Frankly they lost their magic not long after buying Enix. Both companies were amazing, they had some great games for 2-3 years after the merger, then it was just drivel. No I didn't like the dizneee meets final fantasy installments.
Square-Enix sells all of its Western game studios and their games to Embracer
201–210 of 264 posts
Re: Square-Enix sells all of its Western game studios and their games to Embracer
#202>The Transaction will assist the Company in adapting to the changes underway in the global business environment by establishing a more efficient allocation of resources, which will enhance corporate value by accelerating growth in the Company’s core businesses in the digital entertainment domain. In addition, the Transaction enables the launch of new businesses by moving forward with investments in fields including b…
"Investments in blockchain, AI, and the cloud" sounds like they have absolutely no idea what they should do, and will spend most of the money paying very expensive consultants who produce delirious slideware about web3 metaverse opportunities.
Those seem like obvious areas of research for a next generation game developer. Perhaps you are overreacting because of a culturally normative skepticism toward the word "Blockchain"
Re: Square-Enix sells all of its Western game studios and their games to Embracer
#203>The Transaction will assist the Company in adapting to the changes underway in the global business environment by establishing a more efficient allocation of resources, which will enhance corporate value by accelerating growth in the Company’s core businesses in the digital entertainment domain. In addition, the Transaction enables the launch of new businesses by moving forward with investments in fields including b…
"Investments in blockchain, AI, and the cloud" sounds like they have absolutely no idea what they should do, and will spend most of the money paying very expensive consultants who produce delirious slideware about web3 metaverse opportunities.
The market and real estate systems in FF14 are indicative that Square Enix's creative units either have no idea whatsoever about how economies work, or no interest in making theirs fit for purpose. Their efforts in this direction are easily derided as painfully limited, crude, naive, and dysfunctional, certainly one of the least well designed aspects of the experience. This stands in stark contrast to the thoughtful, detailed design evident in gameplay and world-building exhibited by much of the rest of the game. The supply-chain economies and sophisticated markets found in some other MMOs put it to shame.
The buzzword vomit from their CEO is simply a continuation of this trait.
Re: Square-Enix sells all of its Western game studios and their games to Embracer
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
...if you haven't already heard of it, I feel like you'd enjoy Spec Ops: The Line . Go in completely blind if at all possible, and don't be turned off by the fact that it seems like a generic dudebro war shooter. It does start out that way.
Dunno about this recommendation, it feels like the parent poster would have the same issues with Spec Ops as with TLoU. But still they can forge their own opinions about it.
Without spoiling too much, the difference to me is that Spec Ops is aware of and addresses people's actions, and even more critically lets the player make different choices.
Re: Square-Enix sells all of its Western game studios and their games to Embracer
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Investments in blockchain, AI, and the cloud" sounds like they have absolutely no idea what they should do, and will spend most of the money paying very expensive consultants who produce delirious slideware about web3 metaverse opportunities.
Those seem like obvious areas of research for a next generation game developer. Perhaps you are overreacting because of a culturally normative skepticism toward the word "Blockchain"
Veteran game developer here: What makes "ai" and "the cloud" obvious areas of research for a next generation game developer? Games have had "AI" for decades and we've had neural net hardware on GPUs for years and years now which gets used for things like upscaling, global illumination, etc. "the cloud" has been available for ages and games already use cloud hosting extensively where it makes sense.
All I see here are buzzwords and abstract terms that mean literally nothing as an investment unless your goal is to impress investors and specialist press. The blockchain is not going to do anything to streamline game development or improve game quality, all it can do is provide new monetization options... but traditional gacha games already make a truckload of money, so it's questionable whether the cost of moving into blockchain is reasonable for a company like Square Enix that can already rake it in via microtransactions.
Re: Square-Enix sells all of its Western game studios and their games to Embracer
#206>The Transaction will assist the Company in adapting to the changes underway in the global business environment by establishing a more efficient allocation of resources, which will enhance corporate value by accelerating growth in the Company’s core businesses in the digital entertainment domain. In addition, the Transaction enables the launch of new businesses by moving forward with investments in fields including b…
>one I swear they make 3 utter shite too + their gacha games are not even that good considering the saturation on the gacha market and what quality games some other companies can make (see Genshin)
I heard from sources that the western department is doing this.
Sources: Are on Twitter, forgot the name. (Yea I know, that I don't need to "believe everything" so please add salt to my statement)
Source #1: https://twitter.com/Genki_JPN?t=FlkGLMQE4aoCHqod-O68RQ&s=09
Re: Square-Enix sells all of its Western game studios and their games to Embracer
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
Those seem like obvious areas of research for a next generation game developer. Perhaps you are overreacting because of a culturally normative skepticism toward the word "Blockchain"
Veteran game developer here: What makes "ai" and "the cloud" obvious areas of research for a next generation game developer? Games have had "AI" for decades and we've had neural net hardware on GPUs for years and years now which gets used for things like upscaling, global illumination, etc. "the cloud" has been available for ages and games already use cloud hosting extensively where it makes sense. All I see here are…
"games have had ai for decades and the cloud has existed for years" is not a reason why research in those areas is pointless.
Your failure to, as you admit, see these topics as anything other than "buzzwords" all but confirms my original opinion of a cultural skepticism.
Re: Square-Enix sells all of its Western game studios and their games to Embracer
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Investments in blockchain, AI, and the cloud" sounds like they have absolutely no idea what they should do, and will spend most of the money paying very expensive consultants who produce delirious slideware about web3 metaverse opportunities.
The market and real estate systems in FF14 are indicative that Square Enix's creative units either have no idea whatsoever about how economies work, or no interest in making theirs fit for purpose. Their efforts in this direction are easily derided as painfully limited, crude, naive, and dysfunctional, certainly one of the least well designed aspects of the experience. This stands in stark contrast to the thoughtful,…
Except that the other MMO economies are horrible to play in. FFXIV is a lot more fun than say GW2 economy driven game.
Subjective you'd say? Maybe but it does show that maybe they know better about what a game needs than you think.
Re: Square-Enix sells all of its Western game studios and their games to Embracer
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think that's just pandering. The markets expect to hear this line and will punish the stocks of tech companies that don't show some kind of investments into this kind of stuff. They'll make some NFT-based card game with advanced self-learning AI opponents just to tick all the right boxes.
Why? Because enough VCs/Hedge Funds have bought into the lie that is crypto or “AI”. Is this some kind of economic extortion?
Crucially they don't need to buy the lie themselves, they only need to believe others will.
Re: Square-Enix sells all of its Western game studios and their games to Embracer
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Investments in blockchain, AI, and the cloud" sounds like they have absolutely no idea what they should do, and will spend most of the money paying very expensive consultants who produce delirious slideware about web3 metaverse opportunities.
Those seem like obvious areas of research for a next generation game developer. Perhaps you are overreacting because of a culturally normative skepticism toward the word "Blockchain"
Pick a hapless MBA-equipped middle manager at Oracle or IBM or some other washed-up corporate hell, and ask them what are important technology trends. The answer will be some variation of “blockchain, AI, cloud.”
It’s not encouraging if high-level leaders at a game studio can’t articulate their vision any better than that.