Akuun said:
I'm interested in hearing more about this. Is this the reason why so many anime seasons are flooded with generic moe crap?
Someone posted a video a while back about Naruto Anime staff... jesus fucking christ. you would think they would invest talent and treat their artists good, but no. those very few staff have to work their ass off, and are destroying their hands because they are so overworked.
Anime is dead as a result. It's incredible how fast that whole industry went to shit.
And it's the same in electronics. Internally, a company like Sony are at war with itself. the different departments fuck each other over.
And both for gaming, anime and electronics they started outsourcing to Kore and China - And right now you see the results of doing that.
In electronics, companies like Sony used companies like Samsung and LG (both Korean) to do the labor work, while Sony took care of the "hard stuff" like designing a beautiful device or doing good marketing, but individual parts were made by these outsourced companies. But then they catched on. Look at Samsung... they are doing relatively comparable phones, tvs, dvds and all sorts of components, but at a cheaper price... they just looked and copied Sony.
Its also why they are in trouble with Apples lawsuits right now. Samsung gained proficiency in making components and "stole" design ques from Sony and Panasonic and such.
Japanese business created a revolution in the 70s, where they had massive booms. Using SOP (Standard operating procedures) the Japanese changed the way we used our working ethics.
Basically, it's a sort of guideline to enable an outside person with little skill to be able to do a specific task, by reviewing these SOPs, and thus become much more efficient. It's widely copied all over the world.
But the Japanese were extreme. they are extreme. It's not uncommon to hear stories about them trying to maximize their deficiency to such a degree that they would sleep in shift at work, and work 24/7.
It looks like this crazed worker bee model can't go on much longer. the workers are grow dull and dumb, can't be creative, the strain on their physical and mental health leaves them like zombies, and when the enthusiasm is gone, the high quality is usually gone too.
If you look at Square-Enix, I personally don't think they have released a really good product outside of Final Fantasy 12 since the early 2000s.
1) They tell poor stories, repeat themselves.
2) They fail to innovative and improve on their weak areas, and just continue living in the past.
3) They make needlessly convoluted products, full of fluff and holes in the design. Obscure battle systems, fucked leveling pacing, overly extended gameplay. Just the whole approach to design is throwing more shit at the toilet problem, instead of trying and fix it. they keep adding layers and layers. A game like FFXIII might have been technically advanced but on the inside it was hollow and shallow as fuck (outside of the battle system).