For starters they keep making mostly the same game over and over. They’re essentially doing the Bethesda shtick except their end results are better. Sticking to stuff that can mostly be made in the same engine as the thing you finished 15 minutes ago is going to shave off a lot of time compared to making a new game.
Of course that’s not to shit on incremental improvements or engine reuse or anything. That is just sound thinking as long as the games are good.
The three games I was most interested in last year were Kerbal Space Program 2, Cities Skylines 2, and Zelda Tears of the Kingdom. Two of them had newly designed game engines. The third used the engine from the previous game.
Guess which one I enjoyed playing the most?
In software development sometimes you do have to rewrite some code to improve things. But if you have something that functions really well, it’s better to be just continually making improvements. A lot of what makes a game great is going to be artwork, story, creative level design, creative enemy design, etc. But all of that work can be wasted if the software is buggy, which will happen if most or all of the code is written on a tight deadline.
I’d like to add that from a technical point of view, their games don’t really push the boundaries and at least on PC, their games often aren’t the most polished. Elden Ring had severe shader compilation stutter at launch and a 60 FPS limit - which is a big no-no on PC if you ask me. Nothing game breaking like the state some publishers (EA) release their games in, but not great either.
Their games have always been dreadful performance wise. Frame pacing issues and stutter galore.
Not to mention they were actively hostile towards ultrawide gamers. The engine would render it, but then put black bars overtop the sides. Kind of amazing really that level of hatred towards gamers.
I think it’s less hatred and more… Not understanding the wider audience, afaik it’s just not as common in Japan for uw to be a thing in general. Also it adds even more complexity to performance tuning which… They’re not known for. They clearly make games targeted for consoles over PC, the Bethesda comparison is pretty apt in engine reuse and odd decisions to limit fps/uw gaming, Bethesda is at least more open towards modding, but they also don’t make multiplayer games mainly, and while the MP aspects of FromSoft games are unusual, it’s definitely a large part of the appeal/design process and does inherently limit modding due to cheating.
I guess that makes sense, if it’s not that common … but then … why go OUT OF YOUR WAY to make the experience worse? It’s like, why didn’t they just say “oh hey, they have a wide monitor, nice!” but instead they said “oh hey, they have wide monitor, GO FUCK YOURSELF”
What is a AAA game? A game released by a large publisher? Is that the only criteria? Then the answer is “money”.
If a AAA game has to meet some level of quality control before it’s called AAA, why is Ubisoft and EA considered AAA?
Negative. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but Ubisoft is AAAA now.
It really comes down to money more than anything. Quality factors in very little. More marketing, higher budgets, larger teams.
I agree and disagree at the same time here. AAA should and used to signify a higher level of quality. Lately, though, it seems like they finally realized they could shovel shit and still turn a buck.
Japan as a whole is fairly notorious for 24/7 work culture. The way he repeatedly mentions their quick production and pivots feels a bit… crunchy.
Genuinely heart warming quote
By releasing the same game over and over for the most part, just with minor changes to the formula. Same engine, same mechanics, same style, same aesthetic, etc.
I wouldn’t say FROM SOFTWARE’s games are AAA like other AAA studios.
What does that even mean… Elden ring is as AAA as it gets.
Other AAA games have hand holding I guess…
For all the “From Soft games don’t hold my hand” I see, it sure seems like everyone just uses a guide anyway.
“But I didn’t” Yes you did.
Ok sure… Let’s say bugs and incomplete development, shit performance on latest hardware, fixes in a future update tba instead.
This is a genuine question, not a “gotcha” shitpost or w/e because I haven’t played it a while. Did the microstutter in ER get fixed?
AAA literally just refers to games published by big publishers that are large scale and have huge budgets.
I’m aware, though these days it’s more like published by heavily “Yeah I’ve played games, I was the best at pong in elementary school” shareholder influenced publishers and devs that make totally out of touch decisions and then lay off all the staff that were responsible for anything in the game considered good right after the game gets bad press.
This studio is not just known for an even by Japanese standards exploitative work culture, but it also reuses assets of all kinds far more liberally than other developers. Art is by far the biggest cost factor in games development and they are taking significant shortcuts wherever they can.
So frequently? Dude it’s been like 2 years since they announced DLC for their last game and it’s only finally coming this June assuming it does not get delayed.
Just so surprising that treating staff well and keeping them around lets you do consistently high quality work. Boggles the mind really.
keeping them around
It’s rare for employees to move companies in Japan. A lot of people will work for the same company their whole life. Japanese companies aren’t really known for treating their employees well either.
I’d guess what they’re doing well is hiring employees that are very passionate. I hear the anime industry is the same in that people who are in it are willing to work themselves to death because they want to work on big name projects
Just be clear, there is a reason that’s not in the quotes of the title. The author basically makes up that they’re "treating staff well* because they’re not randomly firing people right now. (The empowering bit is basically fabricated)
But…they don’t? Their mainline games are always a few years apart (with the exception of Bloodborne, which they had a separate team doing concurrently).
Unless you’re referring to the other games they publish that no one really knows about or comments on? I don’t think Metal Wolf Chaos XD, Déraciné, or Monster Hunter Diary: Poka Poka Airou Village DX should really factor into the discussion.
Metal Wolf Chaos should factor into all discussion, even those that have nothing to do with FromSoft.
LET’S PARTYYYYY!
You don’t have to actually finish the game when a bunch of marks will treat every bug and inconsistency as some grand difficulty hurdle and some deep lore the normies don’t understand
are you talking Bethesda or From software?
They’re the same thing
where’d you get stuck?
I didn’t
The dev team’s boss is literally an elden ring boss.
I dunno. But I’d like to see queen pwnsalot blind fold play a fromsoft game.
If it was actually a blind fold
Karl jobst is right
“At the cost of our staffs sanity!”
What, you think you can make games where the player’s sanity can be broken without insane employees?
