New Games Suck... Or Is It Just Me?

He is a board of director, not game project director. You get the position of a role wrong. Board of directors aren't game makers, they are shareholder representatives.

If Saudi investors can elect a Saudi guy because they invested money, then so can woke investors to elect their own.

The criteria of choosing a board of director isn't industry/background/IQ/game development experience/whatever, it's business politics.

The glazing here is off the charts.

You guys, in a nutshell

It fails to add:

And that I can't do anything about.

Otherwise not a bad meme at all.

This is false.

We can do something about it by boycotting the slop with our wallets, and its working:
Concord shut down
Outlaws flopped
Veilguard flopped
AC Shadows is expected to flop
Ubisoft shareholders are scrambling to find out what the *** is going on with the company they're investing in

No one said change would happen overnight, but its starting.

You know who always like to propose that idea.

Theres a big difference between avoiding a good product for personal reasons (“Starbucks bad cuz zionism!”) and avoiding a shitty product because its a shitty product (“kay vess looks like a man and the game is buggy as ***”)

Remember when they said it was due to technical limitations??

https://x.com/pirat_nation/status/1871247983284789304

Turns out that was a lie. But only low IQ morons would believe that lie.

IRL Starbucks bad cuz lousy overpriced coffee. You need a different for personal reasons.

Don't pick bud lite either, its lousy beer.

Maam, Starbucks has been lousy overpriced coffee long before october 7, 2023.

People that buy starbucks coffee are the same kind of people that think the apple brand is something to show off about, they pay more for it on purpose cause prestige social brand. If they removed the logo from the cups they would complain, or bring an old one cause they have to be seen drinking from the branded disposable cup.

I can't wait for GTA6, that game is going to be so huge and such a massive downgrade from 5 in every area that it's going to open the eyes to the masses. There will be a huge outrage like nothing we have seen before after that game, nothing so far has really riled up the masses of "gamers" cause most of the woke disasters have been semi-niche titles. This will be the one.

I wpuld like a cup at Starfucks

You get a puppachino

I know. I used to live in Seattle the city that taught America about espresso* I used to threaten to print bumper stickers that read "Real Seattleites don't drink starbucks."

*And THAT is SO WEIRD seeing as I learned to drink (and make) espresso when I was a teen aged beatnik in New York city.

Ive just learn a new move!

https://youtu.be/vJ4qtuCmpJo?

youtube conversion not working

Good morning you, topic with most hate per post in FFXIAH.

Fanbases used to be the be all and end all of being successful, and game companies fluffed them up endlessly. Now they are just human cattle that they know are "going to buy it anyway" due to mindless brand loyalty, all that matters is the big share holders being happy and whatever they want they get. Even if it directly goes against the fanbase.

The industry needs to move to make all these companies private again.

Been playing Astlibra lately and that game is awesome. Indi action RPG platformer with super smooth controls and funny story.

Helldivers II is so much fun, it's bogus this game didn't get a GOTY nomination. The only thing I don't like about it is the evasion. Its clumsy and tedious to dive away from an enemy and end up on your stomach. Gears of War perfected rolling away from danger in third person shooters, and its okay to just copy that format.

https://www.4gamer.net/games/613/G061307/20241223023/

Japanese game media 4gamer recently published an interview with the creator of "Showa American Story" Luo XiangYu. This guy is a hardcore otaku who used to work in western studios including Ubisoft and Pandemic before he goes indie. In the interview, he discussed western, Japanese and Chinese game industry situation and that kinda explained why some western AAA games are becoming more bland recently.

To summarize the points:
according to him, in Japanese gaming industry game director has more power to control everything. From art to system to narrative etc. so Japanese games can maintain higher level of artistic expression and personality.

I think he is correct on this. This Japanese way created a bunch super star game directors like Yoko Taro, Hideo Kojima and Hidetaka Miyazaki who has a large amount of fans because they like their "style".

In some western studios like Ubisoft for example, they focus on making a product first not art. And the power to make creative decisions are spread out to different people with different expertise. As a result it has less personality.

Note that I don't think this applies to all western big studios. Swen Vincke from Larian studio and David cage from Quantic Dream all owns their own studio and able to make all the decisions by themselves. Even Casey Hudson(creator of mass effect) from Bioware years ago has no problem putting everything together as a bossy person. Those people are known to have many fans too. But obviously Ubisoft don't have such people nor power structure. That's why recent Ubisoft games are all the same.

Anyways, I think his explanation on why western game gets more boring makes more sense than just "woke bad" or "public company bad". Otherwise you can't explain why Capcom still does good job despite they are public. Or why Larian is still successful despite they are woke.

He also said Chinese game industry's biggest advantage is cheaper dev cost so they can take more risks, and risks is important for creativity. However, Chinese game industry has great production pipeline and technicians for game production. But when it comes to game design for single player experience, it's still several step behind Japanese industry.

Anyways. I think it's overall a very interesting read. Probably far more accurate than those internet influencers who look at things from the outside.

Good interview and nice breakdown of it.

I have never really thought about the fact that Japanese devs in their large corporations do have individual recognition that Western devs in a similar rank/position do not.

It kind of seems odd as in my head I think of Japanese work culture as a place where that type of stand out behavior would not flourish, and I would think it would in North American work culture. but I really don't know why I have that point of view, or why it does not reflect reality.

in the "western" gaming space only indie "I did it all" devs have an equivalent amount of recognition.

There are two sides to that coin though and the flip side is when the director has a vision for the game that sucks, no one can or will push back on them to fix it. It only works when the direction of the game by the director is actually good.

Dragons Dogma 2 is a good example, the game sold well on release and had a lot of potential. It adopted some of the better parts of DD1, but also a lot of the bad parts. It ended up being very repetitive, again like DD1 was initially, but also heaped on some mechanics that were pretty clearly force fed IMO. One mechanic in particular, meant to be punishing and require you to pay attention (which is fine), was poorly thought out and can literally end your entire game with no way to revert due to the save system. It wipes out every NPC in the main town, ending every quest and sending you to the final boss. It's one of those unnecessary things that someone should have stopped and said "this isn't fun, we should focus on adding more variety than developing this" but no one did or they weren't listened to. In adopting this vision, which does have some carryover from his other games, they made a game that wasn't as good as it could have been.

You could also argue that the same idea bleeds into XI and some of the less well received content updates (e.g. Sortie, various MTs) we've received. Is there anyone there saying "this needs improvement" and being listened to or is Fujito's vision being adopted without question?

My observation is that Larian is successful the same way CD Projekt Red is because they seem largely receptive to suggestions and what people want, hiring people who are passionate about what they are doing and listen to feedback, but also stick to a general direction. There's certainly a balance there and how well you implement that balance is going to help dictate the end result IMO, Japanese work culture likely shifts too far in the direction of doing things without question while western culture likely takes too much input without anyone putting a stop to bad ideas coming in. Also keeping in mind both of those studios have made games that weren't very well received as well.

The reason individuality and director's vision are not the guiding force in making games in the western world is $$$.

The reason Hideo Kojima got shipped out despite his superstar status and hyper successful games is because his status led to him wanting to do more and more out there games that had a huge budget with little sales behind it. Not able to accept indie game budget for experimental ideas, which is what led to his success, he insisted on being given carte blanche.

When he did leave and make his own game, they ended up with the walking tetris simulator while carrying a baby, Death Stranding.

It also reminds me of when Conan played FFXV in SE's studio and literally walked out and asked the artists "What have you been doing for 10 years" because it was so boring.



Sometimes grand ideas need to be curtailed or you end up with Duke Nukem Forever.

I like this explanation of how these outcomes are generated by the working cultures, the individuality of the western studios dilute the responsibility for the vision to the point that no one person owns that vision, while the japanese studios conform to the one person's vision for better or worse.

FFXV is one failed example because the real idea guy (Nomura) behind it was kicked out for not getting ***done. Nomura's original vision was way cooler than the final product.

But he couldn't get his ***done at all, after years of development all FFXV had was some concept videos. So SE replaced him with another director Hajime Tabata, who's job is to create a game out of nothing in just 3 years.

In the end it became a very incoherent game with ideas from all over the place. The 4 boys character concept from Nomura, an open world gameplay that came out of nowhere which doesn't work well with the main story (since open world removed sense of urgency), and the whole story was changed and ended up needing multiple medium to tell the story. It's a project management mess and it shows in the final product.


You are absolutely correct. FFXV's example shows us that having an idea guy with zero PM skill in charge will be a disaster. Those idea guys like Nomura are good creative director material but they also need a good PM to keep them on schedule.

That being said, Showa American story's creator Luo in the interview is obviously a very creative guy. Just look at his game trailer, it's full of crazy cool ideas and personality. So of course he will admire a work environment with more creative freedom in an interview. That's his nature as a creative people.

This isn't on accident or due to individuality, it's known as "socializing responsibility" and basically a way for everyone involved to have maximum rectal coverage. Everyone operates under the plan of using existing position as a ladder to greater things and doesn't want to have their name attached to a bad outcome. If the project is a success, everyone can claim to be a hero, if the project is a failure, everyone has plausible deniability.

It's a really annoying system to operate under because of how incredibly inefficient it is.

I remember getting the first episode of PC Gamer that had a huge special section dedicated to this, then watching the whole clusterfuck unfold over the course of the next..15 years? I can't even remember. Constant engine changes and chasing whatever butterfly came past, all for an end result that was...just not good in any way. Ran poorly, the jokes fell flat or were just outdated (e.g. Olsen twins), gameplay was not great, etc. It is a masterclass in how to screw up project management, something that was repeated by several high profile Kickstarter projects when that was a bigger thing. It's a real good example of how some people need reigned in.

I'm not sure what's worse, the fact it took over a decade for beyond mediocrity to eventually release something or something organized and actually released, but neutered like Shadow Warrior was. This is a case of something being released that rode in on the name alone and failed to have any relationship to the original outside of a few surface level things, which is probably for the better in this era depending on how you see it.

I've never been a huge FPS fan but Doom, Duke Nukem, and Shadow Warrior were things I spent a lot of time playing in the 90s. I just can't help but feel like they were best left in the 90s, DNF would've been better dying on the vine after the original version was scrapped, but then we wouldn't have that valuable lesson for some to ignore.

Nah, the worse thing was the eventual publisher/developer doubling down and blaming the public for not liking the end product.

It was obvious it was not a good game just from the trailer.

Talk about blind sighted.