have a bandit day

“Out of my way. I’m going to see my mother.” – Sephiroth

Final Fantasy VII video game cover

My ABSOLUTE favorite game of all time: Final Fantasy VII. Epic heroes, mysterious pasts, immeasurable power, sacrifice, and the fate of the world. This glorious role playing game (RPG) smacks of adolescence. I’ve spent untold hours button mashing my way through the game, over and over, relishing each and every encounter.

“But, isn’t it the same game over and over?”, Billy asked inquisitively.
“…Who are you, and how did you get into my blog post?”, I demanded.

The basic storyline remains the same, but the interactions between characters and choices you make can make each run through different.

The skinny on RPG’s : Assuming the role of the character, you simply run around fighting battles and collecting objects to progress the story. The more battles you win, the stronger your character gets.

My fascination (substitute: obsession) in the game lies in growing your character. The in-game engine hosts a complex web of rules governing growth. A nudge in a particular statistic (say, “magic”) can lead to the decrease of another (perhaps “stamina”?). Equipping a weapon may make you impervious to fire but susceptible to poison. In the nebulous cloud of “if’s” and “maybe’s”, the goal remains to optimize your character’s statistics so that it can fill it’s role during battle. Without knowing explicitly how attributes will affect others, it becomes a perpetual experiment, testing to confirm or discard carefully formulated hypotheses.

Final Fantasy VII Screenshot

Screenshot of Google Analytics

I know I have a point in here somewhere…

RPG Gaming, much like Search Engine Optimization (SEO), is about constant innovation, progressive thought and planned adaption. Your tactics should be thoroughly tested, constantly improved and (most importantly), meticulously measured.

Stay tuned for part I of III in my series SEO: the RPG for Webheads.

- bang.