[HN Gopher] The game magazine that spent two years taunting a Fi...
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The game magazine that spent two years taunting a Final Fantasy
VIII hater
Author : headalgorithm
Score : 207 points
Date : 2024-02-29 11:10 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (ff8isthe.best)
(TXT) w3m dump (ff8isthe.best)
| rossant wrote:
| That was hilarious. Thank you.
| jimmydroptables wrote:
| Lovely story. Wouldn't call this taunting a hater at all, if I
| had to guess I would say that the person was happy that the
| magazine acknowledged him and created an inside joke together
| with him. This is how you make super fans for your brand.
|
| I wish more brands interacted with their audience in this human-
| like, friendly banter, playful sort of way, instead of the
| sterile corporate happy-speak as if the reply is a way to perform
| for an audience, or instantly trying to sell you multiple calls
| to action if you interact with them.
| Solvency wrote:
| Or that the person never existed and was merely a funny
| editorial device to keep a joke going.
|
| Source: Wizard comics did stuff like this all of the time.
| latexr wrote:
| > I wish more brands interacted with their audience in this
| human-like, friendly banter, playful sort of way
|
| And I'm sure brands wish they could do it without fear of being
| misinterpreted and causing a litany of issues for what amounted
| to a well meaning joke. No one wants to be the social media
| person that causes trouble for the company (and thus
| themselves) for being a bit too friendly to an unreasonable
| entitled prick.
|
| Heck, I've seen it happen (more than once) in a support forum
| context where someone is a regular and always treated
| respectfully and helped whenever they ask, but one day the
| support person is a tad more relaxed (read: less corporate,
| more open and personal) in their communication and the customer
| is offended out of left field. Which then becomes stressful for
| the support person and naturally causes them to clam up in
| future communications.
|
| Yes, big companies definitely take it too far in their
| frustratingly sterile I'll-restate-everything-you-said-and-
| repeat-your-name-over-and-over direction, but "human-like,
| friendly banter, playful" is incredibly risky and not worth the
| stress.
| r00fus wrote:
| Blame our litigious society for making this kind of interaction
| impossible. Plus when is the line crossed between "friendly
| banter" and straight-up harrassment?
| flyingfences wrote:
| > when is the line crossed between "friendly banter" and
| straight-up harrassment?
|
| I don't think he could call it harassment if he were still
| buying the new issues.
| mrobins wrote:
| I think this sort of thing is much harder to do in the modern
| digital world.
|
| It's one thing when it's one-way, magazine -> audience, and the
| current edition is off of newsstands in a month or two. Once
| you throw in forums and social media then the public gets to
| shape the narrative.
| jandrese wrote:
| The fun police have much more of a platform these days. Back
| when they were just writing letters to the editor their
| screaming was lost to the void. These days it gets amplified
| by the algorithm and may be latched onto by the most
| insufferable people who have an axe to grind or just crave
| attention.
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| Agree, with "hater" in the title, I expected a 20 page
| manifesto discussing every little detail that's supposedly
| wrong with the game. That was pretty moderate and the inside
| joke this created is like funny little easteregg.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| Their about page suggests why the strong language. It appears
| to be a stylistic choice. https://ff8isthe.best/about/
| jjice wrote:
| The fact that the website this comes from is "ff8isthe.best"
| makes this so much better. I love hyper-specific websites.
|
| Also, I love documentation on these obscure things from times
| passed. I'm not sure where else I would have ran into this, but I
| appreciate the author for writing this kind of thing down.
| bombcar wrote:
| This was what the Internet made beautiful for a time,
| international access to hyper-specific deep sites on highly
| specific topics.
|
| Instead we get 9000 identical sites regurgitating the same
| identical garbage; I want sites where I can enjoy people going
| into way too much detail about something they feel strongly
| about, like why steam engines were going to lose to diesel no
| matter what, because diesel can get traction going up an
| incline that a steam engine simply cannot do (and that detailed
| page is lost to me, I can't find it).
|
| It's just how subreddits devolve to meme-reposting unless
| actively and strongly countered; forums were a bit better at
| that but you had to have active moderation.
| krapp wrote:
| > I want sites where I can enjoy people going into way too
| much detail about something they feel strongly about, like
| why steam engines were going to lose to diesel no matter
| what, because diesel can get traction going up an incline
| that a steam engine simply cannot do (and that detailed page
| is lost to me, I can't find it).
|
| You can find plenty of that as content, it just exists on
| platforms rather than individual sites, and mostly as video.
| azemetre wrote:
| Not the same, it's much harder to watch video content than
| content you can read.
|
| I don't have time to spend 30 minutes watching some in-
| depth video essay on a game, but I can read someone's blog
| for 5 minutes that hits all the relevant points.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| > Instead we get
|
| lots of publishing history in different media tells the
| story. "Broadcast media" was always suspect from the point of
| view of artsy, sophisticated and niche circles.. and I do
| mean circles, because publishing, content creation, and fans
| are all different people and need each other to make it work.
| This has been done "well" over and over.. but in the digital
| realms the incentives and mechanisms are powerful in
| overwhelming ways. More people than have ever existed in
| previous eras, are involved now.
|
| Cory Doctorow has plenty of (imperfect) insight into some of
| these things.. a local bookstore and network of those used to
| be an answer.. evolution is not over
| sonicanatidae wrote:
| This is part of why I miss BBSes.
| ilamont wrote:
| Viz in the UK had a long-running single frame comic called "rude
| kid" depicting a mother asking her son to do something and his
| response was some variation of "bollocks" or "fuck off."
|
| https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=6e8c819a630d1523&hl=en...
|
| Went on for years and for all I know still continues today.
| bloomingeek wrote:
| Glitter Shitter, OMG!
| mst wrote:
| The gag with the spine art reminds me of this (video boxed sets
| of the series Monk): https://trout.me.uk/monk.jpg
| BubbleRings wrote:
| Good stuff. In case you missed it, if I'm guessing right (I
| don't know the show well), the lead character is
| obsessive/compulsive and would be wildly irritated if he knew
| that the videos about his life cannot be neatly displayed on a
| shelf because the last one's spine was formatted differently
| from the others. Why did I need to make this post?
| neogodless wrote:
| The slanted text comments on this reddit page is extra
| infuriating!
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/mildlyinfuriating/comments/ro5e6r/t...
| yobert wrote:
| The fake hair on the screen totally got me!!!
| int_19h wrote:
| Huh! How do they achieve this effect? Does Reddit give you
| that much control over CSS?
| alpaca128 wrote:
| The old interface does. Only one of the countless reasons
| the new one is worse.
| fecal_henge wrote:
| Whats the problem? Just turn the last one round.
| swayvil wrote:
| I've seen similar in forums. A couple of diligent haters, posting
| frequently, can supply enough drama-energy to keep the forum
| active for years.
| bloomingeek wrote:
| Yes! As a victim several times of "nitpickers" on posts I've
| replied to on different sites, it's absolutely bonkers how far
| they will go to prove a point that wasn't ever brought up.
| After patiently explaining what I had written, usually several
| times in a variety of ways, some will contact the administrator
| and have the entire thread removed!
| bpp wrote:
| Laughed out loud.
|
| And FWIW loved Final Fantasy VIII. More then VII. The soundtrack
| was fantastic, I used to have an imported full orchestral
| arrangement that was in heavy rotation in my tweens.
| captainbland wrote:
| Yeah I think FFVIII hit this really artistic note in a way that
| very few other games were able to at the time. I get that might
| not be everyone's cup of tea but it remains one of my favourite
| FF games.
| haolez wrote:
| Final Fantasy titles have a deep gameplay aspect and a deep
| story aspect. FFVIII wasn't the best story, but it had great
| gameplay.
| giogadi wrote:
| The internet needs more websites like this. This is The Good
| Internet
| Yhippa wrote:
| Right? This kind of content came out around 15 years or so ago.
| dmonitor wrote:
| This post was made 2 days ago
| netsharc wrote:
| Instead we get: hey guys checkout my Twitter thread about
| $some_topic! 1/x
| santoshalper wrote:
| I love this guy's web site. This is what the internet was really
| made for, grinding your own personal axe and venting your
| ancient, slightly obsessive, grudges.
| thiago_fm wrote:
| Same.
|
| A hard fact to digest is that if you have a website like this,
| content might not come as often as an audience expects.
|
| Which nowadays doesn't work, as people are content crackheads,
| quality isn't that important anymore.
|
| This article is just perfectly written, and the image at the
| end... nobody will read this and regret it later, but it is a
| story that doesn't happen every single day.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Back when Trolling was an art form.
| 1nd1ansumm3r wrote:
| Nintendo Power magazine had amazing spine art and I can't help
| but wonder if it inspired the spine art from the article.
| burrish wrote:
| >website url is ff8isthe.best
|
| Name checks out it seems haha
| matt3210 wrote:
| 8 was better than 7. There, I said it.
| vehemenz wrote:
| Fans of the FF games are very passionate about their favorite
| game(s). In the earlier days of the Internet, there were endless
| debates about VI vs VII. Those truly had an inspirational effect
| on people--but rarely in a good way. Or maybe it's just the
| perfect cross section of Internet-arguers and JRPG-obsessives
| that makes for insufferable, endless debates and ranking lists.
|
| Anyway, enough beating around the bush. Here's my list (B tier
| and above):
|
| 1. Tactics
|
| 2. FFVII
|
| 3. Chrono Trigger
|
| 4. FFV
|
| 5. FFIII
|
| 6. FFVI
|
| 7. FFIV
| pfdietz wrote:
| No one has anything good to say about FFX2.
| SllX wrote:
| It was a fun game with a neat class mechanic and interesting
| character designs.
| johnny22 wrote:
| I liked it a lot other than the dress spheres weren't
| properly balanced against each other.
| static_void_ wrote:
| Yay, love the Chrono Trigger in the top 3. People always bring
| it up, either to say they love it or that it's overrated. It is
| not overrated! its correctly rated, it really is that good.
|
| FFVII was _great_ but it is an interesting contrast to games
| like FFVI / Chrono Trigger. The SNES games came out at the end
| of their console's lives and made the absolute most of what the
| hardware had to offer. FFVII was early-ish in the PSX life
| cycle and pushed JRPGs forward. There were some earlier 3d-ish
| JRPGs, sure, (wild arms was 1996) but FFVII would go on to
| define how those games would work for years. It became the
| prototype, but it also feels like a prototype in a lot of ways.
| It has a lot of jank. Some of those mini games just aren't fun
| anymore. The good news is all the stuff they learned about
| narrative in the previous generations was intact and carried
| the game where it might have other wise faltered.
|
| Anyways, I still loooove FFVII a ton too. But it's good for
| different reasons than the later SNES games. Also FFVIII was a
| lot of fun too, and a much more solid 'game' than FFVII even if
| some systems were pretty breakable / exploitable.
| klyrs wrote:
| No love for FFI or FFII? Guess it's time I dig out the ol'
| emulator again and re-read 8-bit theater...
|
| https://www.nuklearpower.com/2001/03/02/episode-001-were-goi...
| SllX wrote:
| Hadoken!
| spillguard wrote:
| Tactics Advance is a good time as well, if you enjoyed Tactics.
| Different in some ways, but similar mechanically
| Smar wrote:
| My favorite! A2 after it, maybe. But Advance is highly
| underrated.
| jandrese wrote:
| Advance was simplified a bit and slightly less janky, but the
| AI in the original FFT is superb. I find the original FFT
| more interesting on a revisit, at least until you unlock
| Calculators/Arithmeticians and break the game. It does have
| one of the more egregious fist mission bumps[1] though.
|
| [1] Tactics games often have a _very_ easy tutorial mission,
| then drop you off in a first or second mission with an
| enormous difficulty bump. Sometimes even having a reverse
| difficulty curve, where the challenge spikes hard in the
| first mission, then slowly declines over the rest of the
| game.
| z500 wrote:
| What puts 3 ahead of 4 and 6 for you?
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| Love the ending. I'll not spoil it.
| wccrawford wrote:
| Your comment made me bother to read the whole article.
|
| Wow. I literally gaped.
| Sakos wrote:
| I enjoyed the article as is, but that ending really sealed it.
| Brilliant.
| baq wrote:
| I must say I admire the dedication.
| dash2 wrote:
| Since 1995, Private Eye magazine has regularly run a picture of
| Andrew Neil wearing a baseball cap and vest, in the company of a
| younger woman, which he was supposed to find embarrassing. A
| long-running letters page joke is finding spurious reasons to
| reprint it. https://www.private-eye.co.uk/blog/?m=201101
| cdelsolar wrote:
| Hilarious! Trolling is definitely a art.
| axpy906 wrote:
| Yeah, VIII was either a love or hate game with nothing in
| between.
|
| Also > At my day job as a video game history librarian
|
| How did they do that one?
| debo_ wrote:
| The editors of this magazine were definitely not spineless.
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(page generated 2024-03-01 23:02 UTC)