Summary
- Discord was created to improve communication for Final Fantasy 11 players before expanding to include various chat features.
- The co-creator of Discord, a Final Fantasy 14 player, hints at a potential collaboration between Discord and the MMORPG.
- Final Fantasy 11's impact on Discord's development highlights the influence of older games on modern gaming platforms.
Discord users have Final Fantasy to thank in part for the development of the program. A recent interview with one of the co-creators of the Discord chat program revealed that one Final Fantasy game in particular played a role in its development.
Discord officially launched in 2015, nearly a decade ago, but its development began even earlier. While other chat programs like Skype already existed, Discord provided a way to combine multiple sorts of chat functionality into a single program, allowing for voice chat, text chat, message board-like functionality, direct messages, and eventually, even video chat and screen streaming. As it turns out, all of this came to be because one of the co-creators wanted an easier way to communicate with their Final Fantasy friends.
In an interview with Famitsu, Stanislav Vishnevskiy, co-creator of Discord and current CTO of the company, sat down to discuss the program's origins and some interesting information about his personal gaming interests. In the interview, Stanislav explains that when he was a student, he began working on the prototype for what would become Discord because of Final Fantasy 11. He was "obsessed" with the MMORPG and wanted a way to easily communicate with those he was playing the game with. While Final Fantasy 11 has text chat, there were limitations on how much text could be sent at once, and no options for transmitting voice.
Discord May See a Future Connection to a Final Fantasy MMORPG
Further in the interview, Stanislav talks about how the recent collaboration between Final Fantasy 16 and Discord, which unlocked a special avatar decoration for those who played the game. Stanislav now plays Final Fantasy 14, a game he's been active in since the pre-ARR 1.0 era, and discussed the possibility of a future collaboration between the MMORPG and Discord. When asked, he said that there could be one, but it was too early to say, and to "look forward to it," a catchphrase that Final Fantasy 14 developer Yoshi-P often uses when teasing future updates.
While Final Fantasy 11 has been largely overshadowed by its younger sibling Final Fantasy 14, the game set the stage for what the future iteration would become. To this day, Final Fantasy 11 is still online and has fans devoted to exploring the world of Vana'diel. Without FF11, Final Fantasy 14 either never would have existed or would have looked very different from what fans recognize today. And now it's clear that the same could be said for Discord.
- Released
- October 28, 2003
- ESRB
- T For Teen Due To Animated Blood, Violence
- Developer(s)
- Square Enix
- Publisher(s)
- Square Enix, Sony Computer Entertainment
- Engine
- Luminous
WHERE TO PLAY
A New Beginning. An Endless World.
The world of Vana diel stands on the brink of war. Three powerful nations rally their troops against the beastmen in a desperate bid for survival. Now, brave adventurers like you are Vana'diel's only hope! Create an alter ego and forge alliances with players from around the globe. Exhilarating quests and an epic storyline await you in Square Enix's premiere online role-playing game.
Join together to steer the course of Vana'diel's history!
- Multiplayer
- Local Multiplayer
- Franchise
- Final Fantasy
- Genre(s)
- MMORPG
