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.
They also had great success with Sekiro, which was (and still is) very different from their other titles.
It’s still the same engine and general gameplay concept though. The combat was the big difference.
I mean, make no mistake, it is fundementally different in lots of ways, but in terms of what the engine needs to do to work, what the character needs to do, how the player interacts with the world, at those basic building block production points Sekiro is almost the same as Dark Souls, I so can agree there.
I love the Dark Souls games. I use two moves in those games: swing big sword, dodge.
In Sekiro, there were many more moves I was forced to use, with precise timing, and split second reads to know which moves I needed to use. My aging brain cannot do that. So I didn’t enjoy Sekiro.
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.
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.
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.
Ac6 is “basically” the same game as ac 1 through 5 or whatever. Elden ring is “basically” the same game as the dark souls saga.
Just so surprising that treating staff well and keeping them around lets you do consistently high quality work. Boggles the mind really.
Well, this may not actually be the case. 7 or so years ago FromSoftware was pretty notoriously known to Japanese workers in the gaming industry to have very harsh working conditions, even among other Japanese studios that also have harsh conditions. Allegedly programmers at FromSoftware at that time were making an annual salary of only $27k USD. Compare this with Konami, who was paying an annual salary of $40k USD for the same position.
Its possible in the last 7 years things might have changed, but Japanese companies are usually very resistant to change. Japanese work culture honestly sucks, I would never want to.live in Japan because of this.
EDIT: You can see here that the overall worker satisfaction rating for FromSoftware is only 2.8 out of 5, which seems to be nearly the same as it used to be.
NOTE: Some readers may see something about the “Whiteness/Blackness” of the company. This has nothing to do with race or racism. This is a slang term from Japanese culture that refers to how ethical a company is. A company that is very unethical (overworking employees, borderline illegal treatment of employees, etc) is called a “Black Company,” and everyone will tell you to avoid them. Conversely a “White Company” would be a very ethical company and one that everyone would be fighting each other to work for.
Well, I wouldn’t call From a Black Company. 2.4 White rating is almost exactly in the middle.
A real Black Company would be something like the V-Tuber Agency Wactor (and more recently maybe Nijisanji). This company has engaged in behaviour that is legitimately abusive to its employees, to the point that nearly all of its liver talents have quit.
For Black Companies, it is most common that there is bullying or some other kind of abuse from higher ups, as well as threats of disrepute if the abused employees quit voluntarily. This doesn’t seem to be the case with FromSoftware. Just that they don’t pay overtime because it is considered voluntary (incredibly common among Japanese companies) and pay below industry average.
Japanese work culture honestly sucks, I would never want to.live in Japan because of this.
You can find Western companies and semi-westernized Japanese companies where the work culture is better.
Yes, but in Japan the large majority of businesses are Japanese, and most conform to the expected conditions of underpaying or not paying for overtime (“voluntary overtime”), etc.
Just like there can be some companies that do the same thing in the USA, though it is not.common because there are laws specifically to prevent that.
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
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.
I will say that reusing assets is 100% okay, and I actually wish more studios did this. You don’t need to make everything from scratch. It’s okay to reuse the thing you made previously.
It is definitely a smart move. But still, maybe we can retire the Asylum Demon?
I dunno. If the dlc is like the rest of the game and I see the same dungeon changed slightly 20 times I’m going to be disappointed. But I guess that’s what reviews are for.
Note a difference between that and what we’re talking about. We’re saying that if you modeled a table in your previous game, just use that same table again.
Repetitive use of assets within a single game is another thing
Elden ring dungeons and dungeon bosses did get kinda samey. But god i did not care, there was a list of i think 120 bosses in the game, and i had to be sure each and every one got murdered. I honestly hope this new dlc is a window to the past and the whole ass map gets reused to form the new lands, and we get another 120 bosses to slay.
They wisely stick to AAA games and avoid the hassle of AAAA games like ubisoft
what the hell does the number of As even mean? how does one quantify how many As your game has? if I made a game today and shipped it how many As could I get today?
I read it’s how the companies talked to the stores, AAA meant it would probably be popular and expensive so you better order a big batch.
Is that so?
It fits with my understanding as well, but comes from investment grade bond ratings where AAA usually signifies the highest quality (i.e. the best chance of getting paid back). A AA bond is still a good bond, but it has a higher risk of default.
But in practice, I just see AAA as a “high budget production,” both in development costs and marketing. It doesn’t mean it’s a better product, just one with a lot more money on the line.
They also release real products and not “games as a service” shit.