THE MODERN SQUARE ENIX DEVELOPMENT CYCLE

[flonnebonne]

1. Lock Tetsuya Nomura in a room and give him some acid so he can start drawing up...something. Something involving belts and hearts. NO EDITING ALLOWED.

2. Make pretty trailers based on whatever Nomura drew. Trailer must include mockups of gameplay so people will understand that development is definitely well on its way.

3. Plan out all side games and side movies and mobile games. Hire Sean Bean to play all side characters.

4. Make sure to announce several bombshells at E3. Watch hype grow like a weed. Send out cheques to shareholders.

5. Five years later: Think about actually developing the game.

6. Hire Outsourced Company to develop the game. Bring them to the room where acidified Nomura scribbled his soul in blood all over the walls. Tell them to Figure This Out. All employees of Outsourced Company receive free leather coats for inspiration.

7. Five years later: Realize that Outsourced Company is a film company and not a game company. Start sweating. Fetch Nomura from rehab and tell him to Fix Everything. With his well-organized and highly analytical mind, surely he can find solutions to all these problematic gameplay elements, like the fact that there is no gameplay.

8. Twenty years later: Quality Control says the game has neither quality nor control. Someone compares the game to a fetal monstrosity theatening to rip apart time and space, Chrono Cross style. Interesting idea, but the shareholders are starting to Panic, and the dev floor is filled with Heartless and Nobodies in leather coats.

9. Call Hajime Tabata and beg him to Fix Everything. Tabata politely explains that he doesn't do that anymore.

10. Cut out half of the planned storyline. Keep all the cutscenes (shiny!) and add more cooking/fishing/cell phone mini-games (more shiny!).

11. Release the game to the public. Make Nomura do some frantic hand waving and say it was all “creative genius choices,” not budget cuts.

12. Profit.

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POST-LAUNCH DEVELOPMENT CYCLE

1. Release some rage-inducing DLCs and mobile games.

2. Profit.

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...Have I mentioned that complaining about Kingdom Hearts 3 is now my full-time job?