Warning: Politicians May Be Abusing Their Powers to Make Gaming… Better?

Dan Landis — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 02:19:48 +0000

This story starts with a young boy and a subscription to the MMO Final Fantasy XI. After a few months with the game, he grows tired of it and decides he’s going to cancel. Great, so how do you do that? What seems like should be a simple task ends up an exercise in frustration. Little did Square Enix know — they just messed with the wrong guy.

When Frank Edwards wanted to cancel his son’s subscription, he had a hard time finding out how to go about it. The Final Fantasy XI community website supposedly had no link to cancel an account, and he was unable to locate a phone number until he checked his credit card statement. A call to this number resulted in an hour and 45 minutes of elevator music while he was on hold.

Rather than just put up with this bullshit, Frank Edwards calls up his good buddy Illinois State Representative Raymond Poe. You see, Frank Edwards just happens to be an alderman in Springfield, and he’s learned that having a friend with bill-writing abilities is a good thing to have.

Frank gets his pal, the Senator, to propose a law that fixes this horse-swaggle, and that law ended up just getting passed earlier this week. The law states:

So basically, it says: “That’s what you get for fucking with me, Square Enix.” It’s actually kind of funny how the law is written to specifically address Frank’s problem. To put things into perspective, though, Frank Edwards previously had asked Senator Poe to help him pass a law that “package delivery trucks are not permitted to park along the curb next to a driveway because the exhaust from said package delivery truck is harmful to the homeowner’s tomato plants and totally makes the homeowner’s wife angry.”

Okay, I made that up.

Having had a similar issue after canceling my World of WarCraft subscription a few years ago, it’s cool to think that I could do something about it if I decided to become more politically involved and make friends with a Senator. I won’t, but it’s still nice to know I could.

It’s strange to see videogame legislation pop up in the news like this and have it not throw me into a geekified rage. This one, however, seems to to be a win on both sides of the camp. What’s next, legislation that makes licensed games not suck?

Source: Silicon Alley Insider

Wada Wada Wada – Square Enix is Neutral in Hardware Wars

John Landis — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 17:33:18 +0000

Square Enix President and all around peaceful guy Yoichi Wada recently stated that his company remains neutral in the ever flame-inducing console war.

Fans (or fanboys) of the 360 and PS3 were at each other’s throats yet again recently when supposed long-time PlayStation backer Square Enix announced that their flagship title Final Fantasy XIII would be released for the 360 — in North America, at least.

“We’re now in the age of the multi-platform, but depending on age and territory, users have different tastes. Therefore it’s very difficult to just deal with one company or one hardware platform – in order to offer our product to the vast majority of gamers we need to deal with multiple companies and platforms.n North America Microsoft is doing very well with its hardware, and for that reason it’s a very important partner for us.”

He also states, “We always consider the territory and hardware for titles, and I just want to make sure that we’re neutral about dealing with companies.” This should come as no surprise to anyone, as Square Enix titles have popped up on nearly every system at some point since the glory days of the NES. So this isn’t a knife in the back to Sony at all — perhaps a bullet in the brain to Kaz Hirai considering the game is still a PS3 exclusive in Japan.

Speaking of Nintendo, when asked about the Wii, Wada said in typical lawyer-over-the-shoulder speak that they didn’t have any plans, but the system was kick-ass and that they’re “ready to offer various types of content to various types of users.” Basically, if it can make money, they’d be willing to make a game for it.

You can read the full interview over at gameindustry.biz

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Warning: Politicians May Be Abusing Their Powers to Make Gaming… Better?

Wada Wada Wada – Square Enix is Neutral in Hardware Wars