First there were rumors of Team Ico boss Fumito Ueda leaving Sony, and now The Last Guardian's executive producer quits? What is it about this highly anticipated game that is making waves over there in Sony world?
Get this: Yoshifusa Hayama, The Last Guardian's executive producer, is leaving to make Facebook games. His new role is creative director at Bossa Studios. Eurogamer says that he'll work on the company's first 3D game.
I like where this guy's head is on social games:
"The future of gaming is definitely online and thanks to recent developments with Flash 11, there is no reason why a social game can no longer be as visually stunning and as compelling as the big console titles."
He continues: "Together at Bossa we have plans to bring a plethora of games to Facebook and eventually other appropriate social media channels, which include 3D elements and can be enjoyed by all age and interest groups."
Still, just about anyone would see this as a step down. What the hell is going on over there?
Dale North is Destructoid's Editor-In-Chief, a founding editor, and specialist in Japanese gaming. An accomplished musician, Dale was reporting from Japan during the earthquakes of 2011. Luckily, he got the fuck out alive and is home in America now with his wife and beloved corgi, Einstein. Dale is also a co-founder of Destructoid's sister anime site
Japanator. Likes Corgis, Sega Saturn, PSP, iPhone, Photographic tools.
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Contest:
5:30 PM on 12.07.2011 | 
This is sad. Fuck casual gamers, fuck bro gamers, fuck iOS/Android games, etc. I wish games were less popular again. Morrowind could be upgraded and we could have an entirely new world... I'd be happy with that. I'll gladly take a step back if it means getting all these fucks out of my hobby.
I know Zenga employees are compensated very well for their work on their games so I can, again, only assume that this man will be getting more money.
U got some serios issues there bud ITS not jus ur hobby INTITLED much?
Don't make me report you to support or Mr. Andy. Dead serious. Stop the trolling.
@Topic:
Hopefully the game will be released. I know it sounds selfish, but more than sometimes I feel the same way as Footbal Religion. I miss when games as entertainment was a niche, underground hobby...
-Sony is focusing on a more kid friendly market in 2012
-Microsoft is becoming more Kinect based, if evidenced by the last E3, which was underwhelming, to say the least.
-The last guardian, almost guaranteed to make a splash critically, and be fap material for the "gaming is art" crowd, has lost its executive producer, to social games.
I don't have a problem with casual gamers, they provide a much needed sales boost, and give gaming more exposure. What I have a problem with, is respected developers making a lesser experience to appeal to a broader audience.
God people don't seem to understand gaming history half as well as they think they do.
Anyways, I think this is a smart move. Neither Ico or SotC were huge successes so it makes sense that this guy would move on to make games that would have a better chance of having more customers while not having to develop them for as long. Whether they'll be successful or not is a different story.
Another thing is lately Sony seems hellbent on sabotaging any goodwill they've had with gamers with the PS Vita and the other moves they've been making with PSN and the like. I think it seems perfectly logical to move on to somewhere else where the company isn't actively attempting to piss off their fanbase.
"Yes because clearly gaming would be where it's at today if Atari and Nintendo hadn't tried to make gaming mainstream....
God people don't seem to understand gaming history half as well as they think they do."
Could you elaborate on that statement some more, if I may ask?
As long as Ueda leads the project, it should still have potential.
"Yes because clearly gaming would be where it's at today if Atari and Nintendo hadn't tried to make gaming mainstream...."
It should have a certain level of popularity but it shouldn't be too popular. MW3 sells how many millions of copies? Fuck that shit.
the same team worked on both games, retard.
BECAUSE MW3 is clearly a bad game BUT realy I still dont get ur point with that antimainstream rant
Anyways, I'm sad to see him go, but if this means that there'll be better Facebook games, I'm all for it :)
By your logic because Monster Hunter is niche over here in the West I should like it yet when if I were to go to Japan where it's popular I should therefore hate it.
Mind you I love Monster Hunter (MGP2G was the first time I ever imported a game back when we didn't think it was coming out), but this stupid childish attitude of making game inclusive isn't just, well, stupid and childish, it's also damaging to gaming as a whole because if you don't expand gaming's popularity you don't get new gamers, which means you are left with a stagnant and shrinking group of gamers that are unable to sustain gaming as production values goes up and customers/revenue goes down. Eventually the industry will just collapse.
Right now my 7 year old nephew is playing Mario World, DKC, NSMB, Link to the Past, and Kirby Superstar Ultra on my old DS (which I gave to him), and he's loving those games to death. If this keeps up I'll make him a gamer for life. When I get a chance I'll let him play Goldeneye Reloaded with me and even Black Ops' Zombie Mode. He watches me play these games. He likes watching me play these games. Shit, he even enjoys watching me play the original Final Fantasy.
I guess by your logic my nephew isn't entitled to enjoy gaming like the rest of the elite few. I also suppose my 50 year old manager isn't entitled to play a 007 game because he happens to be a huge fan of 007. When people like you speak about making games more exclusive it comes across like some petulant preteen trying to act all pretentious and bourgeois.
Social games are so vile. I don't even consider them games, really. From the get-go they're psychologically and economically thought out as schemes to reel in massive amounts of people and extract enough nickles and dimes from that fleshy mass to turn a massive profit. It's just a money sink with a game-y shell on top of it.
And what's so social about social games anyway? Is bugging your friends with annoying messages in hopes that they'll undertake a specific action to grant you more resources to build your lame farm considered social? Fuck no, that's just using your friends for your own gain, effectively turning them into resources.
Evil little social games. Even Wii Shovelware and Taiwapanesian F2P MMO #69395 are on a golden pedestal compared to that shit.
"By your logic because Monster Hunter is niche over here in the West I should like it yet when if I were to go to Japan where it's popular I should therefore hate it. "
No, I consider Monster Hunter to be a good game. If that's what is made and sells 10 million copies... I'm all for gaming become very mainstream. If MW3 is what's made though? Fuck that.
I rather see gaming destroyed than turned into something I don't want (Facebook bullshit, casual gamers getting too much attention, etc). I don't care about what other people enjoy, if it leads to a direction I don't like then fuck them.
I don't want everyone to enjoy this hobby.
"I don't want everyone to enjoy this hobby."
I'm sorry, but I just can't agree with you on this. I find it selfish at best.
I'm not asking you to like Facebook games or anything of the sort, but to consider them the "destruction" of gaming, I find it rather naive. There can be all sorts of games for everybody, and if you want to see more games of the kind you like, then vote with your wallet.
I prefer my mom to enjoy Angry Birds, a fun game in its own right, than her considering gaming a "kids" hobby :)
Yea fuck people liking things! Fuck games becoming an 'acceptable' hobby!
"I prefer my mom to enjoy Angry Birds, a fun game in its own right, than her considering gaming a "kids" hobby :)"
Fuck your mom. I rather she never get involved in video games except for when she's buying them as a gift.
@SteamPunk
"Yea fuck people liking things! Fuck games becoming an 'acceptable' hobby!"
Yes. Generally things get better when they go mainstream. Video games are a mixed barrel but it's mostly negative.
"Fuck your mom. I rather she never get involved in video games except for when she's buying them as a gift."
OK, where do you want me to fuck my mom: your house or mine? You can come over if you want to! :P
Casual games are fine and exist just for that audience and if this guy is going to improve them and make them less grating and shitty, so be it. That will just lead to more people understanding why people play the "hardcore" games.
Everything is gonna be JUST fine, everybody.
Back when GTA3 hit, a lot of us were complaining that everything was going open world. In retrospect, this may have been an overreaction on the part of those people, but given the landscape at the time, it really did feel that way. If I had known how far "me too" would go with gritty realistic Hollywood-esque mookiness a decade later, I myself probably wouldn't have complained so much.
With the wild proliferation of the mainstream market, it seems only natural that the same business models that created the "listen, we like the idea of this fantasy game, but we really need you to make it more palatable for a broader audience if you want us to publish it" mentality would give rise to another perceived honeypot. When opening up everything to a broader audience became incredibly important, it laid the foundation for the logical continuance of that mentality.
We are definitely approaching that point. Social/smart device games are cheaper to make, and allow for far less risk when trying to hit that home run. The industry has more than proven that opening up to a more mainstream audience pays dividends, the numbers are there and easily interpreted. To do so again, with an even more broad audience, would conceivably do just the same.
Maybe, now just maybe, these "non-traditional" forms of gaming pay dividends enough to allow the console market to contract a little, and allow for the kind of financial risk mitigation the industry hasn't seen in a while (arguably, my opinion anyway). What I do hope, however, is that the opening up of broader audience yet will not be treated as the kind of honeypot that the move was treated as this generation.
Yeah, cuz gaming is all and only about the monies! No one ever makes these to genuinely entertain people or make the feel or experience something new!
Well that was long as hell and probably too long for anyone to take the time to read but whatever there's my thoughts on the matter. So here's to hoping that Ueda actually stays and that no one else leaves so that Team Ico can continue to create some of the most wonderful experiences in gaming history.
Gaming is a business and business is about making customers. While Ico and Sotc may sell better than SMT (which I do like, mind you), it isn't exactly selling on the same level as say Super Mario Bros. If you keep making games that have nothing but production values and no actual *replay value* then did you really make a game?
Look at Skyrim. It's selling out like crazy. There is genuine excitement for this game. When I went to a Gamestop to pick up MGS Collection there was a perfectly normal looking couple there to preorder Skyrim. Playing Skyrim I can see why. What I expect we'll get out of The Last Guardian is what we got with SotC. A huge, expansive, beautiful world...with about fuck all inhabiting it outside of the Colossi. Skyrim has huge fucking dragon, giants, bandits, vampires, werewolves, and a whole fuckton of stuff to explore and do and the means to do so in any way that you want. Where is that kind of replay value in SotC?
I'm not hating on people that like those games. But if you are gonna whine about why people aren't getting the "genius" of these games that people don't buy, it's probably because they lack replay value after you've finished it. Even a game like DMC 3 features different playstyles so that people can play in the way that they want, with the weapons they want. Can you do that in SotC?
Making something new doesn't matter much when there's no replay value or content behind it. In Skyrim we got a huge world to explore. In SotC we got a "narrative". Yeah, it's no shock that Skryim is curbstomping a lot RPG games of the last decade.
Someone get this man a medal
This is an entertainment medium we are talking about here. While gaming is indeed a business (what isn't), there is as much to be said about enriching the medium itself as opposed to simply profiting as much as you can off of it. This is broadly understood in all other large entertainment industries, and the reason why you don't get summer blockbusters all year round. Failing to enrich your medium forces you to pander to your most lucrative audiences, as you are no longer trying to push the creative boundaries far enough to find new audiences that could be pulled in by said projects.
A game like Skyrim was made using what was likely a huge team with a huge budget. Not only is this not possible the vast majority of the time, it is also not feasible for the medium, or any medium, to base its success as a whole on the work of a huge, well funded team. If it were possible to have that kind of support all the time, I'm sure people would be jumping all over it.
Can I do that in SotC? No. Can Skyrim move me the way SotC did? Absolutely not. I am more than capable of enjoying both games for exactly what they offer, in their own context, without faulting either of them for what they do not, and simply could not (again, in their own context), do in trying to entertain me.
The fact that we still talk about ICO and SotC to this day is proof enough those kinds of games more than deserve to exist. They stand as a testament to narrative through design. They both told a robust tale without having to sit you down and telling you what it was.
Will these games make huge amounts of money? Fuck no. They audience that responds to that kind of design is small in relation to that of a game like Skyrim. Does that mean that those kinds of games should not be made, as they don't have home run potential? Of course not, though that seems to be the prevailing opinion in large industry circles.
The fact that a lack of huge market success potential is somehow considered a bad thing by anyone, industry and fan alike, should go to show just how much gaming has room to grow as a creative medium. The market for an amazing experience is small compared to that of an amazing piece of interactive entertainment, but to trivialize the former does the entire industry a disservice.
while pretty much everything you said makes sense from a business perspective, it doesnt make it any less saddening to me. if anything, it just makes it moreso.
i understand you gotta take the good with the bad, but this sucks. plain and simple.
Anyway, OneRed's response said things much better than I ever could.
i just wanna pick you up and hug you SO HARD sometimes. that is all.
The thing is, at this point, the "AAA" games model isn't one that is being followed so staunchly because everyone wants to, but more or less because they have to. Publishers have created a situation for themselves that is rife with insurmountable risk, as years of focusing on the Skyrim kind of blockbuster has driven prices through the roof. The situation vanor describes is not one of choice, but one of necessity.
The "smart move", so to speak, was never having driven the industry down this path to begin with, one where a game that sells 1million+ copies and is widely lauded as some of the most well designed games in a generation (IGN rated SotC as the best PS2 game made. Its IGN, but still, if SotC is rated #1 given their readership, that may say something), is considered a failure.
If this was the case here, Hayama would have logically split to work on more lucrative traditional gaming ventures, no? If ICO and SotC were such failures, why not move to making more mainstream console games? Because it isn't the failure of those kinds of games that are driving industry minds to social gaming, it is the failure of the "AAA" games business model as a whole. They're not just being priced out of making niche style games, they're being priced out of making anything on a console.
Vanor and OneRed are the MVPs of the thread.