I have a few friends that have played it, actually. I don't know if I'd call them avid fans, though. I'm a fan of the series, but I'm not like "omGAD, I WANNA GET IN BED WITH SEPHIROTH! LIEK, TOTALLY".. and I only own one action figure from FF8(Selphie). But other than that, I always buy the newest Final Fantasy releases in the series. I'll buy whatever console FF13 is released on just to own it. Anyways, for a long time while I was in school, I'd ask people if they ever played FF, and they were like "what's that?" or "you're a girl, though, you're weird if you play that". Now I find more people playing it. I think the reason why it's becoming more popular here is because manga/anime became bigger.