Square Enix CEO Resigns!

On the original topic: Squaresoft have for a long time been tremendously concerned with making their games as technically impressive as possible. Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger, for example, looked pretty damned impressive back when they were new. Final Fantasy VII, particularly in terms of visual effects, was a pioneering game that really demonstrated how cinematic storytelling could be on the then-new Playstation hardware. It's just that this focus on technical virtuosity, particularly on graphics, has become much more obvious in the last few console generations.

One part of Squaresoft's problem is that they have been giving far, far too much creative control to Tetsuya Nomura. Nomura, for his part, has spent the last couple of console generations traveling as far as he possibly can go up his own asshole at astonishing speeds. I find his characters less appealing with each new game. The designs of the characters have, of course, become increasingly ridiculous, but the problem runs much deeper than that. The real problem is that the characters have become less and less like actual people, and more and more like caricatures. I mean, I like anime enough to have driven 700 miles one way to attend Otakon (on three separate occasions, so far), so I hope that lends it some weight when I say that the Final Fantasy series, much as I love it, has gotten far too anime for its own good.

A lot of thought has clearly gone into the stories of the Final Fantasy games. Just having played Final Fantasy XIII for a couple of hours, it's pretty obvious that they spent a fair amount of time on world-building (playing it for that long also made me want to strangle Vanille, for reasons already outlined in the paragraph previous) and mythology. It's just that the way they've shown the world makes it confusing, and their refusal to stop and actually ground any of this wears at my patience.

Or, put more simply, it's not that Square Enix is sacrificing story for graphics. It's that they have good graphics, but have forgotten how to make a good story for those graphics to tell. The attempt at good storytelling is being earnestly made; it's just falling flat with alarming frequency and consistency.

TheIan wrote:

Rulke55 wrote:

Um so rather than forum politics could we instead get back to the point at hand. Square Enix have got to shape-up or ship-out really at least with their RPGs which seem more like they focus more on graphics than stories.

Now here's a query are better graphics killing Square Enix ability to make good compelling stories in RPGs?

Graphics =/= good games necessarily.

Arguably, Sonic '06's cinematics are pretty, but the whole of the game was unfinished glitchy garbage so broken the higher-ups at Sega had to have been smoking some strong shit to greenlight the fucker in the first place.

I will agree that Bioshock Infinite is a pretty game, and I've heard-tell it's received nothing short of praise. I myself would honestly like to play it (and its previous games at some point).

If the game's story fall short, it's the fault of the story, not the graphics. Your game could have this great, well-done atmosphere (I.E. Dead Space 1, Shadow of the Colossus, Amensia: Dark Descent, etc, etc, etc) but if the story sucks, (Like Final Fantasy XIII, hoo-boy is that a clusterfuck!) then it's not the fault of the graphics, it's the fault of the story. The graphics are only a means to convey the storytelling.

I am not saying graphics are good or bad thing, but focusing so much on them is alone where I think the main issue is, because when games devote so much to graphic and creating new innovative engines, I would argue that storytelling suffers, this is no more evidenced by both Final Fantasy X2 and 13, also the abysmal original draft of the online MMO. But really in the end I think the signs are indicative of greater worrying trend, whereas Square Enix outside of RPGs have pretty freaking awesome games, but in their rpgs they focus more on graphics whereas in the past they instead tried to write powerful characters with awesome development and did not rely on graphics to be the only things they use to capture the scene.

As we saw in Final Fantasy 13, it's gorgeous but just because of the world is beautiful if we don't understand it, it's a waste.

Ian wrote:

If the game's story fall short, it's the fault of the story, not the graphics.

Excellent deduction. I believe scholars call this form of argument the "DUH" argument.

Frankly, story means jack shit by itself. A video game should be fun to play. Whether a REALLY neat story/characters makes up for average gameplay (see: The Halo Franchise), or REALLY fun gameplay make up for a crappy or nonexistent story (see: Every Mario game ever, the sports games that don't suck, the Sonic games that don't suck, Super Smash Bros, really ALL of Nintendo that isn't Metroid or Legend of Zelda), a game needs to be FUN.

Single player Final Fantasy games haven't been remotely fun since FFX, because they combine a lack of interesting characters or story with mediocre gameplay. Real time combat and fucking menu navigation should NEVER

EVER

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEVER

Be fucking combined. And yet we have FFX-2, FFXII, and I'm assuming FFXIII combining real time combat with menus.

So, combat is horribly unintuitive and their is nothing redeeming about the story or the characters in the story. Then there's FFXIV which may go down in history as the biggest bust since JaMarcus Russel.

Then there are all of these stupid half assed games like that Vaan Raises Chocobos Game or remakes of remakes of old FF games and other pathetic, transparent attempts to make money without actually providing a product. SE is phoning it in worse than Nintendo.

Mikey Go WOOGA wrote:

Jay/Cris wrote:

Mikey Go WOOGA wrote:

You aren't pregnant, are you?

It's the 21th century. Of course there a degrees of perfection, just as much as you can be a little bit pregnant. Like, you're only a little bit pregnant if you just bought the morning after pill.

But seriously, you aren't pregnant, right? One of you is plenty and I'd hate for you to lose the monopoly on this whole "snarky homosexual" thing that you do.

Nope. I use protection. And careful now. One might be able to misconstrue this as caring, Mikey.

Mikey Go WOOGA wrote:

grmblfjx wrote:

No, I actually agree with Mikey. He may be the eternal class clown, but he's not bottom rung. There's always been someone like Clopper to take that place.

It's clear that you love me, but alas, we can never be together because I don't date Europeans.

On an unrelated note, it seems beggars can be choosers.

...and all of a sudden your struggle with the ladies makes so much sense.


Girl: "You're the last person I'd want to date."
Mikey: "I'm on the list! YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSS "

Man, I do not really give a shit about the story or characters, FF13's gameplay was unappealing to the extreme. It was so fucking linear like wtf, I am not asking for my JRPGs to be Elder Scrolls or whatever but I would like to do something other than run down one long-ass corridor.

Reepicheep-chan wrote:

Man, I do not really give a shit about the story or characters, FF13's gameplay was unappealing to the extreme. It was so fucking linear like wtf, I am not asking for my JRPGs to be Elder Scrolls or whatever but I would like to do something other than run down one long-ass corridor.

Very much this.

Square didn't even have to try to get me to buy FF13. In fact, I couldn't afford to buy it for several months after it's release, and I was so much of a mark that I read all the reviews and still bought it.

Final Fantasy had such a dedicated fanbase that they were practically selling milk to cows, and they killed just about the entirety of that fanbase with one game. That's how bad 13 was.

WD40 wrote:

Final Fantasy had such a dedicated fanbase that they were practically selling milk to cows

Why would cows need milk? A better metaphor would be to say they were selling water in the Sahara.

Mikey Go WOOGA wrote:

WD40 wrote:

Final Fantasy had such a dedicated fanbase that they were practically selling milk to cows

Why would cows need milk? A better metaphor would be to say they were selling water in the Sahara.

Or, like selling milk to baby cows.

Disco Stu wrote:

Mikey Go WOOGA wrote:

WD40 wrote:

Final Fantasy had such a dedicated fanbase that they were practically selling milk to cows

Why would cows need milk? A better metaphor would be to say they were selling water in the Sahara.

Or, like selling milk to baby cows.

What I was going for was selling things to a person who doesn't need them/has an abundance of them. Selling grass to a groundskeeper or something. I think we're all thinking too much about this metaphor. What I meant was that Square needn't have put any effort at all into FF13, and people would have bought it and loved it, so long as it was a fecking Final Fantasy game. What we got was... well...

They could have re-skinned Mystic Quest and we'd have been happy. As it is, Square has to, somehow, recapture the lightning in a bottle that was 7 all over again, rather than just coasting on it which they could have done quite happily. Although kudos to them for trying to improve on the formula with 9, 10 and 12, but what they did with 13 was just unforgivable.

WD40 wrote:

What I was going for was selling things to a person who doesn't need them/has an abundance of them.

First of all, the standard "Selling snow [or ice] to Eskimos" works.

Second, why would having an abundance of stuff or no need for that stuff make you likely to buy that stuff compulsively? It seems like it would have the opposite effect.

WD40 wrote:

As it is, Square has to, somehow, recapture the lightning in a bottle that was 7 all over again

FFVII may be the most overrated game I know of. Yes, it's good. It's above average. It's certainly one of the FF games from a time when FF games were actually decently made, well thought out games. It's replayable. Even today, it's enjoyable.

But it is NOT that fucking good. People keep talking about FFVII like it's the God damn Wayne Gretzky of video games, when it's Bobby Orr at best.

When people get the feeling that a company is just trying to get their money with as little effort as possible, they tend to not patronize that company. Sure, we all know that, in the end, companies only give a shit about money, but no one wants to pay for someone to phone it in. SE has been clearly phoning it in with pretty much everything they've done since FFXI

Mikey Go WOOGA wrote:

WD40 wrote:

What I was going for was selling things to a person who doesn't need them/has an abundance of them.

First of all, the standard "Selling snow [or ice] to Eskimos" works.

I knew there was a standard metaphor out there somewhere. :/

Quote :

Second, why would having an abundance of stuff or no need for that stuff make you likely to buy that stuff compulsively? It seems like it would have the opposite effect.

That's the point. FF fans were so rabid that they'd gobble down anything Square put out. Hell, I've even been known to defend FFX-2.

We'd have been happy with anything and Square would have sold it with no problem. But we got FF13, which is utterly irredeemable.

[edit]

Mikey Go WOOGA wrote:

WD40 wrote:

As it is, Square has to, somehow, recapture the lightning in a bottle that was 7 all over again

FFVII may be the most overrated game I know of. Yes, it's good. It's above average. It's certainly one of the FF games from a time when FF games were actually decently made, well thought out games. It's replayable. Even today, it's enjoyable.

But it is NOT that fucking good. People keep talking about FFVII like it's the God damn Wayne Gretzky of video games, when it's Bobby Orr at best.

I don't know who Wayne Gretzky or Bobby Orr are because I'm too busy weaving my own wicker sandals, but I think I agree with you completely.

There were far batter JRPGs out there when FF7 rolled around. (Suikoden, for one [/fanboy]) What FF7 did, that no other game was able to d at the time, was make the link between these niche, stat-focused, angst drama, turn-based games and the growing popularity of anime at the time. (Id did somethign very similar to what Vampire the Masquerade did with D&D fans and Goths, uniting two niche audiences into one significant audience)

In doing so, it not only tapped the previously minority JRPG fanbase, but brought in newbie anime fans and introduced them to a pretty simple, but new (so far as they were concerned) type of game that was part visual novel and part anime film.

I used Mystic Quest up there deliberately. MQ was the last game that tried to do what FF7 did accidentally. Provide a stepping-on point for people not used to JRPGs. What 7 had that Quest didn't was, basically, the latter part of the 90's, combined with visuals that could use filmic language.

Quote :

When people get the feeling that a company is just trying to get their money with as little effort as possible, they tend to not patronize that company. Sure, we all know that, in the end, companies only give a shit about money, but no one wants to pay for someone to phone it in. SE has been clearly phoning it in with pretty much everything they've done since FFXI

Probably. But I don't think Square had reached that saturation point yet, Square fans would have been happy with a rote, by-the-numbers, no-surprises FF game. Maybe 13 was an attempt to revitalise a series that they thought was going stale? I dunno - they seriously misjudged it if it was. I think it would have been better for them to coast a little longer, get a taste for what the market was like and then start innovating, probably with a different series.

[edit on reflection]

Thinking about it, the shift from turn-based to more real-time combat to MMORPG combat through 10, 10-2 and 12 also showed a distinct decline in popularity of the series.

Hell, a return to an all-basics, turn-based system would have probably qualified as an innovation. As it was, it went full-on with the MMORPG-style and turned the game into a button-mashing exploration of the Channel Tunnel.

As overrated as 7 is, the magic to it was that it jump started the franchise again in the US and vacuumed money out of people's pockets when the economy was decent.

For the record, 7 is my favorite RPG. Yeah yeah yeah, throw garbage at me, BUT I don't typically play them. I have relatives down south who didn't even know what the genre was called and they still bought, played, and enjoyed that game.

Shit... I remember when I thought RPGs was some kind of racing game. Btw, Reepi, I totally lied about knowing what Earthbound was back when we first met. I just wanted you to be my friend.

^ Betrayal.

Also really unnecessary, I was all over trying to memorize shit about Pokemon so you would be my friend. All staying up nights like "ok I am not gonna go to sleep until I can recite all 150 pokemon names so Eevee will like me".

Um, yeah, I really like materia and that p much my favorite thing about FF7, except also I thought Cloud, Vincent, Reno, and Sephiroth were hotties. I felt like the plot could have been more straight forward and honestly I am not sure I really understood it at the time.

I think Earthbound is on a fairly short list of RPGs I enjoy because of the story/ visual aesthetic. Most of my favorites I like because of some sort of mechanic I enjoyed. Chrono Trigger had time travel, FF10 had the sphere grid, FF7 was materia, Suikoden had character recruiting and a handful of other things, Suikoden 2 had even more stuff and I really loved the major battles like woah, BoF2 had that town and the spirit combining thing (although both could have been better executed), Radient Historia also had time travel... Well I could go on for basically forever but my point is that interesting/ unique mechanics and the opportunity to play around with them to my heart's content is way more important to me than story or graphics.

Quote :

Btw, Reepi, I totally lied about knowing what Earthbound was back when we first met.

Quote :

Also really unnecessary, I was all over trying to memorize shit about Pokemon so you would be my friend. All staying up nights like "ok I am not gonna go to sleep until I can recite all 150 pokemon names so Eevee will like me".

... you guys got weird ideas about making friends.

Usually a great mutual masturbation session is all it takes.

WD40 wrote:

There were far batter JRPGs out there when FF7 rolled around. (Suikoden, for one [/fanboy]) What FF7 did, that no other game was able to d at the time, was make the link between these niche, stat-focused, angst drama, turn-based games and the growing popularity of anime at the time. (Id did somethign very similar to what Vampire the Masquerade did with D&D fans and Goths, uniting two niche audiences into one significant audience)

In doing so, it not only tapped the previously minority JRPG fanbase, but brought in newbie anime fans and introduced them to a pretty simple, but new (so far as they were concerned) type of game that was part visual novel and part anime film.

I used Mystic Quest up there deliberately. MQ was the last game that tried to do what FF7 did accidentally. Provide a stepping-on point for people not used to JRPGs. What 7 had that Quest didn't was, basically, the latter part of the 90's, combined with visuals that could use filmic language.

This can't be stressed enough. While Final Fantasy VII was a lot of fun, its main impact, what made it sell--the thing that made people who had never heard of RPGs as anything but military hardware want to go out and buy one--was its impressive visuals. Mystic Quest may have wanted to make RPGs more mainstream, but its makers misread the reason RPGs weren't catching on in the West. It wasn't the initial perceived difficulty of mastering the game's various aspects that prevented people from wanting to play. It was the inability of the hardware of the time to quickly and easily convey that this was all actually a big, sweeping fantasy epic with a strong story and interesting characters. And the fun of tweaking your characters' abilities and equipment, of correctly determining a boss's weaknesses and the appropriate tactics to use against it, is difficult to convey short of putting a controller in someone's hands and having them actually play the thing for a little while. Final Fantasy VII, on the other hand, was able to convey that it was telling an exciting story with interesting characters, and it was able to do so immediately thanks to the hardware finally being able to make use of more filmic presentation. The complexities of the genre weren't what held JRPGs back in the west; it was the lack of anything immediately perceivable as interesting that did so, and Final Fantasy VII was able to address that problem in a way that virtually no such game on 16-bit hardware was capable of doing.

WD40 wrote:

Thinking about it, the shift from turn-based to more real-time combat to MMORPG combat through 10, 10-2 and 12 also showed a distinct decline in popularity of the series.

Hell, a return to an all-basics, turn-based system would have probably qualified as an innovation. As it was, it went full-on with the MMORPG-style and turned the game into a button-mashing exploration of the Channel Tunnel.

I don't think Final Fantasy X, X-2, or XII are bad games. One of the things I respect Square for, even today, is their willingness to change up the formula, in terms of mechanics. No two Final Fantasies play in quite the same way. And people claiming that we're only recently in a slump are forgetting train wrecks like Final Fantasy II (the one that was actually Final Fantasy II, not the one that got re-titled as such but was originally Final Fantasy IV). I do think that this slump they've been in has lasted considerably longer, but I'll get to that in a minute. While I can understand how some people didn't like the gameplay of XII, or of X, I think the greater faults with those games lie more with the creative direction. Final Fantasy X is okay, though some of the characters get on my nerves (though that probably has more to do with Tetsuya Nomura's ridiculous designs). And while I have my struggles with XII's battle system, I'm generally pretty okay with it. Most of the complaints I've heard about XII lie with the direction the story took, and from what I've heard, that was largely a case of executive meddling. The theory goes that Yasumi Matsuno, who was originally directing the game (and had previously directed for Square on Final Fantasy Tactics and Vagrant Story, and elsewhere for the Tactics Ogre games), had intended for Basch to be the hero. But Square supposedly kept pressuring him to create a younger character as the protagonist, fearing that audiences wouldn't relate to Basch as well, since he was older and more mature. So we got Vaan's bratty, petulant ass instead. The constant meddling and interference from Square's higher-ups was what caused Matsuno to abandon the production in the end.

As for Square's current troubles, I sometimes wonder if they aren't actually an indirect result of the unparalleled success of Final Fantasy VII. It's only a theory, but it goes like this:

The first few games that came after Final Fantasy VII were still typical of Square's pattern of behavior, in that they decided to try different things, both with the narrative and the mechanics. Final Fantasy VIII was fairly successful, or so I've come to understand, but a lot of that may have been Square trading on VII's success. It was also around that time that Square was working on games in a lot of different genres: shoot-'em-ups (Einhander), fighting games (Tobal No. 1, Bushido Blade 1 and 2), strategy (Final Fantasy Tactics), action-adventure games (Brave Fencer Musashi) and various other projects. But by the time Final Fantasy X came and went, Square were still unable to quite reach the heights of success that they'd managed with Final Fantasy VII. It can't be comforting to see one's greatest work lying, not ahead in the future, but somewhere in the irrecoverable (not to mention far less profitable) past. And so it was time to go back to the well. This was done both literally (with the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, some parts of which were even good, like Crisis Core), and somewhat more figuratively (with Final Fantasy XIII, whose main character Square stated was an attempt to have another protagonist like Cloud, but this time a woman).

Personally, I feel like these efforts would be better spent in fresher endeavors, rather than in trying to make that 16-year-old lightning strike twice.

Fresh Meat on the boards huh?

Also, meh, SE has been doin shoddy fer awhile, I'll admit that Bioshock Infinite is a good game worthy of a 8 or 9 out of 10, The storyline is amazing, the graphics are amazing... buuuut there's something missing. Something ELSE they could have done that they missed. Puzzles. I fucking love em, they had plenty of opportunity to put in puzzles AND make them give you better boosts. Also. I've been MIA due to playing GW 2 lately Hope no one missed me too badly.

And mikey: you're absolutely right, FFVII IS overrated. FFVI is much, much better. That Kefka.

Can't reply to everyone since not got enough time, but well saw this today, and it's further update on this whole deal.

High Moon & Square Enix Both Suffered Significant Layoffs Today thoughts on this, considering they have been in the news a lot lately.

OK, so my question is this: is this really an issue of Squeenix making bad games or is this to do with the economy still being in the shitter?

Reepicheep-chan wrote:

OK, so my question is this: is this really an issue of Squeenix making bad games or is this to do with the economy still being in the shitter?

The long and short of it is they just didn't make target on their last 3 big releases. Funnily enough, none of these cited games are a Final Fantasy or even an RPG, make of that what you will.
But actually answering your question reepi, considering how good those titles cited in that article are supposed to be, either Square Enix really have over inflated expectations or, as you said, the economy is in the shitter.

Somath Cegem wrote:

Reepicheep-chan wrote:

OK, so my question is this: is this really an issue of Squeenix making bad games or is this to do with the economy still being in the shitter?

The long and short of it is they just didn't make target on their last 3 big releases. Funnily enough, none of these cited games are a Final Fantasy or even an RPG, make of that what you will.
But actually answering your question reepi, considering how good those titles cited in that article are supposed to be, either Square Enix really have over inflated expectations or, as you said, the economy is in the shitter.

Quote :

Sleeping Dogs
Actual: 1.75 million units
Expected: 2 - 2.5 million units

Hitman: Absolution
Actual: 3.6 million units
Expected: 4.5 - 5 million units

Tomb Raider
Actual: 3.4 million units
Expected: 5 - 6 million units

Now, I'm no Logistics analyst, nor do I work in Accounting and foretell prophecies, but how is this a failure? Weren't two of these three games big hits with the reviewers and critics?
Idun'getit

TheIan wrote:

Now, I'm no Logistics analyst, now do I work in Accounting and foretell prophecies, but how is this a failure? Weren't two of these three games big hits with the reviewers and critics?
Idun'getit

Because accounting can foretell how or what expectations for certain games/movies/pornos/literature status quos are righ- oh wait.

Reepicheep-chan wrote:

OK, so my question is this: is this really an issue of Squeenix making bad games or is this to do with the economy still being in the shitter?

As far as I know, Squeenix in the only company with losses like that. It's probably made worse by the economy, but other companies are managing profits. It seems that, as people have to buy less vidya, the first vidya they're cutting out is SE's vidya.

Somath Cegem wrote:

Reepicheep-chan wrote:

OK, so my question is this: is this really an issue of Squeenix making bad games or is this to do with the economy still being in the shitter?

The long and short of it is they just didn't make target on their last 3 big releases. Funnily enough, none of these cited games are a Final Fantasy or even an RPG, make of that what you will.
But actually answering your question reepi, considering how good those titles cited in that article are supposed to be, either Square Enix really have over inflated expectations or, as you said, the economy is in the shitter.

I didn't hear good things about Hitman: Absolution. It sounded like it was hollow, much like recent FF games. I didn't hear much about Sleeping Dogs. I heard good things about Tomb Raider, but enthusiasm for that franchise has generally been crap lately, which may be the reason there was no rush to buy it.

It may not necessarily be a revenue problem. I'd hate to guess how inflated the salaries of the top guys related to the Final Fantasy franchise are.

I have no idea the status of tax laws and various regulations and how they're changing, but that could play a part in increasing costs.

Mikey Go WOOGA wrote:

I have no idea the status of tax laws and various regulations and how they're changing, but that could play a part in increasing costs.

Considering gaming is a multi-billion dollar industry... No. Just no. Mark my words, once the economy picks back up, prices will return to normal and fans will bitch about the newest FFXXXLLVI whatever generation.