For starters they keep making mostly the same game over and over. They're essentially doing the Bethesda shtick except their end results are better. Sticking to stuff that can mostly be made in the same engine as the thing you finished 15 minutes ago is going to shave off a lot of time compared to making a new game.
Of course that's not to shit on incremental improvements or engine reuse or anything. That is just sound thinking as long as the games are good.
They also had great success with Sekiro, which was (and still is) very different from their other titles.
It's still the same engine and general gameplay concept though. The combat was the big difference.
I'd like to add that from a technical point of view, their games don't really push the boundaries and at least on PC, their games often aren't the most polished. Elden Ring had severe shader compilation stutter at launch and a 60 FPS limit - which is a big no-no on PC if you ask me. Nothing game breaking like the state some publishers (EA) release their games in, but not great either.
Not to mention they were actively hostile towards ultrawide gamers. The engine would render it, but then put black bars overtop the sides. Kind of amazing really that level of hatred towards gamers.
The three games I was most interested in last year were Kerbal Space Program 2, Cities Skylines 2, and Zelda Tears of the Kingdom. Two of them had newly designed game engines. The third used the engine from the previous game.
Guess which one I enjoyed playing the most?
In software development sometimes you do have to rewrite some code to improve things. But if you have something that functions really well, it's better to be just continually making improvements. A lot of what makes a game great is going to be artwork, story, creative level design, creative enemy design, etc. But all of that work can be wasted if the software is buggy, which will happen if most or all of the code is written on a tight deadline.
Just so surprising that treating staff well and keeping them around lets you do consistently high quality work. Boggles the mind really.
Well, this may not actually be the case. 7 or so years ago FromSoftware was pretty notoriously known to Japanese workers in the gaming industry to have very harsh working conditions, even among other Japanese studios that also have harsh conditions. Allegedly programmers at FromSoftware at that time were making an annual salary of only $27k USD. Compare this with Konami, who was paying an annual salary of $40k USD for the same position.
Its possible in the last 7 years things might have changed, but Japanese companies are usually very resistant to change. Japanese work culture honestly sucks, I would never want to.live in Japan because of this.
EDIT: You can see here that the overall worker satisfaction rating for FromSoftware is only 2.8 out of 5, which seems to be nearly the same as it used to be.
NOTE: Some readers may see something about the "Whiteness/Blackness" of the company. This has nothing to do with race or racism. This is a slang term from Japanese culture that refers to how ethical a company is. A company that is very unethical (overworking employees, borderline illegal treatment of employees, etc) is called a "Black Company," and everyone will tell you to avoid them. Conversely a "White Company" would be a very ethical company and one that everyone would be fighting each other to work for.
Ah so FromSoft went pure black company tendency.
Well, I wouldn't call From a Black Company. 2.4 White rating is almost exactly in the middle.
A real Black Company would be something like the V-Tuber Agency Wactor (and more recently maybe Nijisanji). This company has engaged in behaviour that is legitimately abusive to its employees, to the point that nearly all of its liver talents have quit.
For Black Companies, it is most common that there is bullying or some other kind of abuse from higher ups, as well as threats of disrepute if the abused employees quit voluntarily. This doesn't seem to be the case with FromSoftware. Just that they don't pay overtime because it is considered voluntary (incredibly common among Japanese companies) and pay below industry average.
keeping them around
It's rare for employees to move companies in Japan. A lot of people will work for the same company their whole life. Japanese companies aren't really known for treating their employees well either.
I'd guess what they're doing well is hiring employees that are very passionate. I hear the anime industry is the same in that people who are in it are willing to work themselves to death because they want to work on big name projects
Just be clear, there is a reason that's not in the quotes of the title. The author basically makes up that they're "treating staff well* because they're not randomly firing people right now. (The empowering bit is basically fabricated)
This studio is not just known for an even by Japanese standards exploitative work culture, but it also reuses assets of all kinds far more liberally than other developers. Art is by far the biggest cost factor in games development and they are taking significant shortcuts wherever they can.
I will say that reusing assets is 100% okay, and I actually wish more studios did this. You don't need to make everything from scratch. It's okay to reuse the thing you made previously.
It is definitely a smart move. But still, maybe we can retire the Asylum Demon?
They wisely stick to AAA games and avoid the hassle of AAAA games like ubisoft
what the hell does the number of As even mean? how does one quantify how many As your game has? if I made a game today and shipped it how many As could I get today?
Recently one of the executives at Ubisoft called Skull and Bones a AAAA game. Now the internet is dunking on it.
They also release real products and not "games as a service" shit.
Japan as a whole is fairly notorious for 24/7 work culture. The way he repeatedly mentions their quick production and pivots feels a bit… crunchy.
So frequently? Dude it's been like 2 years since they announced DLC for their last game and it's only finally coming this June assuming it does not get delayed.
They released a whole ass other game in that window.
Armored Core was pretty dope too. Saying as an old fan
But...they don't? Their mainline games are always a few years apart (with the exception of Bloodborne, which they had a separate team doing concurrently).
Unless you're referring to the other games they publish that no one really knows about or comments on? I don't think Metal Wolf Chaos XD, Déraciné, or Monster Hunter Diary: Poka Poka Airou Village DX should really factor into the discussion.
The dev team's boss is literally an elden ring boss.
Massive, massive whips.
Are we just going to pretend Armored Core 6 wasn't a development hell for a good while to the point that the original producer left to do Daemon X Machina?
You got any sources for that claim? Because quick googling makes me think it's BS.
EDIT: For anyone not wanting to read the rest, it is BS.
What is a AAA game? A game released by a large publisher? Is that the only criteria? Then the answer is "money".
If a AAA game has to meet some level of quality control before it's called AAA, why is Ubisoft and EA considered AAA?
Negative. I don't know if you've heard, but Ubisoft is AAAA now.
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