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[Takuan]

I feel like the hype cycles are for shareholders more than fans. Squenix's problem is with project management; they have the budget and the talent (or, at least, the money to procure required talent), but clearly something's amiss.

Pretty sure I've shared this sentiment before, but I'd love to read an insider's scoop on FFXV's development from beginning to end.

 

[Toth]

Which is precisely what you would expect someone with the ability to scope, delegate and finish a task with a deadline to do. I wonder what that job title is. Nomura was a shitty manager working for even shittier managers. I feel like laying the blame all one one guy kind of ignores the problems Square had getting games out that Nomura barely worked on or didn't work on at all.

Toriyama is honestly a very good director. He just needs to not work with the same scenario writer on FF projects again. That is the guy who needs to go.

 

[Fredrik]

The main problem is announcing a game while you only have a target render, which is often done at the start of new generations. This would be okay if you could make a game from concept to gold status in 2 years, but when it takes 5 years you could actually miss the generation you announced the game for or arrive when it's close to end and people are hyped for new stuff.


I also think that - if a game can go from "hyped!" to "meh" or if it can be spoiled by a long dev cycle and being showed too much - then you're not making a game worth playing, you're making a movie worth watching and you should just make movies instead.

Focus on the gameplay and you can never spoil anything and it will never go from "hyped!" to "meh". If it's a fun game to play then it's a fun game to play 5,10,15,20 years later too.

 

[Kambing]

I agree, but it certainly feels like this is more of an issue with their Asian based studios/brands?

 

[Lindsay]

More like they have issues developing games. Makes me wonder if they don't have some "Kojimas" there basically doing whatever they want which causes the endless development probs in the first place!

 

[NoctisVsStar]

They announce stuff early to move consoles and the fuckery of their in-house engine also plays a large part. The HD era also makes development harder compared to the old days, people want quality and amazing things but it takes time. The more powerful consoles get the longer games are gonna take to come out i feel.

 

[arcticice]

You are right. SE seriously needs to work on their marketing. reveal when it's ready or almost ready so that ppl won't have to wait decades to play them

 

[RareFantasy64]

They do. FFVIIR being so early in development since it was first announced shouldn't have happened after the FFXV saga. I'm way more interested in the FFVI remake they keep discussing. Because I know the game won't need to be some huge to-do when it comes to presentation. Get a team on that FFVIR game tomorrow and I bet you it releases long before the FFVIIR episodic series completely finishes

 

[HerroRygar]

They announce stuff early to move consoles and the fuckery of their in-house engine also plays a large part. The HD era also makes development harder compared to the old days, people want quality and amazing things but it takes time. The more powerful consoles get the longer games are gonna take to come out i feel.

Yeah, but lots of other devs can get AAA games out in a reasonable time. Wrangling the projects is no doubt expensive and challenging, but why does SQEX have so many of these ultra-long dev cycles? I am a big fanboy and love their games, but it certainly seems like they have problems managing projects.

 

[Fredrik]

Yeah, but lots of other devs can get AAA games out in a reasonable time. Wrangling the projects is no doubt expensive and challenging, but why does SQEX have so many of these ultra-long dev cycles? I am a big fanboy and love their games, but it certainly seems like they have problems managing projects.

They're maybe too frenetic to get all the tiny details right?

Same thing with Polyphony Digital which are known for the attention to details. There are usually 2 or even 3 Forza games between every Gran Turismo.

Question is, is the details really needed to make a fun game?

I think there is bit too much focus on evolving and finetuning the graphic techs instead of the gameplay right now in the whole industry.

 

[civilstrife]

I cannot fathom the time and money wasted on endless trailers for games barely in production. Kojima obviously suffers from the same problem.

 

[kennyamr]

Personally, I don't really care. The game will eventually come out, and there are plenty of games coming up that will keep me busy for the time being. TLG and FFXV did come out, did they?

.

 

[dracula_x]

it doesn't seem to be a problem to me. Some people really should focus on something else instead, it's not that hard. Just play other games.

 

[tiggerkiddo]

I don't really feed into company's hype cycles. I do hate it when companies announce games that aren't anywhere close to a release (like 4-5 years or worse). After awhile I just stop caring and lose interest in the game but I refuse to obsess over it for years and years. If it comes out, nice, I'll check it out if I really care. If not, whatever. There are other things to do.

 

[mieumieu]

They're maybe too frenetic to get all the tiny details right?

Same thing with Polyphony Digital which are known for the attention to details. There are usually 2 or even 3 Forza games between every Gran Turismo.

Question is, is the details really needed to make a fun game?

I think there is bit too much focus on evolving and finetuning the graphic techs instead of the gameplay right now in the whole industry.

You sir speaks the truth. Have you noticed the pupils and how it reflects light sources on FFXV main characters? It is a marvelous achievement (just not in pure tech) indeed.

 

[Skux]

It's more of a problem with development cycles than marketing.

 

[SporeCrawler]

Personally, I don't really care. The game will eventually come out, and there are plenty of games coming up that will keep me busy for the time being. TLG and FFXV did come out, did they?

In a different platform. This still pisses me off. I bought PS 3 for those two games (had a 360 and wii before that)

 

[Mihael Mello Keehl]

Let's just pretend the game doesn't exist lol.

Nah 10 years alot of time.

What if they say yeah we making this game and it wont be done until 2027. Hold dat

 

[Styles]

Uh, I don't think SE as a developer, have the drive nor expertise to efficiently produce a high quality game anymore.

I gave them the benefit of the doubt with FFXV, but after the middling experience I had with the last half of that game it is apparent that they are not cut out for HD game development.

 

[JB2448]

In a different platform. This still pisses me off. I bought PS 3 for those two games (had a 360 and wii before that)

Never ever buy a video game console for games that aren't released yet. Ever.

 

[Alex_Mexico]

I actually felt offended when I read that 18 months after FFVIIR was announced they were "brushing up the scene in the trailer" and are "seeing the line of quality they'll aim for".

Offended that I was tricked in 2015 to be hyped for a game that isn't coming out for another half a decade.

Fuck Square Japan and Nomura's mismanagement!

Remind me why they thought announcing FFVIIR before XV was even out was a good idea?

 

[mortal]

The entire industry has this issue. I cannot stand hype culture anymore, it's so vapid. I can hardly stand the marketing gimmicks of these companies that offer fuck all in return. Just let your audience get an extensive preview of your game if it's being announced.
Then allow your audience to play your game in a reasonable amount of time after said announcement. I don't understand the point in announcing a title when it's barely been in development long enough to show the actual game. Or in some cases, hasn't even enter production.

Square Enix in particular, has had damning management issue for years and years. It nearly tanked FFXIV. Despite that, it seems they still haven't learned any lessons, if FFVIIr and KHIII is anything to go by.

The meat and potatoes for me is the game itself. The rest is noise that doesn't enhance my experience of playing the game in any type of way.

In short, don't believe the hype.

 

[nath999]

They reveal way way way too early. The PS4 reveal was in 2013 and they showed off extremely early stage of Kingdom Hearts 3 and now it's 2017 and that game is no where near complete.

Appropriate would be a year for any publisher but I really prefer e3 reveal and Holiday release but that seems to be rare now.

 

[old]

I have long adapted a special policy for SE: I largely don't think about, care about, or talk about their games until it's on the store shelves.

Otherwise you spend up to a decade wasting your time and energy.

 

[SporeCrawler]

Never ever buy a video game console for games that aren't released yet. Ever.

then why buy a platform at launch?

The entire industry has this issue. I cannot stand hype culture anymore, it's so vapid. I can hardly stand the marketing gimmicks of these companies that offer fuck all in return. Just let your audience get an extensive preview of your game if it's being announced.
Then allow your audience to play your game in a reasonable amount of time after said announcement. I don't understand the point in announcing a title when it's barely been in development long enough to show the actual game. Or in some cases, hasn't even enter production.

Square Enix in particular, has had damning management issue for years and years. It nearly tanked FFXIV. Despite that, it seems they still haven't learned any lessons, if FFVIIr and KHIII is anything to go by.

The meat and potatoes for me is the game itself. The rest is noise that doesn't enhance my experience of playing the game in any type of way.

In short, don't believe the hype.

square enix is way worse than the rest. even blizzard doesnt announce stuff and releases it a decade later

 

[kyser73]

Does this 'hype cycle' apply anywhere outside of enthusiast forums & groups?

Make a big enough noise 4-8 weeks prior to release and you've got wide mainstream coverage to people who may have been vaguely aware of a title, but you've caught them nonetheless, and close to them buying.

From the POV of gaffers though, yes these long delays are an issue because we're all basically ADHD kids who need a constant stream of info that in most cases simply isn't there to give.

 

[Rei_Toei]

I very much dislike the way things are going with Square Enix these days. Years passing between announcing a game and actually releasing it have already killed my interest in their games a couple of times. Either because I was over-saturated with media exposure (which is also my own fault, I could choose to not keep up with the news of a certain game - which is also something I do quite a lot these days) or because so much changed in the product that I had no confidence in it anymore.

I think Square-Enix would be better off if they didn't try to juggle so many big projects at once, but cut down on the huge productions and go for more, smaller productions. Stuff like I Am Setsuna, Octotraveller, etc. It's rather obvious they can't really handle so many big projects, time-management wise.

 

[Some Nobody]

Does this 'hype cycle' apply anywhere outside of enthusiast forums & groups?

Make a big enough noise 4-8 weeks prior to release and you've got wide mainstream coverage to people who may have been vaguely aware of a title, but you've caught them nonetheless, and close to them buying.

From the POV of gaffers though, yes these long delays are an issue because we're all basically ADHD kids who need a constant stream of info that in most cases simply isn't there to give.

I mean....yeah. But. I also feel like S-E is kind of legendarily bad with this. It's starting to feel like as soon as they get a game running in a semi-playable state they wanna show it off, even if they know there's 3-5 years left on development.

It's a vicious cycle though--if they truly went silent on their big J-RPGs like they needed to, we probably wouldn't hear from them for years.

That said: Yeah, this doesn't bother me too much until I come on GAF. I do other things that aren't gaming-related and that keeps me from thinking about how this or that game isn't out yet.

 

[Elfstruck]

In a different platform. This still pisses me off. I bought PS 3 for those two games (had a 360 and wii before that)

You don't buy console for a single game.

 

[royox]

then why buy a platform at launch?

A friend of mine got a PS3 exclusively for FFvsXIII.
He paid 600$ for that PS3.

Spoiler

When they announced vsXIII was going to be XV and for PS4 I bought that PS3 for 90$ lol

 

[Ananaz]

2. Games developed by an external studio, with Square having less input on it. For example, Nier, The Last Remnant.

The Last Remnant was developed mostly in-house, wasn't it?

I should add that the FFXII announcement OP has listed as 2001 is incorrect. I don't recall seeing anything signifying the games development was actually started until at least 2003. Still, it was clearly intended for release in late 2004 and got delayed twice, the second delay leading to the nervous breakdown and departure of it's director.

I don't think it's incorrect, at least not completely. FFXII was properly unveiled in November 2003 and it was claimed to be about 70% complete at the time, so it definitely had been in development for a while. Hard to say when it started development, but I know Sakaguchi first talked about the game in early 2001 and confirmed it would be an offline game directed by Matsuno. They also released a teaser poster for FFXII in late 2002 which confirmed that Jun Akiyama, Akihiko Yoshida and Hideo Minaba were also involved.

 

[MindGamingMantis]

It's not Square. It's Nomura.

This.

 

[LordYeezus]

Dissidia, VII Remake, and KH3 are the only games i'm actually hyped for from them, and they decide to have them all at last priority while mobile/random merch as first priority.