I posted this in Reddit but I thought why not see what my favorite people think?

[Mr Bekkler]

Your comments on game production show how little you understand the process. Adding more people won't necessarily get you a better game faster. It won't necessarily get you either of those things. I understand your frustrations with long development times and with companies seemingly wasting their teams on projects that don't interest you. What you have suggested is not a practical solution.

Who are you responding to?

I hope not the whole thread. I think a lot of interesting things are being discussed here, and I think a lot of ideas that have been presented are very practical. Faustwolf's dream battle system, Satoh's desire to have deep interactivity, and Boo's tendency toward dynamic and distinct characters, just to name a few, and imagine them all together in one game! These ideas together would make a huge splash in the gaming world(at least in rpg country).
The time budget of two years is not wholly unrealistic for such a feat either, but you're right tthat the amount of people won't make it faster or slower. It's more about proper planning, getting things done on a shedule. Another factor is the passion of the development team. If they're gung ho, they're more likely to make a quality product, if they're in it for the money, they're  more likely to make their deadlines. A balance is needed so the team is motivated but efficient.

[Boo the Gentleman Caller]

Game Informer had a great piece on Final Fantasy Versus XIII this month.

In the time since the game was announced (in May 2006)...

...we've had all three Mass Effect games.
...the entire Assassin's Creed franchise.
...the rise and fall of music games.
...four other main Final Fantasy titles: XII, XIII, XIII-2, and XIV.
...Bioshock, Bioshock II released.
...Call of Duty 3, World at War, and Black Ops released, along with all three Modern Warfare titles.
...the Playstation 3's entire life.
...the Wii craze.
...Sony and Microsoft introducing/releasing their own motion controllers.
...Duke Nukem forever released.

How's that for game production?

[Satoh]

Your comments on game production show how little you understand the process. Adding more people won't necessarily get you a better game faster. It won't necessarily get you either of those things. I understand your frustrations with long development times and with companies seemingly wasting their teams on projects that don't interest you. What you have suggested is not a practical solution.

to expand on RD's comment here, I'll explain a little of why more people != faster release and better product...

Ideally a product will be at its best if only one person is required to create it, because it will be fully coherent then. The world is not ideal however, and multiple people are needed in some cases to improve what a product lacks, and other cases to complete the tasks a single person is simply incapable of completing alone.

Given enough time, a single man can -not- create an entire title like is sold for consoles daily. On person will simply not have the skills required to complete every task, and even if they did, the number of resources(As in art assets, plot, scripting, music) it requires to finish any one console game (no matter how crappy) cannot be made in any feasible amount of time before the entire technology behind said game was obsolete.

Even asset-economizing games that reuse everything for everything, require a lot of resources. (I'm not talking about retro games like Galaga or anything)

This is why we add people... to finish resources, and to catch mistakes... however this is also where the misconception arises. There can very easily be TOO MANY people doing any one thing. Especially writing. More writers means more people weighing in their opinions, which inevitably leads to a product that satisfies no one. This is called Product by Committee. It will contain features meant to appease individual members of the group, and by the time all of these features are implemented, the end result is not something that appeals to any of them, and by proxy, none of us.

This doesn't mean two people working on something is bad of course, but there is a peak in the graph that optimizes the risks of too many people, with the costs of too few.

An example, if you have 45 chefs all cooking one dish, it would taste awful... Each would try to make it into something she wanted, and there would be a mixture of so many flavors it would be utterly disgusting.

There is also the question of quality in the workers themselves. Not all artists are the same, some may be better, some may be worse, some may be equal but not suited to the same kind of artwork... Some artists will be best at doing gritty zombie wastelands, and others will be best at cartoony flowery fluff... These kinds of artists may be able to work together, but the chances of that are slim.

Essentially, since we rely on human beings as the task force for our productions, we cannot in fact rely on shear numbers and expect quality and expedience.

For a long time, however, Capcom DID manage to use this brute force method of numbers to accomplish their spriting needs. They in fact hired people off the street to work for a day on individual keyframes of animations... Hiring over 600 people daily for a single day's work, they managed to cut a profit and complete the art task quickly... This is due to having redundancy and being able to simply throw out any frames that didn't meet the standard... as they had others to replace it... however, that only works with 2D animation... and no other field of work really. Since games are 95%+ full 3D anymore... this just doesn't work. It was interesting while it lasted though.


But back on the subject of FF and how can it be improved...
References. Cameos. Nonsensical storyline-unrelated throwbacks to other games. The bastard sword in the Lindblum Weapon shop, to which Zidane mentions a "spiky headed guy having something like this."
"Whatever you do, don't call him Atma"~FFX(2?) a reference to the misromanization of Ultima Weapon.
Hell, I'd like to see someone make mention of "Off course" and "No way," a typoed yes or no choice in FFVII.

I know they're trying to pull together all their terminology lately, making sure all the spellings on all the enemies are the same, renaming and retconing old skills with the ragaja theme... But I think what the series needs is LESS coherence. Less coherence in terms of strictness of pattern. They're doing exactly what they think we expect them to do... and because of it, they're not giving us anything to get excited about.

I'll admit though, I thought Lightning was a nice twist on the pattern... a female player protagonist that wasn't a girly girl with emotional issues coming out of every oriface... Hell, she was practically Cloud with ovaries. It was nice to see that such a character could finally exist... yeah... it was nice... until I realized how much the rest of the game sucked.

You know what would be really interesting? Take a level in Pokemon and give the player the choice of character gender... Oh but they'd never do that, because that would mean they'd have to either write a story unique to each character... or acknowledge that homosexuals exist in a fashion that isn't played for lols.

But even so, they could give us back a little freedom in the character... I don't want them to turn it into TESVI or anything... but well... ok lets start at the beginning... Name and Class. Final Fantasy I. That was one of the revolutionary things about FF, was that the characters were quite literally whoever you made them. There was a Thief, or maybe he was a Mage... His name was Bill... or was it Jim?

I think that's part of the problem... Not even the class thing, I can understand a character having a set class as it gives good dev control over a game mechanic... But not letting us name the characters anymore? After all the YEARS we could? And why? So you could make the voice acting fit perfectly? So you could make small puns about the names? Does anyone care?

It worked pretty well in FFX I thought. You never actually heard Tidus' name spoken allowed. Sure I'll bet it was hard to do all that writing and never say the player's name...

But would it be a really big issue if the FMV's said Chloe aloud while the subtitles said Lilly? If you did away with the concept of "every line must be voiced" it wouldn't even be terribly noticeable.

But that's just a few more suggestions of really small details I think would make a big difference in recapturing the feel of FF's past.

[Radical_Dreamer]

Mr Bekkler, I was responding specifically to the initial post.

Satoh, you aren't expanding on my post. That's your own logic, and it has nothing to do with the experiences that lead to my comment. Having one person doing a game by themselves isn't ideal either; specialization is a good thing. I've never seen a situation where a bulk of writers was the problem, and either I'm misreading you or you have vastly overestimated the influence writers have in the game industry.

[Mr Bekkler]

I see. Thanks for clarifying!

What I'd like to see is a Final Fantasy that the developers are passionate about. Something their whole team wants to play. I don't think they've felt that way since at least as far back as FFX. Maybe even VII.

I'd also like to see something that fits the title "Final Fantasy", like actually have a fantasy setting instead of all this futuristic technology-driven-setting stuff, in a world similar to LotR or Game of Thrones. That is to say, a fantasy setting with a rich background story that unfolds with the main story and integrates into it. A place where magic used to happen but is gone, and has been brought back one final time to do...something.

Next, I'd like to see something that isn't extremely cliche in the FF/rpg universe. No damsel in distress(maybe a man in distress instead) no black and white good vs. evil, no amnesiac main character, no playables who are annoying kid characters or stupid little monsters that are supposed to be cute, basically no rehashing previous stories or game character archetypes, just real people with real problems and real faults who find themselves pulled into a crazy fantasy world as a proxy for the player.

They should use names that don't sound ridiculous. The names for just about everything are really bad in FF13. Character names (Vanille, Lightning, Hope, Snow, Fang), artifact names (L'Cie, Fal'Cie, Cie'th, Eidolon, Crystarium) Paradigm names (Ravager, Synergist, Commando, etc). I liked the name Pulse and Sazh, and that's about it. Everything else sounded very inappropriate for its purpose.

Lastly, no crystals. Stop it. Crystals suck. For reals.

[ZealKnight]

Mr Bekkler, I was responding specifically to the initial post.

Well, I was referring to the basic grunt programming. Not systems or whatever. More like scenery like rocks and trees. I remember an interview where a group of programmers were tell us about what they were working on was scenery. Their job was making sure the game was pretty. Spending a week designing a rock. I remember a designer said she spent a whole week programming a rock. I'm not talking about a writer. I'm not talking about a system. I'm not talking about ideas. I'm talking about all the grunt work. Which they are currently passing off to other developers. Like Tri-Ace. They did it in XIII-2 and they already said they are doing it again.

As for you, Mr. Bekkler, it sounds as if you don't want to play an FF game. No cute monsters? No Cactuar? And no pure evil villian? Did you play XIII-2 Caius isn't pure evil. He's evil from a loving place. Vayne isn't even really evil. And it's not very good. No Crystals? FFVIII was a good example of why I always want crystals in an FF game.

[Boo the Gentleman Caller]

Bekkler, to add to your most recent though, I think that's what they're trying to achieve with Final Fantasy Versus XIII. The game is pretty much Entourage-meets-Final Fantasy, hahaha...

[tushantin]

Satoh, you aren't expanding on my post. That's your own logic, and it has nothing to do with the experiences that lead to my comment. Having one person doing a game by themselves isn't ideal either; specialization is a good thing. I've never seen a situation where a bulk of writers was the problem, and either I'm misreading you or you have vastly overestimated the influence writers have in the game industry.

Pardon me, I haven't even read the thread at the moment (I haven't the time currently), but since your posts were concise my eyes fell upon them. While your experiences may be accurate pertaining to "number of workers" and "quality of resources" in game development, Satoh's suggestions* aren't precisely wrong either.

Adding more workers DOES produce a better game faster, but the problem lies in management of resource creation and integration. That's just the "secondary" problem, because with good management you can speed up production farms. The primary problem, however, is the production costs vs estimated profit. It's risky to spend too much when you're not confident of earning them back from the market, and the artists do tend to put their hearts into what they do.

The management of production pertaining to the number of workers depend on specialization, but even then the key-specialists are a handful (keyframe artists, art-directors, concept artists, cinematographers, etc.) -- after that, the management is scheduled and forwarded to (what ZealKnight likes to call) "Grunt Workers", who take on the tedious and hard-work of actually producing the "idea" that the key-specialists created. This is done in a hierarchy:

For instance, you're working on a film. One fellow writes the script. That's divided into there Acts, hence between one to three Storyboard Artists collaborating with the Art Director and Cinematographer (working on Animatics if in case of 2D). The contents of each storyboard is divided into sections, which is distributed among ten keyframe artists. Under each Keyframe artist, there are 50 more animators. Why 50? It's because those 50 animators actually consist of in-betweeners, outliners, and colorists. Then with the storyboard or keyframe artists (depending on which studio you're working for) there will also be background artists. Normally one would say that these numbers are actually more than enough for a studio, but strangely, companies like Ubisoft and others tend to outsource their work to India and China not only because production is cheaper, but they've also plenty of grunt work to distribute which may simply be too much for their primary studios in the First World.

If you've ever drawn 24 frames (even if ONLY outlining, without the tedious background) for each second of a footage, only to end up redoing them because the art director didn't like it enough, you know why they require so many workers.  But then again, that's only the art side. Something tells me the technical side is even worse.


*I've only skimmed through Satoh's posts, so there's a good chance I might be missing details.

[Mr Bekkler]

As for you, Mr. Bekkler, it sounds as if you don't want to play an FF game. No cute monsters? No Cactuar?

I don't mind them that much, I just don't want to be forced to use them as playable characters. In FF6 it was cool using Mog because you didn't have to. The other characters were pretty much badass. In FF7 Cait Sith kinda sucked, but Red13 was pretty badass. I maintain that there could be a really good game made by combining everyone's best ideas in this thread, and that cute characters don't make a game good.

And no pure evil villian? Did you play XIII-2 Caius isn't pure evil. He's evil from a loving place. Vayne isn't even really evil. And it's not very good. No Crystals? FFVIII was a good example of why I always want crystals in an FF game.

I haven't played 12 or 13-2 yet, just the 13-2 demo, and I've seen the FF13Versus trailer.

I've always thought "crystals" were just a lame plot device. At least call them something else. CT had dreamstone, sunstone, etc. CC had frozen flame, dragon tear, etc. Crystal doesn't do anything for me, but for some reason giving it a different name gives it substance somehow.

[ZealKnight]

I've always thought "crystals" were just a lame plot device. At least call them something else. CT had dreamstone, sunstone, etc. CC had frozen flame, dragon tear, etc. Crystal doesn't do anything for me, but for some reason giving it a different name gives it substance somehow.

They've been doing that since VI.

FFVI - Magicite
FFVII - Materia
FFIX - The Crystal and I guess Jewels
FFX - Spheres
FFXII - Nethecite, the Sun-Cryst, and the giant one in giruvegan (although I don't think they said it's name)
FFXIII - Fal'Cie? Although they really overused the "crystal" root with Crystogen

Although I think they usually do a good job with it. XIII was the first time where there were too many crystals. At least XIII made them annoying.

[Mr Bekkler]

Magicite, Materia, Nethecite, all sound great. It's specifically the words "Crystal", or "Sphere", or "Grid" for that matter, that I find annoyingly uninspired. Though Spheres and Grids were used for a more practical purpose, a Crystal is just like a placeholder for an important item they didn't want to create a back-story for. It's a bland, vanilla plot device that could just use a drop of other flavor to make it intriguing. "Crystarium" was even kind of cool, but yeah, 13's reliance on the word "Crystal" is one of its several flaws in my opinion as well.

If they called it literally anything else I wouldn't be so adverse to it. Again, though, my opinion of 13 is negative mostly due to the name-bombing with crazy fake words that you're supposed to memorize instead of actually getting into the gameplay, you end up stuck on nomenclature.

L'Cie get a Focus from a Fal'Cie and if they don't fulfill their Focus they become Cie'th, while if they do fulfill it they become Crystal, but along the way some get Eidolons and can use their Crystarium to appoint Crystogen Points to their Crystal Grid to level up.

Sounds horrible, right? Change the names, though and it's actually kind of cool:

The Branded get a Focus from the Divine and if they don't fulfill their Focus they become The Corrupted, while if they do fulfill it they become The Frozen, but along the way some get Guardians/Summons and can use their Crystarium to appoint Experience to their Level Grid to level up.

I don't mind breaking from tradition once in a while (FF7 is a good example of the right kind of breaking from tradition that proved very popular), but they don't need to rebrand EVERYTHING, they can keep some familiarity in the naming conventions that allow the player to sort of already have a clue what's going on and how to play, while still having original-sounding items, events, characters, and locations.

[Radical_Dreamer]

Well, I was referring to the basic grunt programming. Not systems or whatever. More like scenery like rocks and trees. I remember an interview where a group of programmers were tell us about what they were working on was scenery. Their job was making sure the game was pretty. Spending a week designing a rock. I remember a designer said she spent a whole week programming a rock. I'm not talking about a writer. I'm not talking about a system. I'm not talking about ideas. I'm talking about all the grunt work. Which they are currently passing off to other developers. Like Tri-Ace. They did it in XIII-2 and they already said they are doing it again.

I don't think you remember that interview correctly. Your commentary incorrectly assigns tasks to team members. It's clear that you aren't familiar with the process of game development. That's fine; most people aren't. This paragraph is basically equivalent to saying that nine men could have a baby in a month.

Again, I realize your frustrations, but adding more people does not in principle make for a faster or better production. While tushantin doesn't get the details quite right, he is correct in identifying that management matters a lot in these situations, and the bigger the team, the more complex that becomes. Add to that the fact that not all tasks can be done in parallel, and it becomes clear that adding more people cannot even in principle always yield faster results. This is known as blocking. For example, if I need a piece of art to finish a level I'm working on, but tushantin hasn't produced it yet, then I am blocked on that task by tushantin. Having more level designers or artists isn't going to fix that.

I wish there were an easy answer to this problem. Believe me, the difficulties of game development are far worse for those on the inside. But adding people only works up to a point, and only when management is equipped to handle the team size and distribution.

[Satoh]

I've always thought "crystals" were just a lame plot device. At least call them something else. CT had dreamstone, sunstone, etc. CC had frozen flame, dragon tear, etc. Crystal doesn't do anything for me, but for some reason giving it a different name gives it substance somehow.

They've been doing that since VI.

FFVI - Magicite
FFVII - Materia
FFIX - The Crystal and I guess Jewels
FFX - Spheres
FFXII - Nethecite, the Sun-Cryst, and the giant one in giruvegan (although I don't think they said it's name)
FFXIII - Fal'Cie? Although they really overused the "crystal" root with Crystogen

Although I think they usually do a good job with it. XIII was the first time where there were too many crystals. At least XIII made them annoying.

Correction, since FFI. The Four Heroes of Light started the game with the four legendary elemental crystals. That was sort of a plot point, though it was hard to get the plot in that game being that there were no real 'major plot exposition scenes' all over... At least I didn't get the plot until I read about it after finishing the game. It seemed a bit like they were the world's errand-boys to me.

In any case though, every Final Fantasy in the main series has had a crystal that was somehow important to it.

[ZealKnight]

Correction, since FFI. The Four Heroes of Light started the game with the four legendary elemental crystals. That was sort of a plot point, though it was hard to get the plot in that game being that there were no real 'major plot exposition scenes' all over... At least I didn't get the plot until I read about it after finishing the game. It seemed a bit like they were the world's errand-boys to me.

In any case though, every Final Fantasy in the main series has had a crystal that was somehow important to it.

Correction, I was talking about renaming crystals.

I don't think you remember that interview correctly. Your commentary incorrectly assigns tasks to team members. It's clear that you aren't familiar with the process of game development. That's fine; most people aren't. This paragraph is basically equivalent to saying that nine men could have a baby in a month.

Again, I realize your frustrations, but adding more people does not in principle make for a faster or better production. While tushantin doesn't get the details quite right, he is correct in identifying that management matters a lot in these situations, and the bigger the team, the more complex that becomes. Add to that the fact that not all tasks can be done in parallel, and it becomes clear that adding more people cannot even in principle always yield faster results. This is known as blocking. For example, if I need a piece of art to finish a level I'm working on, but tushantin hasn't produced it yet, then I am blocked on that task by tushantin. Having more level designers or artists isn't going to fix that.

I wish there were an easy answer to this problem. Believe me, the difficulties of game development are far worse for those on the inside. But adding people only works up to a point, and only when management is equipped to handle the team size and distribution.

I wish I could find that interview for you, but it was by kotaku before XIII was released. Perhaps the time she spent on the rock is not remembered exactly, but I do remember her talking about the detail she put into a single rock. But what I'm even more curious about you, is the simple phrase "This paragraph is basically equivalent to saying that nine men could have a baby in a month." I don't understand. Maybe it's the fact that the I haven't eaten all day and it's late enough for bed. But I'm just telling you what SE says. They are literally outsourcing this grunt work. They just announced that. And that's what I'm referring to. I'm going to just guess that maybe if SE is outsourcing that work, then it can be done by anyone and that perhaps more workers and make it work faster.

[Kodokami]

To be honest, I think the best thing that could happen to the series right now is if a small group of indie developers that haven't even become a "company" yet, were to make a game and bootleg it as "the next final fantasy."

*looks around* Where's Faustwolf when you need him? We have the technology, we can rebuild the series. Make it faster, stronger, better.

Why reboot Final Fantasy when we could make our own unique game, without ties to an existing franchise? Looking back through this thread... there are a ton of damn good ideas! And an indie game can't be C&Ded.