"Making deals with snakes"? What do you think this is, a charity? Regardless of how well the Wii U is doing now and how well it may be doing in the future, the Wii U's launch and first year and a half were disasters. There are a number of reasons for that, but lack of third party support was, at least at first, not…

You don't have to like her point, or think that she's made it well, but, really, "affecting other people in other ways"? "Disregarding how people feel about something"? That's extreme to the point of absurdity. You have a different attitude towards game design than Christine Love does. That's fine. But when she makes…

So, if he's the King of Pop, and his name is "Sir Michael," who's knighting him? Can a monarch knight himself? That seems a bit excessive... which is oddly appropriate for a guy who had a pet monkey and installed a Ferris wheel at his house, I suppose.

That's fair. I mean, my purpose isn't to discredit your views, as I do think you have a number of very good points. Even if I did broadly disagree with your argument, there's certainly truth to the idea that the rumors surrounding Aerith entered into something of a feedback loop, with interest in the "secret" of her…

They're only integrated at a very superficial level, though. With an Xbox achievement, achievements are at least a major factor in your gamerscore. With Steam you don't even have that. I think people expect something different from achievements than Valve actually intended in the first place (possibly because of…

The completionist urge you're talking probably was the major factor for some gamers, sure. But I think you're too quick to discount the emotional attachment people (not just gamers) often feel towards stories. Aerith's murder was supposed to feel like a punch to the gut. It's one of the major emotional beats of the…

A witch, I believe.

Unless you're using the Japanese romanization or modern translation, in which case it's "Raithe." Which is the Irish word for "quarter." Which means that, all along, Square was trying to tell us how Aerith liked to cut her apples before eating them.

Plus, knowing that there is literally no way to save someone from suicide can be very traumatic to some people as well, like a kind of PTSD kind of thing.

don't take it personally babe, it just ain't your story (the "thing with the password") isn't a Steam game. It's a freeware game available from the developer's website. So there are no achievements.

The point is not that you're "allowing someone to commit suicide." The point is that they don't need your permission in the first place. You may have a moral obligation to intervene to offer help and support, but you don't have the moral right to allow/deny another person to make his or her own choices, even (or…

In this case, the "trolling" is the point, though. It's supposed to draw attention to a key part of the game's message. That said, it's designed in such a way to be relatively obvious to anyone familiar with the reference (the Aerith resurrection rumors), or anyone who bothers to do a cursory Google search for it.

Steam achievements are only very loosely "system-level" to begin with. They're validated on the client side only, and they're pretty trivial to hack. They have no purpose other than bragging rights, and they're not even as far along in that sense as Xbox achievements or Sony's trophies. Steam's achievement system is…

The point isn't to make a cheap Final Fantasy VII reference. The cheap Final Fantasy VII reference is the mechanism by which the developer is making the actual point. That is, by referencing a well-known urban legend about a nonexistent game secret (the level 4 Revive materia from Final Fantasy VII), the developer is…

That's part of it, sure. But I think what you mention has more to do with convincing people that reviving Aerith/Aeris was actually possible. It doesn't explain why it became such an obsession in the first place. Gamers had an emotional attachment to the character in a way they didn't to, say, Leo from Final Fantasy VI…

Achievements on consoles are pretty close to meaningless. Achievements on Steam are entirely meaningless. They serve no purpose other than bragging rights, they're only checked/validated at the client side, and they're trivially easy to hack (look at the number of people who've successfully obtained the "don't play…

Exactly. And part of the point the developer is making here is that there is no "good" ending. Sometimes, things don't turn out for the best.

Never! You can't make me!

Neat, but I wouldn't call this making the game "way easier." You get a one-time, limited use cloud for pulling of a somewhat tricky glitch. It's handy for getting past a particularly tricky section, I suppose, but if you're good enough to pull off the trick consistently, you probably don't need to make the game any…

Exactly so. I'm not really in love with the kind of games Nintendo makes, and if you're not gung-ho on Nintendo's first-party games, you're not going to get much out of the Wii U.