Building games that are actually fun is going to make you the most money, that’s it.
Say it louder for the publishers in the back.
It’s infuriating how game design is devolving into engagement treadmills instead of simply being fun, concise experiences. The industry needs more Hi-Fi Rushes and less Suicide Squads.
The problem is publishers and the huge risk you’re selling to create a hit. You still have shareholders. Those who take the risk in financing a game development and those who own the IP.
Unless you got extremely lucky and can gamble with your own cash you always have shareholders in game development.
I'm still unreasonably mad that they marketed the first game as a remake - even literally titling it 'FF7 Remake' - and then it turns out it isn't a remake at all, it's some poorly-written Kingdom Hearts nonsense about how bad it is to be restricted to telling the story you're fated to tell and how you need to break free from the shackles of destiny. I can't imagine a bigger "fuck you" to fans of the original game. If they hated the idea of having to remake the original story so much, then they should have just not made it!
It should have been called Reimagination to set expectations for existing fans. FF7 original is probably my favorite game of all time (tie with FF6) and I still did not play Remake (lost interest waiting too long and then asking price on Steam is 80 Euros, fuck you SquareEnix!).
But you know, I am not entirely opposed to changes in story and character handling, if its done well. They even changed up the battle system. To me this is an opportunity to re-live the game, to experience it with new perspective and see details I could not before. If it was exactly the same game with better graphics, that's just playing the same game again. But the Remake... ahem, I meant Reimagination, is different. And you know what, I kinda like this idea. But off course, I still did not play and don't know how bad it is. And oh god, I hope they don't change the important story line in part 2... this would be a huge fuck.
It would have been nice to have a proper Remake but this is not bad per se, though I'm not a fan of how much it's being dragged out, and that Vincent and Cid still won't be playable still.
I’m taking my conversation-level Japanese courses this year and have been looking to land a dev job in Japan. From the sound of it, I’d like working for Pocket Pair a lot. But then again, most companies make their employment sound fantastic…
Haha, yeah, I’m familiar with the work culture in Japan. I’ve heard from other developers currently working there that it’s much better working for newer and/or international companies.
From what I’ve read about their Daily Active Users they’re going to be overstaffed soon. No hate but they exploded and when things settle they might not need as much staff. Thoughts?
You’re good. I’d have thought the same thing had I not been following the development story.
Their game pass numbers also seem to be going up, which is harder to dev for as well. I know my steam friends got sick of it after putting in 100 hours in three weeks though
I too have sunk more then 100 hours into the game. It was worth its purchase already. Yet in a year or however long it takes to be complete… i and many others will jump right back on to see how everything has progressed. Plus they’ll release on play station and that alone will be millions more copies sold.
This is how it happens. If they dont staff to meet the demand the game suffers and dies out, if they do in a few years when the player base falls off and they announce layoffs everyone makes the shocked Pikachu face.
Live service games really did a number on people. Why does it matter if people stop playing Palworld between now and when those new people they hire can produce the things they're hired for?
Yeah I keep thinking this too, it’s a buy once game, they still have the money they made. They’re trying to push more content as quick as possible to get more waves of players, new and old. I’m positive their accountants know the player base isn’t rebuying the game.
There's something called "Brook's Law" that basically observes that a software project which onboards more developers in order to catch up will fall further behind. I hope they're careful about how they allocate new developers or they'll end up doing a year of onboarding, rewriting core code, and have no meaningful updates for 6-12 months. I know they have the resources to spare, and that scenario worked out okay for Valheim, but I hope the game doesn't lose momentum because they overhire or don't allocate enough senior devs to continue feature development while they catch the new devs up to speed.
Edit to add: I don't think it actually matters in this instance if they don't have a large player base by the time the game is feature complete. They don't have continuous revenue streams like a live service game, so hiring more devs is ultimately just about making sure they have enough talent to make good on their early access promises. The company could probably dissolve tomorrow and all the staff could live the rest of their lives in luxury never working again. It'd be a dick move, but they already sold an insane number of copies.
They don’t have continuous revenue streams like a live service
Yet. The game seems extremely easy to monetize, up to them how evil they go. To be successful longterm (if thats something they even want) they will need to add more content first but they could cash in in so many ways. Dlc, selling servers, cosmetics or more nefarious stuff lkke boosters to speed up mechanics, pals that take huge grinds without payments. It would be very easy to do.
Oof. You’d think if they wanted to surprise people with twists and turns they’d just make a new game instead of altering the plot of a remake (unless I’m misunderstanding).
There is this exercise you can do for Agile/Lean estimation where you run a multi stage beer store by passing only order quantity notes up and down a chain.
The intent is to trick the participants into a whiplash effect where the retail store has a one off jump and so orders bigger than normal, and the whole supply chain then gets excited and thinks this is the new normal rather than an anomaly.
The exercise ends and the excess beer in the chain is counted.
You are not wrong, but remember that they only employ like 40-50 people. Even if the playerbase goes down to 10% of what it is that’s still not a lot of people.
That was me! I figured that I succeeded by getting to 3bc. I played 3bc for a long time and realized that after a while that I was at my level. I guess I didn’t have the will to grind the skills needed to go further. Many great memories and I’m so glad I played it. Been seriously the best game I played in years.
6 months from now: “We didn’t sell it, we granted them a non revocable permanent license to be the exclusive producers of D&D content, but we still receive a royalty fee and have no control over it”
Can’t vouch for performance or technical stuff on PC, but I was checking out Lost Judgment on PS+ after hearing a lot about the Yakuza series and I’m loving it. It’s kinda like Shenmue, but with real, good combat and not QTEs. Or a Japanese GTA with all the extra side stuff you can do as you wander around the neighborhoods the game takes place in. I definitely want to check out the others in the series now.
Infinite looks just as good, but I am probably going to go backwards because I am not sure if I would like the new turn based combat system. I like the more Sifu-ish combat.
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Aktywne