The Movie: Final Fantasy XIV Otousan no Hikari

Despite the rumor of having promoted, Akio’s father decides to retire. He’s a cold father and rarely talks to the family. Akio lets him play the online game, Final Fantasy XIV. Without revealing his identity, the son becomes an online friend. In that universe, they began to pour their feeling. To his surprise, the father is suffering chronic illness but he can’t tell his family.

It’s a warm story about how online game mediates father-son interaction. Marko Siitonen from the University of Jyväskylä studied social interaction in online multiplayer communities in his doctoral thesis of speech communication, found that the game technologically meditated interaction between players because they have similar interests (University of Jyvaeskylae, 2007). Communication also increases their commitment through its influence on group atmosphere rather than through increased member participation (Dabbish, Kraut, & Patton, (2012).

There are so many articles about how "evil" the online game is: separating people from real world, making them isolated, getting people into deep so they can't act normal, but this one story covers the brighter side. Isn't this quite similar to "Kokoro ga Sakebitagatterunda" where the female lead can only talk through messages?

Release 2019.06.21
Cast Sakaguchi Kentaro | Yoshida Kotaro

Download nyaa

Reference:
Dabbish, L., Kraut, R., & Patton, J. (2012). Communication and commitment in an online game team. In Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings (pp. 879–888).
University of Jyvaeskylae. (2007, September 20). How Does Online Gaming Affect Social Interactions?. ScienceDaily. Retrieved January 2, 2020 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070915110957.htm