Forum - View topicThis Week in Games - Burning Bridges
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wolf10
 Posts: 748 |
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Wait? Modern gaming still exists? I'm still working through Gotta Protectors: Cart of Darkness.
It's a shame about Balan Wonderworld. I do still enjoy it as a game, warts and all, but with Yuji Naka airing all that about it... There's a strange sense of relief knowing the issues I do have with it aren't just me misunderstanding the creator's vision or anything. It probably could have become something really special with a little more time in the oven, and I suppose we'll never know what could have been. Guess I could always read the novel... |
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Lord Geo
Posts: 2125 Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey |
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Yeah, people are always so quick to bring up how Naka took away the Nights engine that Sonic X-Treme eventually wound up using at one point, but none of them actually bother to get the full context behind it, which really just came down to "No one ever bothered to ask Naka if his brand new game engine could be used for a game he had nothing to do with". While his reaction was no doubt harsh & even overblown a bit, it was also understandable why he did what he did, and if he was simply approached about using it beforehand, then he likely would have allowed it, to some extent. He was simply being protective about something he created, though probably a too much so, in some regards; yes, that engine was technically Sega's property, but it's messed up to not talk to Naka first. As for the whole Balan Wonderworld situation, this whole reveal by Naka has really just turned into people using for each extreme. People who already had problems with Naka are just taking everything he said with an ocean's worth of salt & finding ways to twist it so that he alone is the reason why he was fired from Square-Enix, for example, instead of taking a much more reasonable stance of "The entire game was getting screwed over from the start, Naka & Oshima obviously clashed over things, and Square-Enix certainly didn't make things any better". |
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FunkyDude88
 Posts: 87 |
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Yuji Naka blaming Square-Enix seems akin to Keiji Inafune blaming Capcom and Kojima blaming Konami for their woes. Maybe there's some truth there, but they're all not so amazing people in their own right and have their own issues that seem to be the more primary issue at the core of their problems. There's two sides to every story, and I've also heard plenty of tales of Yuji Naka being difficult to work with.
I'm not sure Balan Wonderworld would be a good game even if he wasn't removed from the project. Square-Enix certainly is pretty hit or miss these days with their games, but I feel this is just the jaded ranting of a scorned lover. Yuji Naka simply making a bad game wouldn't be hard to believe either. |
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rizuchan
 Collector Extraordinaire Posts: 949 Location: Kansas |
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IMO, the Twitch pricing model is ridiculous from a consumer standpoint. I have to pay $5-$10 per streamer to not see commercials and engage in chat. Then if I miss a stream - which I will, because I have a full time job and live in a timezone where streams always end up being in the middle of the afternoon - the interface makes it difficult to go back and watch past streams, and the TV apps don't let you watch past streams at all. So I end up getting like, an hour of content a month for the same price as Crunchyroll. There are streamers I'd love to support, but I just can't justify paying for a subscription based on value.
And now Twitch wants to cut their profits even more, and have them run more ads, which will probably drive more streamers to only remove ads for the higher tiers... no thanks. I'd be more than happy if streamers would start dumping Twitch. |
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Hoppy800
 Posts: 3001 |
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No wonder Balan was hot garbage, SE fired the only person who could've made it good halfway through. SE is a complete mess today and really doesn't care for developers (even the greats like Naka), much less gamers.
EDF 6 finally has a release date of August 25th. |
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 4809 |
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^ Naka hasn’t done much of note since the 90’s/early 00’s so whether he could have made it a good game is certain open to debate.
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Joe Mello
 Posts: 2108 Location: Unlocked |
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Not all Twitch channels set their chat to subs-only (or even followers-only) and my understanding the link to posted videos is just [channel url]/videos. Also for most streamers there's likely going to be a way to support said streamer that doesn't involve Amazon, whether it's a Patreon or some form of tip jar site, so you can give money freely anyway. Cutting the share from top earners is...whatever, but I think the floor for everyone needs to be at least 50%. That's sort of a symbolic red line that, once stepped over, there's no coming back from that. Allowing multiple streaming contracts makes sense if for no other reason than it further dissuades any lawsuits about Twitch misrepresenting their contracted labor. That being said, a CNBC reported Amazon's 4th Q operating revenue was somewhere between $3-6 billion so it is really about greed. |
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Hal14
 Posts: 435 Location: Heart of africa |
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Unless Balan W was made in 6 months, Naka was still around for most of the core game development. Not saying the blame is solely on him, but that he was there when the game design (one of the main issues with the game) was decided.
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AQuin1904
Posts: 38 |
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Legend of Mana is one of those games I've started playing like five times and then put down three to five hours in because I got lost looking for a way to make any kind of progress happen and the combat wasn't doing it for me. It feels like something I might have gotten really into if I'd had it over summer break as a kid and could waste hours checking every nook and cranny.
I don't really get the people who say that Balan Wonderworld could have been great. I can imagine a world where it was pretty good, but nothing about it suggests that it had the potential to be more than a fun curiosity that some people would occasionally think back on fondly. Even with more technical expertise, better design decisions, and a story that was actually in the game, it still wouldn't be doing anything that remarkable. |
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wolf10
Posts: 748 |
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chrisb
 Subscriber Posts: 533 Location: USA |
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Considering HR got involved I’m leaning toward Yuji Naka not being 100% honest about how he lost control of the project.
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TarsTarkas
 Posts: 5399 Location: Virginia, United States |
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Not really. A lot can happen in six months. Just remember the 'sorry lot' of that AAA game 'Anthem'. Designing core game design is different from implementing core game design. And if the 'Overlords' want changes to core game design later in the pipeline, whose to say when the actual game design is finished, and perhaps it is never truly finished or implemented fully. |
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Lord Geo
Posts: 2125 Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey |
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That's where I'd likely put that up to Naka butting heads with Oshima & his team at Arzest. Even by Naka's account it's obvious that he & Arzest/Oshima didn't really see eye-to-eye on things often, and while Naka was likely "too assertive" on his own end (to put it politely, I'm sure), I wouldn't be surprised if Square-Enix simply decided that siding with Arzest & removing just one guy from the production, even if he was the director of the entire game, was a simpler (& cheaper) solution than siding with Naka, especially since the game was more than likely already at a point where Naka's involvement would have been more on a technical level than on a design level. Siding with Naka, as per his own assertion, would have resulting in delaying the game & not putting the team into crunch (which, let's face it, is the opposite of what big name companies like S-E absolutely love doing with their employees). I wouldn't be surprised if, by that point, Square-Enix had already soured on Balan Wonderworld, in general, and just wanted to get it out ASAP & be done with it, regardless of how ready it truly was, and removing Naka from the equation allowed that to happen. Certainly wouldn't be the first time a video game company agreed to produce a game, only to then quickly sour on it & just plop it out without a care. |
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AiddonValentine
Posts: 2003 |
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Not in the final six months; that stretch is usually when you're in the final draft phase just putting things together and squashing bugs. And while extra time would have helped on the technical front with polish, there is no way it would have fixed the game. The problems with Balan are on a fundamental core design level; there would be no way to fix Balan without going back to the drawing board and restarting the whole project. Furthermore, as noted by many, it's difficult to believe Naka at his word because he has his own history of being a toxic, egocentric jackass. It wasn't just Sonic Extreme either, there was also the case of the canceled Geist Force where Naka apparently wanted most of the team fired so he could steal their engine and use it for Sonic games. Or the case where Peter Moore showed him data that SEGA's image was waning in the West to which Naka screamed at Moore and accused him of falsifying information to which Moore just told him to piss off and walked out of the room and SEGA. Or him trying to patronize Lani Minella (one of the GREATEST video game voice actors) about casting and voice direction when localizing the Sonic games. There are other stories, but overall is really just seems like Naka has been high on his own supply for years. Where there's smoke, there's fire. I'm in no rush to defend SqEx (-looks at them forcing out Yasumi Matsuno because he was tired of the executives-) but this reads less like a righteously angry artist and more like a bitter man who finally got a taste of his own medicine. Seriously, when you've pissed off the sound director, you are probably not someone people want to be around anymore. As for other things, I don't really bother with Twitch but these changes are pretty bad. Keeping an eye on Legend of Mana, but anime based on games are wonky. Last edited by AiddonValentine on Sat Apr 30, 2022 2:14 am; edited 2 times in total |
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Break Xerxes
 Posts: 211 |
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It sucks that Yuji Naka got screwed over twice with his recent games. I would love to see what the completed Balan Wonderworld would have been like.
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