HOW SQUARE ENIX CAN FIX ITS GAME DEVELOPMENT CYCLE

[flonnebonne]

1. Beg Hironobu Sakaguchi to come back.* This shouldn't be too hard.

2. Ask Sakaguchi to make a game on an SNES cartridge. If you're feeling generous, give him a Chrono Trigger-sized cartridge. Ask the employees who made that FFXIII sprite movie to help out. Beg Yoshitaka Amano and Kaori Tanaka to do the designs. Beg Nobuo Uematsu to do the music, and be nice to him so he doesn't rage-quit and form his own music group.

3. One year later: Playtest the game and make sure it has not morphed into a feature-length film about Sakaguchi's dead mother.

4. Don't release Sakaguchi's game. Keep it a secret.

5. Beg Hajime Tabata to come back.

6. Ask Tabata to turn Sakaguchi's 16-bit game into an AAA blockbuster on PS4/Xbox/Switch/CPU. Be nice to Tabata so he doesn't rage-quit and form a competing game company. Ask Alexander O. Smith to rewrite all the bad dialogue into iambic pentameter. Ask Hikaru Utada to sing a theme song. DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES ALLOW TETSUYA NOMURA ON THE DEV FLOOR. But let him add some anime hair to the sprites, direct some trailers, and make a splash at E3.

7. Profit.

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POST-LAUNCH DEVELOPMENT CYCLE

1. Release Sakaguchi's 16-bit game on handheld and mobile systems.

2. Keep an eye on Nomura. NO RANDOM SPIN-OFF GAMES.

3. Let the execs have a bonding session in a Coleman tent.** Catch some fish. Cook all the meals in FFXV. Make sure Uematsu spends some time in a hot spring.

4. Profit.

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*Kitase or Matsuno would also do. Kitase is still at Square, technically, but I think he just sits around and collects money. Matsuno would be my pick, but Matsuno already rage-quit once or twice? so I think it would be a tough one.

**...Square Enix needs some more women in the leadership ranks, doesn't it?

 

Comments

[lassarina]

thank you, I almost baptized my computer screen with root beer laughing at this. too on-point.

[flonnebonne]

Oh thank GOD someone else knows what I am talking about. It's pretty amazing what you hear about Squeenix nowadays, huh? I would love to be a fly on the wall at a Squeenix exec meeting...

[lassarina]

I mean, it's not even what I've heard, it's just that from the way some of the games have dragged feet to release, it's pretty apparent (if you understand business) that this had to be how it goes...