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One Man's Two-Year Quest Not to Finish Final Fantasy VII (newyorker.com)
Simon Parkin, writing for The New Yorker: In 2012, David Curry, a thirty-four-year-old cashier from Southern California, came across a post on an online forum by someone who went by the handle Dick Tree. It contained a herculean proposal: Tree planned to play the 1997 video game Final Fantasy VII for as many hours as it took to raise the characters to their maximum potential, without ever leaving the opening scene, which unfolds in a nuclear reactor. Final Fantasy VII is a role-playing game, a form popularized in the nineteen-seventies by Dungeons & Dragons, in which players' feats -- beasts felled, maidens wooed -- are quantified with "experience points." Accrue enough of these points, and your character ascends a level, at which point it confronts stronger opponents worth more points. Curry estimated that, even playing for a few hours every day, Tree's attempt to raise a character to Level 99 by fighting only the game's weakest enemies would take more than a year to complete. Nevertheless, Tree attracted a following of forum users, including Curry, who cheered the project on and watched it unfold in sporadic posts. Over time, Curry told me recently, Tree's updates became more infrequent. After two years, Tree stopped altogether. "I got fed up with Dick Tree," he said. "So I declared that I would do it myself." Curry had first played Final Fantasy VII several years after its debut, but had set the game down after a few hours, underwhelmed. Although he had participated in a few Web endurance projects -- he once provided commentary on twenty-three seasons' worth of "The Simpsons" -- he had never undertaken a video-game marathon before. "I don't consider myself anything more than a casual gamer," Curry said. But then, on January 18, 2015, he switched on his PlayStation and loaded the game disk. "After that first session, I felt confident that I could complete the challenge," he told me. "I was also confident that I would teach Dick Tree a lesson about finishing what you start."
Soooo did he manage to do what Dick Tree could not? It would be nice if the summary told me instead of making me RTFA.
That will be a few years on doing nothing particularly productive. :P
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Dude, that's nothing. I didn't finish it twice, and I'm considering not finishing it again later this year.
In 2012, David Curry, a thirty-four-year-old cashier from Southern California, came across a post on an online forum by someone who went by the handle Dick Tree. It contained a herculean proposal: Tree planned to play the 1997 video game Final Fantasy VII for as many hours as it took to raise the characters to their maximum potential, without ever leaving the opening scene, which unfolds in a nuclear reactor. Final Fantasy VII is a role-playing game, a form popularized in the nineteen-seventies by Dungeons & Dragons, in which players’ feats—beasts felled, maidens wooed—are quantified with “experience points.” Accrue enough of these points, and your character ascends a level, at which point it confronts stronger opponents worth more points. Curry estimated that, even playing for a few hours every day, Tree’s attempt to raise a character to Level 99 by fighting only the game’s weakest enemies would take more than a year to complete.
Nevertheless, Tree attracted a following of forum users, including Curry, who cheered the project on and watched it unfold in sporadic posts. Over time, Curry told me recently, Tree’s updates became more infrequent. After two years, Tree stopped altogether. “I got fed up with Dick Tree,” he said. “So I declared that I would do it myself.”
Curry had first played Final Fantasy VII several years after its début, but had set the game down after a few hours, underwhelmed. Although he had participated in a few Web endurance projects—he once provided commentary on twenty-three seasons’ worth of “The Simpsons”—he had never undertaken a video-game marathon before. “I don’t consider myself anything more than a casual gamer,” Curry said. But then, on January 18, 2015, he switched on his PlayStation and loaded the game disk. “After that first session, I felt confident that I could complete the challenge,” he told me. “I was also confident that I would teach Dick Tree a lesson about finishing what you start.”
Sometimes Curry played every day, and sometimes he went weeks without picking up the controller. Sessions might last one hour or twenty-four. As time passed, the forum users rallied behind him. At one point, Tree reappeared, claiming to have, in fact, completed the challenge already, without telling the group. “He couldn’t back up his claim with any sort of evidence, so we went on in spite of him,” Curry said.
A few months into his endeavor, Curry bought some hardware that allowed him to record his activity. He started uploading the footage to YouTube, then broadcasting it live on the streaming service Twitch. In April, a full two years after he had embarked on the project, his characters reached Level 98. “When the final session first started, mostly what I felt was pain,” Curry recalled. He had recently undergone surgery on his arm, which was still heavily bandaged and resting in a sling. Using his free hand, Curry began the fifty-six-minute session that would take him past the finish line. “It didn’t take very long for the Twitch chat to fill up with far more people than usual,” he said. “Before the finale, I would struggle to keep five viewers, but that day I had around fifty. Just keeping up with reading and responding to comments took most of my attention.” When the moment came, Curry met it with an appropriate sense of ceremony. “I’m going to hit the button and we’re going to get that glorious half a second where it says ‘Level up,’ ” he says in the video, his voice quivering. “I want us to savor that level-up, because it is the last one . . . Brace yourselves.”
The human predilection for combining tenacity and tedium goes back a long way; in the early twentieth century, for instance, there was a fad for pole-sitting, in which practitioners would sit atop flagpoles, often for days at a
Seems as those "not finishing" might be right in this dude's wheel house.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
The old Slashdot slogan used to be "News for nerds, stuff that matters." Most Slashdot articles fall into both categories. It is rare to see an article which more so unambiguously falls into one category and not the other. Still, a very impressive feat.
Dick Tree can eat a bag of ... oh, wait.
I am not your blowing wind, I am the lightning.
The entire game is basically the same thing as what he did.
Soooo did he manage to do what Dick Tree could not? It would be nice if the summary told me instead of making me RTFA.
He did it, just to be contra Dick Tree.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
Abe Lincoln once said "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need".
Abe Lincoln also said, "You can't believe everything you read on the internet"
You have a strange way of spelling Karl Marx by the way.
I just really want to know where people get all this damn time. I'd be willing to buy a lot of it if the price is right.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
People have always liked to challenging themselves in one way or another. What's the point of climbing to the top of Everest, for example? You spent a couple of weeks braving freezing cold and oxygen deprivation and a high chance of death to accomplish what a helicopter could do in a couple of hours. Hell even without a helicopter, whats the point? Stand on a high mountain for a couple of hours and stare at other not-so-high mountains before turning around and making the trek back down. Yay.
But of course the answer is because people like the challenge of doing it. It gives them bragging rights and a story to tell. Obviously "I climbed Everest" is a much more impressive story than "I hit level 99 by grinding the starting zone for 2 years" but the purpose is the same, and the latter is a much more accessible challenge to average people who are neither rich enough nor fit enough to be mountaineers.
I spent the last two years not even making the attempt.
Although I haven't heard of this particular challenge before, many games/communities have specific, alternate ways of playing (usually to increase the difficulty). This one doesn't sound particularly fun to me, but it takes all kinds. It's another way of extending the life of a game and improving enjoyment, so I approve :-)
...but as a cashier, you can have a till all year round!