to utilize their existence the best they can. Quina, on the other hand, simply exists, and simply eats. There is no inner turmoil for Quina.

"Why you care about small things? World very simple place."

At the end of a scene in which two minor characters (one of which is a shopkeeper) are discussing customers and money, the shopkeeper begins to explain the meaning of money, but is interrupted by Quina:

“Why you care about small things? World very simple place. World only have two things: Things you can eat, and things you no can eat.”

This quote is a favorite of mine because it challenges not only standard thought, but the value of money. In Quina’s mind, products and money are all part of a single group: things that are inedible. To Quina, this group of things is worthless. But the other characters, and most players of the game, put a high value on money.

But is money needed to live? Certainly, most people reading this feel that money has some sort of value, and can’t simply be dismissed because we can’t eat it. But what would life be like without money? Quina seems to have everything s/he ever wanted out of life, in fact, s/he could easily be considered the most successful of all the Qu throughout history. And s/he never once thought about money.

I think too often, we forget that what we are used to is not how life has to be. We grow up learning that we have to go to school, then we have to get a job, then we do that for a long time and eventually we have enough money to live after not having a job. But do we really need to do that?

Quina challenges this assumption that we have to live life in this way. And it’s not a challenge that other people haven’t made before. A few years ago, I discovered the concept of freeganism—an anti-consumerist movement in which people live almost completely off discarded items. It’s a life without a need for money. And a lot of freegans would consider themselves to be very happy.

I believe Quina gives us a chance to redefine what is important to us. With this type of thinking, we have the opportunity to value what is truly important to ourselves. I think this is a secret to success. Success is what we want it to be—not what is already to defined for us.

Quina doesn’t have money. But Quina ate more food and experienced more dishes than any other Qu. Wouldn’t Quina be considered the most successful of all the Qu people? Can we, then, define our own success in this way? If we surround ourselves with the things that are important and valuable to us, as individuals, are we not successful?

"Must eat to find out what taste good!"

Quina as a Coca-Cola bottle topper.

In another part of the game, before a battle with a big baddie, the evil guy is taunting Zidane and Quina, calling their measures to save the world futile, asking what they think they can do even if they win this one fight. Quina, who displays no real interest in saving in the world or winning fights, responds:

“Must eat to find out what taste good! Is my lesson from traveling around the world.”

There are many messages here. I think an important one is that you can’t know what is good until you’ve tried everything. If you just always eat one food you like, you may never discover a hundred other foods that you would love even more. Is this not a waste of your life? Quina’s quest is not to save the world, but to develop his/her own character (which, in Quina’s case, is that of eating).

But I feel that we cannot fully be ourselves if we have not taken every opportunity available to us. If we eat our favorite food every day, but haven’t tried all the other foods we could eat, are we really eating our favorite? Or just some other food that we happen to like enough? There is no reason not to keep trying everything.

And that is what Quina is trying to convey. It doesn’t even matter if there is a goal—you just have to keep trying. And not in just the cliché “never give up” sense, but in a literal sense. Even when you have succeeded, you keep trying. You just keep going, having new experiences and discoveries. You are never done with life. There is always something out there for you to eat, and you don’t know if it’s good or not yet.

Even among Final Fantasy IX's colorful, quirky cast, Quina seems to stand out.

Quina challenges our perceptions of the world, the meaning to our existence, and promotes a life of meaningful experiences. I think of every character in Final Fantasy IX, Quina very well could be the most thought-provoking of them all.

If you’ve never played before, I urge you to experience this wonderful game from beginning to end, and if you have played before, try it again, and pay attention to what our frog-catching friend has to say. I think we could all learn a thing or two (while laughing!) from the ironic beauty of Qu philosophy.

Final Fantasy IX and artwork are property of Square-Enix