Square "avoiding further large scale internal development"

[Lex]

According to this article, Square-Enix are changing their development strategy.

Motomu Toriyama, director of Final Fantasy XIII and XIII-2, has recently spoken about the problems that occurred during the development of those games, and how Square Enix is looking to avoid them in the future.

At it’s peak, the development team of Final Fantasy XIII consisted of over 200 members: 30 programmers, 36 game designers and a whopping 180 artists. The problem, according to Toriyama, came in trying to communicate with such a large team:

“How do you communicate to everyone in the department what the drive of the game is?”

Added problems came as the team tried to keep as much about the game under its belt as possible, only revealing details to the press and public as they needed to:

“Because it’s a large-scale project, we had to keep it secret, but this led to user testing happening way too late in the process.”

What this led to was the inability for the development team to address a lot of the feedback player testing offered them for Final Fantasy XIII. This is the reason there were so many little tweaks and changes to the combat and exploration in XIII-2: Square simply didn’t have enough time to address the presented issues due to the problems such a large team offered. Toriyama believes that things went better with the play testing for XIII-2, but that things could be better still.

To that end, Square is looking to make some fundamental changes to its development strategy. The first is that development teams will now play toward a ‘monthly milestone’ style of development. Basically, at the beginning of the month, the development team will set out goals for what it wants to achieve by the time the month ends. This will (hopefully) focus the team, increasing the efficiency of development.

Secondly, Square is no longer partaking in such large-scale internal development. Basically, Square will be focusing on more distributed and outsourced development for larger projects, allowing teams outside of the company to take on some tasks to ensure that the monthly goals (and release dates, one would assume) are met.

Square Enix is pretty notorious for lengthy development times. With this change in their development strategy, hopefully we’ll see these lengthy developments drastically reduced. As an example, this may mean that we just might get to play Final Fantasy Versus XIII before the 12th console generation (we’re in the seventh, now, according to Wikipedia). Of course, it’s just as likely that Versus XIII is the last large-scale internal development project Square will take on, just to ensure that we have to keep waiting. Still, this is heartening. Maybe the next PlayStation and Xbox will see the release of Kingdom Hearts III.

I was going to make a joke regarding an HD remake of Final Fantasy VII, but I figured it would be in poor taste. I just thought you all should know that.

What I got from that is, they're firing a bunch of people and outsourcing. Odd.

 

[Cthulhu]

ITT: Square admits their development process sucks and they don't do playtesting until it's too late. Fix it by introducing a half-arsed vague sort-of-but-not-quite agile development process defined by 'we do monthly milestones' and pulling a FFXIV and outsource development to China, with great successes in the past.

 

[Max Payne]

work's hard

someone else do it for me

 

[Tifabelle]

don't they like... have meetings or something?
how is outsourcing going to help with communication?

 

[Octo]

I don't know enough about how games are made these days, so this probably wont make sense, but like...isn't there a core bunch of people, the story writers, the visual artists, gameplay designers...and then everyone else - programmers, graphic uh...artist people who do the donkey work?

So the core design team should say to the other guys 'this is what we want go do this kthanks' and then they do it. Whereas what they've said up there seems to imply 200 people pulling in different directions?

I mean, if theyre saying too many cooks spoil the broth I totally get that. I just don't see how this solves their problem

Also, can we just have it in future whenever SE related news crops up just title it 'Square-Enix says a thing 1, 2, 3 etc'

 

[Ⓐaron]

This might not actually be a terrible move.

They certainly know how to do graphics well. I haven't really looked into the new engine they've been working on (Luminous), but I've heard testimony from people who have who claim that it is superior even to the Unreal Engine 4. High praise, indeed. Though of course, how efficient it is on various pieces of hardware will also be an important consideration in how widely adopted it will be.

What would really be a smart move is for them to license this engine to other up-and-coming developers who have plenty of fresh ideas, but don't have the wherewithal to develop such an engine on their own. That could really be a boon both to Square Enix and to the other devs, since it would enable SE to focus on something they're demonstrably very good at while enabling other devs to push out much more impressive-looking products.

In the case of Bravely Default, Square Enix will manage the project and work on things like game design, concept art and FMVs while outsourcing things like scenario, music creation, programming, assets creation, and so on. If this works for them, then it could be a benefit.

This is the first thing I've heard from Square Enix in quite some time that didn't sound completely retarded.

 

[ForceStealer]

It's not a bad idea IF they mean looking to how they handle small development and determine how to scale it up. Birth By Sleep was downright surprising how good it was, and few have complained about their handheld games apart from the fact that they're handheld. Figure out what they're doing right with this games and find a way to efficiently scale that up.

But yes, it sounds more like they mean "screw it and rely on Eidos."

 

[Arianna]

According to this article, Square-Enix are changing their development strategy.

What I got from that is, they're firing a bunch of people and outsourcing. Odd.

Which I think is both a promise and a problem for businesses. That's another story all together. In other words, that's probably what's going to happen. Sad, too; if there are layoffs, I really hope everyone can find replacement jobs, equal or better to what they have now.

Or, if I may make a suggestion that will never reach their eyes and ears, most likely: don't keep everything so 'under the belt' as they say. Why the big secrets? Fans are fans and they will play if they want, and like what they hear/see. Of course, this does depend on if you're one who likes to be spoiled () or not.

 

[null]

ITT: Square admits their development process sucks and they don't do playtesting until it's too late. Fix it by introducing a half-arsed vague sort-of-but-not-quite agile development process defined by 'we do monthly milestones' and pulling a FFXIV and outsource development to China, with great successes in the past.

I love how these dumbasses are just now figuring out the concept of a sprint.

 

[Blade]

Years ago (before FFX came out) and I was young and stupid...I sent a letter to Square-Enix offering a ton of suggestions about how they could revise their system for Summons....

Guess what happened in FFX...

If they're running out of ideas, they're probably hoping the fanbase can think up stuff....sigh.

 

[Cat Rage Room]

These bots are getting better and better.

 

[Tennyo]

Is someone going to ban it?

 

[Cthulhu]

Sorted, and I'd appreciate if one of you guys would hit the 'report' icon (

) next time, seeing that I doubt the staff can be arsed to read every single new poast, .