Lightning voted best character in Dengeki's otaku-driven poll

Just want to try to get some perspective here (wall of text warning :X )

How important is this poll anyway?

I understand that most of GAF hates Lightning. Heck I don't like her either. However, there are those who are correct in mentioning that if the poll's results were flipped we would have a completely opposite reaction here. Lightning wins the poll so now the poll is labeled as driven by Otaku and the scum of the earth, I wouldn't be surprised if Lightning lost the poll and this became a circle-jerk of "Japan chooses correctly again" and "Please kill yourself Trolliyama".

Whether Lightning wins this poll or not, we have to be clear on how this affects us in a REAL WAY. What is the importance of this poll? What happens now that Lightning has won this poll?

From my experience, not much. Dengeki has next to no video game presence at all, they are primarily a MANGA publishing company. Even their video game arm of the corporation they are subservient to (ASCII Media Works) is essentially a slave to them, because all that branch does is Visual Novel adaptations of Dengeki Manga properties. Yes, Dengeki has a review portion to it's magazine but the review format is a rip-off of Famitsu's utilizing a non-averaged score and a scale of 1-100 in an attempt to seem more discerning.

Does the Japanese game industry care about the trends in the anime and manga industries? Yes, but only to a degree. Many Japanese game franchises we ourselves know and love are inspired by manga and anime, but very, very, very few are specifically made to capitalize upon trends in it when it comes to the real, AAA level productions. The Tales series has a very anime aesthetic for example, but the story and characters themselves are not specifically tailored to what is 'in' and 'popular' in manga at the time that each game in the series comes out.

But let's play the other side for a second. Let's say that in an alternate universe, every Japanese game developer we all know and love prays at the holy altar of manga and anime, creating games SPECIFICALLY for that audience.

Dengeki still isn't who they'd be listening to.

Logically, they'd listen to the magazines and publishers that have the most clout by having the biggest sales. They'd target the trends happening in the magazines with the most viewers because that way they would be capturing the biggest audience. Can you think of which audience they'd be trying to capture the most?

Hint:
It's not Dengeki.

There are at LEAST two to three other publishers/magazines whose audiences they would try to capture way more than Dengeki's, due to these audiences being not only more varied but also just plain bigger.

Why would I make a hack and slash game about Shakugan no Shana (published in Dengeki Daioh), when I could make the same hack and slash game about Fairy Tail (Weekly Shonen Magazine, published by Kodansha) or Naruto (Shonen Jump, published by Shueisha) whose audiences at minimum triple to quadruple Shana's?

Why should I make an action RPG about A Certain Scientific Railgun (Dengeki) when I could use bigger properties and reach more fans with manga like Gankutsuou (Kodansha) or Jojolion (Shueisha)?

But remember when I told you to assume that this was just a crazy alternate universe? It's not. It's how it actually works in Japan. Naruto gets ten bajillion games because when Shonen Jump's audience asks for a Naruto game they get one because their voice is huge. Fairy Tail gets a game because Kodansha's audience, while smaller than Shueisha's, is still big enough for it to be a valid investment.

Dengeki basically doesn't even get games made for their properties because the manga and the audience itself is simply not big enough to matter. Dengeki in fact has such trouble trying to generate interesting manga in general that Dengeki has tried to ape the video game playing audience multiple times with mixed success by making half of Dengeki Maoh (one of it's more important, if not main magazine) nothing but manga adaptations of video games.

But alright. I'll go all the way since I'm so far along already. Let's assume that Dengeki is exactly the voice that Square Enix wants to listen to. Let's say that Toriyama's got a thing and wants to make games based on what is popular in Dengeki.

They STILL WOULD NOT BOTHER WITH DENGEKI. If they want to get the data on who reads what manga, and what is popular and all the real data that their marketing and research department wants to crunch, it's still a dumb idea to get it from Dengeki. Why? Because they can do the data THEMSELF and for CHEAPER. If they want to get the data from Dengeki, they have to pay Dengeki or some third party research firm that collates everything, costing them money. If they want to make a game based on a Dengeki license, they have to buy the rights and permissions to that Dengeki property and then ALSO answer to Dengeki as a high authority.

Square Enix themselves is ALSO a manga publisher and their manga arm Gangan is STILL bigger than Dengeki. They have manga spanning all types from Shonen, Seinen, Shojo, to Josei, just about EVERYTHING. Their manga is also more popular on a one-to-one basis with most of what Dengeki's ever put out and they get free reign of all the properties on their pages. If they want to make a Soul Eater game they don't have to pay any extra costs for licenses except to the creator of Soul Eater himself, so they can make the game whenever they want, however they want. Since they have so many different types of manga and have no problems finding new properties as they are a reputable publishers that mangaka actually WANT to work with, they can easily see themselves what kind of trends are popular and what they should use as influence whether it's for a Final Fantasy or a Bravely Default.

So since Dengeki is not only small, but it's opinion is also irrelevant because SE can figure out the trends for itself, what does that mean about this poll?

It is irrelevant.

It simply has no weight.

We should not be either happy nor sad that Lightning places first in it. We should not feel anything if Lightning is at the bottom either.

If this was a poll in Famitsu, Weekly Shonen Jump or Shonen Magazine then perhaps there could be something to discuss. We could try to see how SE reacts from here since they've gotten feedback from a real, sizable audience about how people viewed Lightning's character.

As I see it though, it is a symptom of a small group of people at SE who refuse to believe they have made a misstep, and will now herald any positive feedback as the coming of their Goddess bringing peace to earth. This is to save face. This is SE trying to douse the fire so that they can actually utilize Toriyama again, so that they can rewrite history and use the fog of time to try and convince us that the FF13 saga wasn't all bad and just to be a pal and give ol'Motomu a chance.

All I can say is, don't fall for it. Let them have their sun. Let them waste their money. Simply inform those who have not yet made a decision about Final Fantasy 13 and keep silent for all the rest. Proper information and silence will kill Lightning and Toriyama faster than any amount of vitriol, anger, and hate ever will.
 
jaxword said:
snip
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Oh, okay.

I'm more surprised that you even bothered to make this post when I was just saying what casual game players who are females felt about it.

Never mind all the other stuff I wrote in all of my previous posts how I thought FF13 somewhat empowered women. I'm so sorry that I question anything else. I'll continue to allow men to tell women who aren't immersed in video games and anime exactly what they should think of women in video games. Excuse me.
 
They should stop fucking around and make a Lightning dating sim.
We all know that's what they really want to do.

And yes Lightning will be the only character you can date and she will only speak in her charming dead monotone, with her soulless eyes boring into your very soul.

And it will be called;

'Light of my life'

$60.
 
Dark Schala said:
Oh, okay.

I'm more surprised that you even bothered to make this post when I was just saying what casual game players who are females felt about it.

Never mind all the other stuff I wrote in all of my previous posts how I thought FF13 somewhat empowered women. I'm so sorry that I question anything else. I'll continue to allow men to tell women who aren't immersed in video games and anime exactly what they should think of women in video games. Excuse me.
Click to expand...

I didn't comment on the empowerment part because I had no disagreement there? Nor did I say anything about what women should or should not think. Are you mixing my posts with someone else?

Otherwise you may be reading more into what I said, because I wasn't touching on those topics at all. I was replying to one thing only, the rather bizarre idea that weight would matter in a medium where it's meaningless.
 
unbenannt-14yybd.png
 
jaxword said:
I didn't comment on the empowerment part because I had no disagreement there? Nor did I say anything about what women should or should not think. Are you mixing my posts with someone else?

Otherwise you may be reading more into what I said, because I wasn't touching on those topics at all. I was replying to one thing only, the rather bizarre idea that weight would matter in a medium where it's meaningless.
Click to expand...
It was the part about this having no meaning in video games whatsoever, when in fact, this does have some meaning and bearing to potential purchasers and players. Women, especially. A lot of girls who are really into video games prefer playing stuff like CoD, Gears of War, Mass Effect, Assassin's Creed (and they really liked Aveline), etc. They kinda find a lot of the Japanese-developed stuff somewhat offputting partially because of how females are designed in those games. When we were teenagers, though, some of them had an interest in FFX-2 because they were really into anime at the time but have since lost a lot of interest because they grew up and kinda decided to stop letting the media tell them what a woman should be like. Hence the anime/video game-inspired makeup of a woman isn't their ideal, despite me bringing up that even western games have the same issues despite some of the female empowerment in those games.

Oddly enough, some casual female players I know love to bring logic into the equation. I don't know if it's because we're STEM students, or if it's because some of the humanities classes we had taken focused a lot of culture and politics, or whatever. But for the most part, the fantasy part of anime and video games is really weird to them. It's something they'll concentrate on, much like how they'd probably concentrate on an actress's or model's appearance. Somehow I think it's because they're bio majors/nutritionists, but whatever. I mean, I majored in neuroscience and linguistics back then, and I'm in biomed engineering now, so yeah, I think I'd probably nitpick a little more than I should.

What if, if I have to bring in my female peers again into the equation, that the idealization of women is a factor into buying power with respect to a game or a brand? My friend who liked FF13 but didn't want to purchase LR felt that Lightning became a caricature of herself by then, having her body warped outfit-by-outfit so she can look like a model in each of them while facilitating herself as an errand girl, opting to go out on a date in one sidequest, find a girl's number on a poster in one fetchhquest, and some other stuff that I can't be bothered to check my phone for. It really disappointed her because Lightning's original design, despite the issue of her legs in that design, seemed to be all encompassing for a soldier (since she wore shorts underneath her skirt). That's what she respected Lightning for. Now she feels like she lost any ounce of respect she'd originally had for the character and refuses to buy LR at all.

As I said before, this is meaningful to them. You are certainly coming across as dismissive of what women who would be potential purchasers or women who do play games think about with respect to how they feel that women are interpreted in video games. If you're saying that it's 'meaningless' in the medium to you, that is not how they feel at all by comparison. Not everyone has the same opinion or the same reading of everything. All of us have worked out, so for example... I run, so my leg muscles are pretty strong. One of my friends lifts weights, so her arms are pretty firm. One of my friends played ice hockey so she was a little stocky despite her height. That's why they felt like Lightning, a soldier, was not very ideal in terms of body typing.

That is why I felt that you were being dismissive and could be interpreted as dictating what women should think with respect to women's physical forms in video games. How some women feel about the female depiction of characters in a physical sense can and will influence buying habits.

I mean, they had some choice things to say about Lightning's tough facade and personality, though, but that's another story. For the most part, a lot of them seemed to prefer Fang far more.

For further demographics, a lot of my female peers are from varying cultures and ethnicities because my university kind of served as a hub for many different cultures in Toronto, so... *shrug* It isn't really a cultural thing, either. It just defied logic for them considering that she's a well-disciplined soldier who had a bit of a hard head, yet didn't seem to have the physical makeup to show it. Even one of the girls I knew who went to the military school here in Canada was pretty confused by it.
 
jaxword said:
Normal what? How did the fictional weight of a character, a number that is genuinely meaningless, even enter the equation?

It's like blood types of a Street Fighter character. It means...nothing. It has zero influence on anything other than what you want it to influence. And if you think someone is being foolish for saying "I won't play Ken because of his blood type" then you know exactly what I am talking about here.

It actually means nothing even from a gaming perspective since, as I said above, there's no impact at all on the numbers that define abilities.

Honestly, Getting mad over weight is the perfect example of looking for an excuse to complain, a problem plaguing all gaming communities. Especially in a game where appearance and gender means absolutely nothing.

If anything, JRPGS should be PRAISED for making it 100% equal: male, female, black, white, thin, heavy, everyone has the same potential to be strong and powerful and save the world.
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That's not really a fair comparison because weight is a palpable part of character's appearance, but blood type isn't. You can visually see if a character is thin, or fat, or muscular, or whatever.

And character appearance isn't meaningless to most people. Sure, in terms of gameplay mechanics, everyone could look the same but have different stats and abilities. But character design is part of the game and is something people comment on. On GAF, we've had discussions about DmC's Dante re-design, about classic Sonic and modern Sonic, and about generic-looking bald space marines. All pretty meaningless if you really want to be that way, 'cause it doesn't affect how the game plays.
 
Dark Schala said:
.
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Maybe I should try and clarify, because I don't think we're talking about the same thing.

If we want to talk APPEARANCES, that's a very different topic, but right now I am only talking about factors that can't be determined. I think of "weight" as "an invisible number that doesn't come up outside of profiles in the Ultimania."

I brought up the blood type example earlier to demonstrate why I think caring about the weight is silly in the same sense. The character's "internal" details, such as blood type, weight, favorite music, etc. have no influence on how a character is played, because any of them can and will be heroes.

Does that make sense to you? Why I think caring about a nonexistent factor is silly?

I would say this of ANY person of ANY gender. If a guy or girl said they refused to play character X because character X had a blood type AB, I'd say that's foolish the exact same way.

Does that clarify my point of view? It's not about appearances at all.
 
jaxword said:
I didn't comment on the empowerment part because I had no disagreement there? Nor did I say anything about what women should or should not think. Are you mixing my posts with someone else?

Otherwise you may be reading more into what I said, because I wasn't touching on those topics at all. I was replying to one thing only, the rather bizarre idea that weight would matter in a medium where it's meaningless.
Click to expand...

People value different things and find meaning in different things. It's just the way we work. Nothing to it.
 
I would find it powerfully odd if there were a flagship title like FFXIII (essentially a new push for the series - practically a reboot) that starred a character of average or realistic weight, regardless of whether they were male or female.

Leading men and women are unrealistically fit and good looking. Dat's entertainment.
 
BocoDragon said:
I would find it powerfully odd if there were a flagship title like FFXIII (essentially a new push for the series - practically a reboot) that starred a character of average or realistic weight, regardless of whether they were male or female.

Leading men and women are unrealistically fit and good looking. Dat's entertainment.
Click to expand...
There are quite a few games with protagonists who aren't stereotypically good-looking.
260px-Mgs4us_cover_small.jpg
 
jaxword said:
Maybe I should try and clarify, because I don't think we're talking about the same thing.

If we want to talk APPEARANCES, that's a very different topic, but right now I am only talking about factors that can't be determined. I think of "weight" as "an invisible number that doesn't come up outside of profiles in the Ultimania."

I brought up the blood type example earlier to demonstrate why I think caring about the weight is silly in the same sense. The character's "internal" details, such as blood type, weight, favorite music, etc. have no influence on how a character is played, because any of them can and will be heroes.

Does that make sense to you? Why I think caring about a nonexistent factor is silly?

I would say this of ANY person of ANY gender. If a guy or girl said they refused to play character X because character X had a blood type AB, I'd say that's foolish the exact same way.

Does that clarify my point of view? It's not about appearances at all.
Click to expand...
Hmm, actually it does, and I feel like I should have supplied the word "figure" or "bodily appearance" instead. It's because I heard one of my friends ask aloud "how much does she weigh? D:" at the time.

So you're basically talking about the 'attribute' weight, and not necessarily its influence on character appearance. As Kazerei said, weights do influence your physical appearance in different ways, whether it's lipids or protein, so you can tell if a character is muscular (in some parts of their bodies (a la Chun-li)) or lean or fat or whatever. But you were just talking about the attribute isolated from appearance, then I kinda see where you're coming from. With that said, though, I was moreso talking about their figures or muscular (or lack thereof) makeup instead. I mean, you're free to agree to disagree on this, but now I have a better picture of where you're coming from.

See, this is why I thought it was weird; you and I generally agree on a lot of stuff so it was weird that we were having this discussion. I guess it was a misunderstanding based on lexical usage, and I apologize for jumping down your throat about it.
 
Zoe said:
Where is her weight even listed?
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I don't even think it is, hence I should've used the words "body type/figure" instead as I said before.

Oddly, by comparison, both Celes and Terra have height and weights listed. By further comparison in a cross-series approach, Tales characters' body makeups are more ... interesting from what kiryogi showed me.
 
Famassu said:
It was cross-promotion and FFXIV has fucktons of stuff from other FFs, so a Lightning quest isn't that out there, and Lightning Returns was still a part of their marketing machine, so they used XIV to pimp Lightning & Lightning Returns. There are no FFXIII games coming around FFXV's release anymore and LR bombed, so there's no reason to push Lightning into anything in the future (other than compilation games like Dissidia and Theatrhythm and some Kingdom Hearts like franchise that has some of the most notable characters from mostly FFs Nomura has worked on). And Toriyama will very likely be too occupied with whatever is his next game for the next 2-3 years, so he won't have time to waste adding old FF characters into projects he has nothing to do with.
Click to expand...

You seem so certain. As a fellow fan, I feel the need to protect you in case SE truly is that vile. Prepare for the worst, and all surprises are pleasant.
 
Dark Schala said:
See, this is why I thought it was weird; you and I generally agree on a lot of stuff so it was weird that we were having this discussion. I guess it was a misunderstanding based on lexical usage, and I apologize for jumping down your throat about it.
Click to expand...

All good, glad we could come to an understanding.

Just for comparative purposes:

Terra 5' 3"
Cloud 5' 7"
Squall 5' 8" / 5' 10"
Tidus 5' 9"
Vaan 5' 7"
Lightning 5' 7".
Zidane Short
 
kasane said:
Lightning in FFXV confirmed :)

i bet lightning is the main antagonist
Click to expand...


Just for the sheer unprecedented troll factor, I would love it if Lightning turned out to be the bad guy of FFXV. SE's executives would have to be rushed out of the building on release day and be protected for a couple weeks because rabid fans would do some crazy shit.
 
jaxword said:
All good, glad we could come to an understanding.

Just for comparative purposes:

Terra 5' 3"
Cloud 5' 7"
Squall 5' 8" / 5' 10"
Tidus 5' 9"
Vaan 5' 7"
Lightning 5' 7".
Zidane Short
Click to expand...

They're seriously that tall? Color me surprised. Or not surprised enough. I thought Cloud would be at least 178 cm.

And I was initially going to write up a long post detailing my thoughts, but no, you guys got it.

And damn Frozen for the Dengeki ether.
 
Lucumo said:
Clearly, that poll was rigged.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't say rigged. It's clearly a "What one-note generic anime trope would you want as a waifu" poll that only Otaku vote for. We shouldn't give a damn about what Otaku like, and neither should Square if they want to keep on selling FFs.
There's a reason the most Otaku centered game, Lightning Returns, did so poorly.
"Now you can dress up Lightning to make her your ideal virtual girlfriend, complete with terrible anime-esque story" isn't exactly a selling point for most people.
 
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