Dear Future Gamer

In reply to Rob Wilson's Your Shout (FG36), he rants that "people will buy the same game with a few refinements and better graphics year after year". You state this as if it were something to be despised and avoided. Who made you the Chief Constable of the Thought Police? Since when has it been inherently 'wrong' to produce improved versions of a product when the public is clearly demanding this? Do you complain to the BBC when they give the green light to yet another series of The Fast Show? I mean, all they ever do in that programme is crack jokes. How unoriginal! The Two Ronnies were doing that 20 years ago...

"Okay, you may answer Zelda or Metal Gear Solid, but is two games over a six month period good enough? I don't think so." You could always try considering the merest possibility that not everyone shares your taste in games. Claiming that things are bad just because you think they're bad doesn't actually make it true.

"The thing that really gets me is the way some people will buy the same game with a few refinements and better graphics year after year, and this just encourages publishers to release yet more shite - yes EA (FIFA) and Core (Tomb Raider), I'm talking to you." No you're not talking to EA or Core Design - you're insulting the gamers. EA and Core Design will keep on pumping out sequels to their games for exactly as long as there's a demand for them. Get this straight: the day people stop buying the FIFA games is the day EA stop making them, or radically change the game design. But as long as people keep on buying them, EA will keep on churning them out. If you don't like it, tough. That's how businesses are run, and neither EA nor Eidos are registered in the UK as charities.

"I know all these games are from Square and are RPGs, but I like them and loads of other people in the UK do too." Er, no. Contrary to popular belief - and a deeply ill-informed press - there is no such thing as an RPG on any console I've ever seen. Not even the PC has managed to create anything close to a true RPG. The games you talk about are little more than 'improved versions' of the venerable Atic Atac, which appeared on the Sinclair Spectrum over 15 years ago. The words "Pot", "Kettle" and "Black" spring to mind.

Unless every other country in the EU spontaneously decides to adopt English as its primary language, the USA will forever remain the primary market for English-language entertainment. The fact that the US and Japan both share the NTSC television standard is another good reason for games not being released over here in PAL format.

The UK, whether you like it or not, is officially part of the European Union, which is treated as a single market unit by most games publishers. That means Sony, Sega and friends not only have to factor in translation costs, but also graphical changes. Even code timing adjustments (because PAL and SECAM TVs run at 25 frames per second, not 30) have to be taken into account - and fully debugged and tested again - before we get to play the game.

Once you add in those extra costs, it's a lot easier to understand why Square's games only rarely make it to our shores: they have a hell of a lot more text to translate than something like Wipeout, for a start. Oh, and cultural references rarely translate well. A lot of these pseudo-RPG games have to be almost re-scripted for each language they get translated to.

Sean Timarco Baggaley

FG: Thank you for that Sean, you've made a couple of very valid points that it seems Mr Wilson has overlooked. Mr Wilson, would you care to remove your Thought Police hat and defend yourself?