Casinos and Final Fantasy VII
Final Fantasy VII, released in 1997, is not the first game to feature a casino. That honor goes to Casino, for the Atari 2600, in 1978. Other games such as Lynx Casino (1992) and Vegas Stakes (1995) soon followed (arcadeattack). What Final Fantasy VII did differently, though, is create the casino as a representative of the larger game it was involved in. Final Fantasy VII’s Gold Saucer exists as a microcosm of the larger game, especially the city of Midgar, in order to further cement VII’s plot message of classist divides through the use of gambling.
The player’s first impression of Final Fantasy VII is one of vastness. The game opens with an impression of the stars in the sky and a backwards pan into the central city of Midgar, one of the game’s main locations. In “Angelus ex Machina: Economic and Environmental Justice in the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII”, author Jason Cash describes Midgar as “the most iconic locale in the game” (Cash 39). Midgar is expansive; encompassing. Its structure is multileveled: the top, known in-universe as “the Plate”, is divided into 7 sectors, with a district in the center named Sector 0. Sector 0 houses the core of Midgar: the Shinra Headquarters. Shinra, explained by Cash as a “global corporation which functions equally as a nation”, provides power to all of the top plate of Midgar and its residents (Cash 34). Directly underneath the Plate lies the slums, also divided into sectors. While the Plate is futuristic and cyberpunk, filled with the newest technology, the slums are old and decrepit. This creates a class divide that is one of the main elements of the story in FFVII.
The top plate of Midgar is “a scene of rampant, neon-lit consumerism…an endless array of posters, bright signs and billboards, while cars and pedestrians hurry past her…Midgar, the mythological centre of the world. Around the monumental industrial complex, nothing else can be seen. Midgar simply dominates the horizon. Contrary to the initial cosmic sequence, no stars are visible either, only the artificial lights and the towering reactors setting the night sky aflame” (Mavridou). These lights represent all that Shinra is to the populace. To the people living on the Plate, the lights represent power, stability, and their way of living. To the people living below the Plate, in the slums, these lights represent a constant reminder of the poverty and class divide that Shinra has created.
One of the places you encounter on your journey through FFVII is the Gold Saucer, a popular gambling destination. The party must go through at least once on their way to progress the story. After jumping on a train, a cutscene plays which puts the Saucer into view: a massive structure completely covered in gold, dripping with jewels and splendor. In the cutscene, the camera pans in, overwhelming the viewer with the Saucer’s opulence, though this does little to reduce the majesty of it all. This is a direct opposite of the structure of the opening cutscene displaying Midgar – but mirrors it in scale, emphasizing the parallels between the two.
The Gold Saucer is divided into 7 attractions, each in separate areas. Aside from being a reference to the game number Final Fantasy VII, this is the same number of sectors in the city of Midgar. To enter the Saucer itself, the player must pay an exorbitant amount of gil – 3,000 for a one-time pass, and 30,000 for a lifetime pass. To the side of the entrance is a Save Point; however, it costs GP, the Gold Saucer’s own currency, to save there. The steep entry price and gaudy ornamentation further the class divide and serve to enforce the abject poverty that is rampant around the Saucer itself, akin to the city of Midgar.
In his essay “The pursuit of luxury as an act of transgression: Bataille, sovereignty, desire”, author John Armitage states that “the appeal of the pursuit of luxurious objects, which are frequently hard to obtain, is, at least in part, the intellectual and aesthetic appeal of the pursuit of transgression, of expending energy and money on works and/or creative practices that, in their very shapes and implications, ward off threats to individual autonomy” (Armitage 347). The people in the Gold Saucer are using the casino to ‘transgress’ against Shinra, who only see humanity as a means to an end.
Underneath the Gold Saucer is Corel Prison. Much like the slums of Midgar, Corel Prison is derelict. Its residents are, well, prisoners – and also much like the slums of Midgar, one cannot escape so easily. The only way out is a chocobo race: a near insurmountable task in-universe, and a quite difficult one for the player. The janky controls leave a lot to be desired – I personally could not figure it out for at least two runs, and the tutorials weren’t much help either. Corel Prison is a marked difference from the lavish area the player was just in, making for a kind of tonal whiplash upon returning to the Saucer for the chocobo race.
The Gold Saucer’s legacy lives on in the critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV, in the “Manderville Gold Saucer” area (Final Fantasy XIV). The outside is just as brilliantly opulent as VII, and perhaps even more so. It is also, notably, located above a desert. XIV’s Gold Saucer is not as neon as VII’s, but it has all the luxuries one can expect from a casino: gold architecture, red carpets, minigames to gamble all of your MGP away, and it even sells food. This successor to VII’s Gold Saucer doubles down on the grandeur, but it doesn’t quite have the same drastic effect. While the Gold Saucer in Final Fantasy VII uses its gaudiness to make the player uncomfortable, Final Fantasy XIV just uses it as comedic relief. As a larger game with its own distinct narrative, XIV doesn’t need the Gold Saucer to perform as any sort of plot device; it can just exist as an homage to VII. Sometimes, though, I find XIV’s Gold Saucer falling flat, even with the quality-of-life updates such as updated graphics and the ease of gaining MGP. The difficulty in VII’s Gold Saucer is what made it feel more real and gritty – to be gambling, carefree, as the world burns around us.
Arcadeattack. “The History of Casino Games on Gaming Consoles.” Arcade Attack, 31 Jan. 2020, www.arcadeattack.co.uk/the-history-of-casino-games-on-gaming-consoles/.
Armitage, John. “The pursuit of luxury as an act of transgression: Bataille, sovereignty, desire.” French Cultural Studies, Vol 34, Issue 4. pp. 343-358. https://doi.org/10.1177/09571558221118244
Cash, Jason. “Angelus ex Machina: Economic and Environmental Justice in the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII.” The World of Final Fantasy VII, edited by Jason Cash and Craig Olsen. 2023, pp. 33-52.
Final Fantasy VII. Directed by Yoshinori Kitase. Square / Sony Computer Entertainment, 1997. PlayStation game.
Final Fantasy XIV. Directed by Naoki Yoshida. Square Enix, 2013. Microsoft Windows game.
Mavridou, Orion. “The Monstrous Transformation of the Self: Translating Japanese Cyberpunk and the Posthuman into the Living World.” The Luminary, Issue 6: Visualizing Fantastika. https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/luminary/issue6/issue6article6.htm