Today on the Square Enix blog, Final Fantasy XV community manager Taji tells the story of his adventures writing articles on the internet, which is something we here at Kotaku are intimately familiar with.
As Taji explains, he was sneaking around the FFXV office when he found an interesting-looking creature on one of the developer’s computer monitors. “This feels like a scoop!” he thought. But then, when he asked director Hajime Tabata if he could share a photo of the creature, Tabata said no. Not even under embargo!
Said Tabata: “The purpose of your blog is not to find scoops, but to build an ongoing relationship with the users. But so far, the blog isn’t very interesting, because we can’t tell what it is we’re supposed to enjoy. Throwing in new information isn’t going to help. So the answer is no.”
Hmmm. Taji was upset, so he went and educated himself a bit on 3D modelling, which you can read over at their blog. Then he went back to Tabata and had this heartbreaking conversation:
Mr. Tabata:
“You lack in writing ability… And any sense of structure… And the theme lacks focus.”
[*sigh* Oh, well. At least I gave it everything I had…]
Mr. Tabata:
“But you can show it.”
[Yes! I did it! I can show it to you! It was worth struggling for a week!]
Mr. Tabata:
“But on condition. Because we all have to work towards a goal.”
[…!? G-Goal…? (((; ゜Д゜)))]
Mr. Tabata:
“You have to get a combined 150 comments and likes.”
Taji, you don’t deserve this. Come work for Kotaku. I promise Totilo won’t make you hit any comment or like quotas.
Comments
8 responses to “Blogging For Final Fantasy XV Sounds Really Tough”
Was it just me or did you need a degree in communications to make sense of all that?
I tried my best but I had no idea what was going on…
Can confirm – have degree in Journalism and PR, still don’t understand what the hell this was.
Guy working at SE writes a blog, its not very good. Sees something he thinks might make it gooder, boss says he cant show it.
Guy sulks, goes learns something relevant, then comes back. Boss says no… well, ok, but you gotta sell it better.
Person telling story says he deserves better, offers him a job. The end.
Let me try:
So a rookie blogger wants to publicly leak a character model but he’s not allowed to. He says that he wants to inform the fans but we all know that his main motivation is the increased traffic he’ll get if he’s able to say that he has an FFXV leak. Director can see right through him but decides to humour him and gives him a test. What is the purpose of giving an exclusive leak to some random rookie blogger, if he’s not going to be able to write a compelling article? In such arrangement it would be the blogger benefiting from FF’s clout while giving nothing in return.
Unsurprisingly, the rookie blogger is incapable of impressing the director with his writing skills (a quick read to his articles will tell you that the director was spot on in his criticism) but he keeps begging. Other bloggers (like the one who wrote this) jump to his rescue to try to make sound as though he was on the right and that being a professional writer covering one of the most important gaming companies in the world should be anything else than “really though”.
Said blogger is also the community manager for SE on FFXV and the blog is on SE’s site.
I, er… uh. What? Is he kidding? Got to be a translation error.
(Edit: From reading the others I now expect he means that the blog isn’t very good, if it can take all the interesting new information but present in a sloppy way.)