Video games are getting a lot of TV series lately. The Witcher was an award-winner and put the series on the pop culture map. A Fallout TV series is in the works and Dragon Age has an upcoming Netflix animated show. Many animes have spawned from video games as well, such as Pokemon, Danganronpa, and Persona. The list goes on and on, and what all of these series have in common is that they are not the real world setting of the video game, but the plot of the game itself. However, there is one video game show that broke this convention: Final Fantasy 14’s Dad of Light.
Father of Light explored Final Fantasy 14, but not by diving into its characters or story. Instead, the show was a fictional drama about Final Fantasy 14 as a video game and how it involved the relationship between a son and his father. Other shows haven’t followed Dad of Light’s example of how a video game can be the driving force of a plot in the real world, which is a shame because video games can have a lot of influence on drama, family, and relationships. Having more video game shows like Dad of Light can bring more conversations to the video game industry and change how it is perceived.
What Dad Of Light Accomplishes With Its Story
Dad of Light is a show that switches between the real world and the world of Final Fantasy 14. The main characters are an estranged father and son who used to be close and bonded through video games. The father picks up Final Fantasy 14 and the son secretly plays with it without telling him who it is. Overall, the story is quite wholesome. The son helps the father understand mechanics, and the basics like how to chat in the game. For gamers, the scenes can be quite funny, as the father uses a lot of emotions, jumping, and running around at the beginning to communicate.
The show sheds light on how communication in games like Final Fantasy 14 can help those in real life, how a warm community can exist in the virtual world, and how games can be more than games for people only. Many players have personal video game stories like these, but they remain untouched and are only shared in corners online rather than explored by movies or TV shows. In fact, many mediums do the opposite of what the Father of Light does. To see also : Lifestyle, not aging, may better determine dementia risk, study finds. Movies and TV shows often portray video games as an anti-social activity, and at worst video games are portrayed as outlets for violent people. Media characters who play video games very often fall into the trope of someone who rejects reality and the outside world, when people are much more complex than that.
Big games like Resident Evil still get movies and TV series, which suggests that many of the people who played these games grew up to be content creators. Also, many people of all ages play video games. It has become cross-generational, offering many different perspectives on the genre. However, many media outlets focus only on the stories within games and not on the stories of the video games themselves and the players.
There are people who have proposed to their partners in video games, people who have discovered their gender identity, their sexuality, and truths about themselves in video games. There are people who have made long time friends across the planet, who have never met physically, but are fun for each other in life. These stories deserve to be captured in TV shows and movies. If more shows and movies do what Dad of Light did, instead of sticking to game adaptations like Halo’s, it could push more of the real positive messages about video games, and why they attract so many people. It can show the complexities of human relationships more, and how video games can even shape identity with its freedom and messages.
Final Fantasy 14 is available now for PC, PS4, and PS5.
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