The problem is that aside from letting Toby Fox shine, the old heads of gaming haven’t let the new ones do what they want. They haven’t passed the torch, so to speak.
It’s a problem in the whole industry. For example the Sonic Mania guys were really good and had great ideas but then the Sega heads decided to kneecap them with stupid mandates and rushed production and then told them to fuck off all together in favour of the old heads for Sonic Superstars. Boomers see anyone younger than them as competition instead of their legacy.
Outside of indie gaming anyone under 50 in the industry is unable to fully express themselves as they’re under the thumb of a modern, highly capitalist, investor controlled market instead of the emerging, experimental wild west that their predecessors enjoyed. As soon as corporate saw there was money in the industry it was over.
They have the right idea of poaching indie devs, but without that creative control and freedom they’re always going to struggle (unless their name is Toby Fox, I don’t know how he managed to stay in control of his vision in this industry)
It’s a problem literally everywhere. My employer as a bunch of 75+ year old people still working. Granted its all bullshit finance stuff they do, but like, fucking retire you fucking losers. I know for a fact some of them definitely have money and at least 2 houses.
I agree, except that Nintendo has somehow managed to actually be the exception to that. Tears of the Kingdoms mechanics (fuse, ascend and rewind) are the type of mechanics you would have seen some flash or indie game a decade ago and would have been wowed by, except seamlessly incorporated into a giant open world action adventure game. For all their shitty business practices and shovel ware Mario party games, they have somehow managed to leave some actual free design space for creatives to mess around in at the base of their biggest franchises and that’s more than I can say for like all of the rest of the industry.
You have a good point. I liked what they did with Odyssey and Forgotten Land. It really is a shame about the price thing, because that New Donkey Kong they announced for the Switch 2 is the first time I’ve looked at a DK game and gone “Huh, that’s interesting.”
Undertale sold well enough to the point that it granted him financial independence and allowed him to work on Deltarune at his own pace.
Maybe even to the point where he got sidetracked too much, because Chapter 3 and 4 definitely took much longer than he expected. It was supposed to release with Chapter 5 after all.
in one of the newsletters, he said a lot of what kept three and four so long was getting the framework and tool-set fleshed out, so it will be easier to build subsequent chapters off of it.
The problem is that aside from letting Toby Fox shine, the old heads of gaming haven’t let the new ones do what they want. They haven’t passed the torch, so to speak.
It’s a problem in the whole industry. For example the Sonic Mania guys were really good and had great ideas but then the Sega heads decided to kneecap them with stupid mandates and rushed production and then told them to fuck off all together in favour of the old heads for Sonic Superstars. Boomers see anyone younger than them as competition instead of their legacy.
Outside of indie gaming anyone under 50 in the industry is unable to fully express themselves as they’re under the thumb of a modern, highly capitalist, investor controlled market instead of the emerging, experimental wild west that their predecessors enjoyed. As soon as corporate saw there was money in the industry it was over.
They have the right idea of poaching indie devs, but without that creative control and freedom they’re always going to struggle (unless their name is Toby Fox, I don’t know how he managed to stay in control of his vision in this industry)
It’s a problem literally everywhere. My employer as a bunch of 75+ year old people still working. Granted its all bullshit finance stuff they do, but like, fucking retire you fucking losers. I know for a fact some of them definitely have money and at least 2 houses.
I agree, except that Nintendo has somehow managed to actually be the exception to that. Tears of the Kingdoms mechanics (fuse, ascend and rewind) are the type of mechanics you would have seen some flash or indie game a decade ago and would have been wowed by, except seamlessly incorporated into a giant open world action adventure game. For all their shitty business practices and shovel ware Mario party games, they have somehow managed to leave some actual free design space for creatives to mess around in at the base of their biggest franchises and that’s more than I can say for like all of the rest of the industry.
You have a good point. I liked what they did with Odyssey and Forgotten Land. It really is a shame about the price thing, because that New Donkey Kong they announced for the Switch 2 is the first time I’ve looked at a DK game and gone “Huh, that’s interesting.”
Undertale sold well enough to the point that it granted him financial independence and allowed him to work on Deltarune at his own pace.
Maybe even to the point where he got sidetracked too much, because Chapter 3 and 4 definitely took much longer than he expected. It was supposed to release with Chapter 5 after all.
in one of the newsletters, he said a lot of what kept three and four so long was getting the framework and tool-set fleshed out, so it will be easier to build subsequent chapters off of it.
Honestly would I prefer that games release at a slower rate
I want shorter playtimes from fewer games released farther apart and no I’m not kidding.