Talkin’ Sex, Games & Rock ‘n’ Roll

Inevitably, with every high point there must come a low one and in this case, it came in the form of the panel discussion. After the crowds came down from the emotional high induced by their preview of Final Fantasy: The Movie, Sakaguchi exited and four industry experts entered the stage for the actual ‘panel discussion.’ They began by awarding 20 lucky and unsuspecting audience members who had magnetic strips at the bottom of their chairs with autographed copies of either Final Fantasy VIII or Final Fantasy Anthology. Unfortunately for myself, only audience members on the main floor were participants (that’ll teach me to show up late!).

While the panel included noted author of Joystick Nation and cyber columnist for The New York Times, J.C. Herz, there wasn’t a Squaresoft representative or a Japanese counterpoint present to set a dramatic tone. The group, therefore, lacked credible weight and the dialogue going on between panelists and audience didn’t really seem to go anywhere. Topics like why people play games, sexploitation, and Columbine violence were all issues touched upon. Occasionally, a panelist or audience member had a funny remark or something interesting to note, but most comments were typical responses that we’ve heard over and again through the years in message boards and chats. No one really introduced any new ideas or notions about games. Comments heard were hardly unique and not worthy of expertise, but then again, forums of this sort, regardless of topic, rarely produce productive results. As the panel went on, the audience became more and more distracted and people slowly cleared out to the point where only about half of the starting crowd remained for its conclusion.

So before the panel had reached its closing remarks, I had already wandered off to view the Amano artworks, while continually listening to the discussion in the back of my mind. Thankfully, the panel did not drag on and after a respectable amount of time, ended the night’s activities. All in all, I was generally impressed with what transpired. I would have liked to have heard more from Amano himself and had hoped that the panel discussion were more enlightening, but it was still fairly groundbreaking to have such a serious dialogue on the subject of videogames. Throughout, there was still a predominating excitement in the air from the clips of Bouncer and the Final Fantasy movie. In the greater scheme of things, I think Amano’s exhibit helped to elevate videogames a little higher on the cultural scale and such events are necessary if videogames are to ever be thought of as a legitimate art form.