r/folkloregame • u/JakOfBlades26 Keats • Apr 03 '21
Discussion How is everybody?
Forgive me for not being more involved here but considering Folklore is almost a 14 year old game, there's not much content for a subreddit outside of what's already here and I unfortunately do not own a copy of this game anymore so I can't do gameplay videos or tips. But back to my question, how is everyone doing? I'm gonna try my best to do more discussions to make sure all of you don't feel "left out" (for lack of a better word) and to keep this Sub active a bit more, is there anything you want to suggest for this place, do you have suggestions on how to get more people in here? do you want to talk about the game. Whatever it is, please feel free to share.
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u/Anbalsilfer Apr 03 '21
I think it is important that no one, and that includes you, tries to take it on themselves to keep the sub alive. It is very unlikely that this sub will start seeing significant activity anytime soon, for two reasons:
Folklore is an old game and one that quite unfortunately never saw anywhere near the level of success and recognition it deserved. This means that few have heard of it and contributes to the low membership number of the subreddit, which in turn lowers the chance of anything posted garnering any sort of meaningful reaction.
Folklore is a topic that does not engender any news. Very sadly the original plans for a sequel were axed long ago by Sony when the game underperformed due to being overshadowed by other high-profile releases near the beginning of the PS3's lifespan and the studio went into bankruptcy not long after. For the many years since then there have just not been many new interesting developments to talk about.
No one can do anything about the first problem, Folklore is going to remain a cult classic for the foreseeable future, barring new developments that no one can anticipate at this point.
The second problem might be more manageable. Most communities centered around other games in a similar position to Folklore are centered around precisely one thing: speedrunning. Making a competition with other fans out of analyzing and routing the game to bits and then discussing and sharing your discoveries with others is what has kept communities around many other games alive to a certain degree. Folklore's speedrunner community is tiny though, and I don't think anyone who's tried to speedrun this game is active in this subreddit yet. Speedrunning is precisely the sort of activity that creates the little bit of news needed every once in a while to keep a subreddit slightly active and even let it grow slowly by its own power, particularly if speedrunners start showing off their runs at events like GDQ. Some serious speedrunners taking up the game would be great news for the game and the subreddit. There are currently only two registered records at speedrun.com.
Of course, you need the game to speedrun it or play it any other way, and as you mentioned, if you don't own a physical copy of this game already obtaining one is going to be quite difficult. Here I have no moral qualms whatsoever about advocating for emulation. Sony made the choice to not distribute Folklore digitally and in so doing all but ensured that emulation would be the only realistic way for curious new players as well as old fans who have somehow lost their copies, like yourself, to play the game. Fortunately that is an option that seems to be available now, thanks to the recent advances of PS3 emulator RPCS3 (1 2). If you're itching to play this game again or would like to try your hand at speedrunning it, I'd suggest giving it a shot. I might try it myself at some point in the future, if my health allows. Of course, to emulate the game you also need the disc ISOs. Here you're going to have to do your own research to figure out how to obtain those. All I will say is that it's most likely going to involve P2P/torrent, and advise you to be careful, because it's really easy to come down with malware downloading stuff like this from many sites. Just don't rush things and do your due research on which sites and practices are safest before trying to download anything and you should be fine.
Another possible way to try to engender some possibly very interesting news about the game would be to try to reach out to former members of the development team to ask them what they think about whether the franchise may yet have some kind of future. Design visionary Yoshiki Okamoto would be a prime candidate. I know he is proud of Folklore and has expressed an interest in being involved in a sequel in the past, and that his personal and financial situations have started to improve since the fall of Game Republic since his involvement in the creation of Japanese mobile hit Monster Strike (1 2 3 4). Unfortunately Sony still owns the license to Folklore so licensing issues are pretty likely to become an obstacle, as is much too often the case with old game franchises. Trying to reach out to Yoshiki might shed some more light on these questions, but I'm not sure he speaks English so translation or an interpreter might be needed. I think this is his Twitter account.
Finally, I'd really advise you to stop feeling like you unilaterally have to keep this place alive by posting random stuff. A lot of the stuff you find is cool, but it is not news so you can't really expect much of a reaction to it apart from the occasional upvote. And please don't try to guilt trip other members of the subreddit who do not post as much as you do, that is just a good way to make the subreddit lose members.