A more interesting question, for me, than Civilization versus Final Fantasy might be this: Why do I enjoy Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword but not Final Fantasy X?
They’re both linear storylines. In both, you walk from cut-scene to cut-scene, possibly with some combat in between.
It’s not as simple as real-time versus turn-based combat. I tend to prefer turn-based, and FFX is the one with turn-based combat.
So, I’m thinking of ripping off Skyward Sword for a classic D&D setting. The lands are overrun by chaos. The remnants of law have retreated to a floating island in the sky. So, that gets me thinking about how big a community needs to be to be self-sufficient. What will be their source of water? How much land will they need to raise enough food?
Then I remembered how some people say how spells like Create Food would completely change a medieval economy. So, based on the 1981 Expert book, here’s the number of people (and their mounts) that a cleric can produce food for. (They can also supply water for at least this many.)
| Level | # people | casts/day | total |
| 7 | 12 | 1 | 12 |
| 8 | 12 | 1 | 12 |
| 9 | 24 | 2 | 48 |
| 10 | 36 | 2 | 72 |
| 11 | 48 | 3 | 144 |
| 12 | 60 | 3 | 180 |
| 13 | 72 | 4 | 288 |
| 14 | 84 | 4 | 336 |
The spell will keep scaling up by 12 people per level, but the book’s spells/day listings only go up to 14th level.
That’s pretty impressive. The Wikipedia article on space colonization suggests that 50 people for the short term and 500 people for the long term are minimal populations to keep inbreeding under control. A couple of 14th level clerics could easily feed 500.
Which, so far, seems to essentially be the answer for Skyward Sword as well. It seems the goddess who created Skyloft provided a magic spring of water and supernatural agriculture.
This is also handy for isolated communities encountered in dungeons or the wilderness.
Looking over the rest of the cleric spells, it’s clear that—if a community’s clerics are generous—Continual Light, Cure Disease, Raise Dead, and the Cure Wounds spells are going to drastically improve the quality of life. Nothing too crazy, though. Interestingly, this version of the game doesn’t have any truth divining cleric spells.
What would an open phone be?
1. It would be one where I buy the phone from a hardware vendor. The hardware vendor wouldn’t care what I did with it.
2. It would be one where I install whatever software I want to on the phone. Most likely starting with an open-source system that I download for free.
3. It would be one where I pay for cellular data service. The service provider wouldn’t care what hardware I’m using, what software I’m using, or what bits I’m transmitting and receiving.
Without those three things, the word “open” shouldn’t be used without being highly qualified.
Ironically, I think the iPhone may be a key component in this ever happening. Because Apple and the iPhone have come the closest opening up the cellular service providers to being simply cellular service providers. They’re the ones succeeding as a hardware company that thinks of the end-user as the customer rather than the service provider being the customer.
I can’t say for sure that I’d choose such an open phone over the iPhone, but that’s the open phone I would consider. Less than that isn’t worth my time.
“Do you prefer Final Fantasy or Civilization?” noisms asks.
I’ve played Final Fantasy X, and I found it frustrating. I’ve also played Square-Enix’s Chaos Rings, which I found similarly frustrating. Though FFX’s story at least kept me more interested than CR’s.
Civilization, on the other hand, I enjoyed a lot.
That said, I wouldn’t say that my problem with FFX was that it wasn’t Civilization.
You can look at the changes on Twitter similarly to the advent of a graphical user interface that made its debut in early-1980s computers. The design was called WIMP and stood for “windows, icons, menus and pointers.” Before WIMP, the only way to use a computer was by writing code, something most people couldn’t even comprehend.
—Nick Bilton, The New York Times
This isn't just oversimplification. It is just wrong. Before windows or pointers there was “user friendly” software. There was quite a lot of it.
A comedian named Louis C.K. produced his own comedy special and sold it through his web site for a low price without any copy protection or region locking or whatnot. He made a nice profit. Great story all around.
But...could he have done it if he hadn’t already made a name through the big media companies?
If you want to understand how I feel about stereoscopic video, replace 2D versus 3D with...
black & white versus color
silent versus sound
monaural versus stereophonic
stereophonic versus surround sound
Yes, the things on the left side can be used to great artistic purpose, but that tends to be the exception rather than the rule. Yes, the things on the right side can be used in gimmicky ways, but most of the time they just add depth (pun intended) rather than becoming the message.
I suspect, however, that stereoscopic video will indeed turn out to be a fad yet again. Why? Simply because the fundamental technology has been around for ages and it has never made it out of the fad phase yet.
Now, there have been some recent developments. There has been some movement of some technologies towards greater practicality at the consumer level. So, I hold out some hope.
