Their other good thing in my eyes is not overextending.
They have been profitable for a long time, and built up a reserve. Shitty CEOs would demand they use those reserves to branch out into a VR division. Make a room-sized toy, a massively online Second Life space, a chain of theme parks. Anything to show they’re hiring, growing, and that the ROI will triple every few years.
Obviously, had they done any of that, they’d be doing a lot more firing now because they’d have no reserves once all those plans go belly up.
So, it’s likely helpful their culture is quartered in Japan where the long term health of the company is treasured and short term gains are not worshipped so much.
The worst bit is reflecting on how the first movie portrayed it all.
A horrific empire, but a secret mysterious force, not believed in by many, that can help you fight it. Classic warriors using heavy swords in an age of laser rifles.
I don’t even really know what the message around the force was in The Last Jedi. I didn’t even bother watching Force Awakens.
I remember playing the demo for Remake. The guard scorpion took an age and multiple cycles to beat; apparently it’s not meant to, but something about its damage mechanics was just incredibly unclear to me. I was using magic and abilities how it said it wanted me to, but in an action game, those mechanics get much harder to parse. Would’ve preferred turn-taking.
I thought about doing this, but my plan would be to attach a thumbnail on every piece of AI art declaring “Placeholder AI work”. Then release the game for free that way to gauge interest.
Even if it’s literally just “money at stake” some countries would have reason to be concerned - because so many zero-IQ MBAs are pushing industries into a hot crash for short term gains that bankrupt any long term growth.
Gamers having no faith that the games they buy remain theirs is one of many things that can drive down spending; though it will never happen on such a granular scale publishers would take action on it.
I feel a bit of shame that back in the Win7, Xbox Series S era of Microsoft I was sort of cheering them on as an underdog in several markets.
But it does seem like every large company is driving these zero sum efforts now. Anyone that high up is chomping for workforce reduction.
If larger-scale changes don’t prove possible, I still want Elizabeth Warren’s Accountable Capitalism act as a way for majority workforce in a company to declare “No, this way is insane, fire whoever suggested it” earlier rather than later.
Anytime I see super-smooth transition animations in a demo, or even just gameplay mechanics that seem to work out way too conveniently, it tells me it’s an animated “pre-viz” demo of the game they want to make. That’s kind of the impression I got from Perfect Dark.
Any chance he’s putting the question on social media to convince other stakeholders above him?
It’s possible he was in a board meeting when some novice shareholder suggested “What if you take an exclusivity deal”? And he just didn’t have clear evidence on hand of that being vastly unpopular. Obviously that could be me being overgenerous to him.
When all the decisions have to come rapid-pace, I don’t feel like I’m doing anything notable. It feels like mashing out light or strong attacks and maybe some block/dodges.
I’ll admit that there have been some action JRPGs where I just didn’t understand how the mechanics worked together, even after some explanations, because I had to play it out so quickly in combat. Those games ended up having low difficulty so that people that “weren’t getting it” could still see the story.
I’m still okay at Soulslike games where there’s not quite as many meters and illogical systems. And of course I’m okay with turn-based games having those weird systems because I can process things slowly until I get it, and am taking my turns at full speed.
Has the potential to be very cool! What might be sad is that many horror games now evoke the trope of “They move when you’re not looking”. Game development takes a long time, so I can guess this was not an obvious trend when you started on it. But there should still be ways to differentiate your work.
I couldn’t stand Near A Tomato but have tons of hours in SB. I grant it has nothing amazing in terms of story, but it has enough intricacies of combat to keep it fun, even if none of those mechanics were invented here.
Nier seemed to operate off a single attack button a lot of time, and working off RPG mechanics gave so many opportunities for level disparity that didn’t serve the game at all.