Forum - View topicNEWS: Game Freak's Junichi Masuda Releases Comment About Pokémon Sword/Shield Games' Pokédex Issue
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Yuvelir
 Posts: 1621 |
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It isn't easy, but that doesn't mean they should shirk it. It's their particular problem but one that comes with benefits. If they don't want to do anything hard, why are they even making games at all? Making games isn't easy. As for the bolded part, speak for yourself. Nobody expects them to be able to change direction in just 4 months, but this whole debacle wouldn't even be relevant until Pokémon Home is released next year. And I bet you by then some fans will have made a "gotta catch 'em all" mod, as the bulk of the challenge is in updating textures. And what about the "next games" they spoke of? Time is absolutely not a constraint for them, yet they intend on going down the path of partial dexes even in the future.
Town is getting too much flack for this. I really can't blame the individuals working at GF for having more interest in a brand new game rather than pokémon, but the brand itself deserves more care and respect than this. If your studio isn't willing to put enough resources and staff into it, then have some other studio who is actually interested make it with your supervision! Then you can keep the profits of a game coming out while your guys are making the kind of games they actually want to make. |
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matt78
Posts: 260 |
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I think the sales for Town are going to take a big hit because of this. I don't fault the people at gamefreak for wanting to try other things. But if they want to expand like that why don't they just hire more people. There have to be thousands of people who would love to work on a Pokemon game while the rest of their staff works on other games. |
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Hal14
 Posts: 707 Location: Heart of africa |
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They have tried other things: Drill dozer, Harmoknight, Giga wrecker,etc. Pokemon wasn;t even the first game they ever made. It's just that nothing else they've made that doesn;t have pokemon on it did well. |
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Animorphimagi
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All these people rushing to help the Pokemon company, saying they don't have the time or people to make 1000+ pokemon...THEY ARE ALREADY MADE.
This "new" pokemon doesn't look much different than Sun/Moon so if they imported every old design that alone would suffice. And STFU about game balance. THIS WAS SOLVED 10+ YEARS AGO! You make 200-400 available for the main game, then release the rest of them post-game in old areas throughout the world. Now, I don't particularly like this philosophy too much, but if you want all the pokemon in the game without balancing issues, they already made the solution... |
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FinalVentCard
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 606 |
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Alright, it's late, but I've got nothing better to do. So let's do some math. Let's use your figure--for fairness, let's say the main game has 400 Pokémon. That means they've gotta import 600 Pokémon into the post-game areas. Let's assume Game Freak's devs are at their "laziest" and are just wholesale copy-and-paste-ing models from Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon. So. 600 Pokémon. Let's ignore textures, because that'll mess with the number--so nothing like gender dimorphism, Vivillion's different color schemes, Pikachu's wrestler outfit, Froufrou's hairstyles, Oricorio's four types, or any other forme variants. Just 600 basic bodies. Assuming that any dev in the office can just find the model on the database (which, frankly, isn't out of the ordinary) and incorporating it into the game goes off without a hitch, let's say that between installing the model into the game and ensuring it works--the rigging is intact, the textures aren't snagging, the animations aren't clipping through the ground, the model is working with the lighting engine. Let's say this guy is working fast and everything goes without a hitch, and it takes two hours to put this Pokémon into the game. Cool! Now, multiply those two hours by 600. 1200 hours. Because Game Freak is humane towards its employees, that means they've got an eight-hour work day. Those 1200 hours come down to thirty work weeks. At two hours per Pokémon, one employee can get in 4 Pokémon a day. "But wait!" you may say. "Game Freak has more than just one person doing designwork!". And you're right! As of 2018, Game Freak has 143 employees. But not all of them are devs. Let's assume that they have a team of 25 people not involved in dev work because they handle the business side of things (public relations, marketing, liaisons with the rest of The Pokémon Company, human resources, payroll, etc). I'm assuming, for the sake of argument, that they just hire some private company to handle cleaning the place. So that's 118 people left, plenty of people to divvy up the work. But hang on--the game isn't done yet. Pokémon Sword and Shield come out on November 15th of this year. As I said earlier, devs are still adding content in--this includes the main 400 Pokémon, the various explorable towns and buildings, programming battles, writing text, finalizing assets, bugtesting, etc. And they still have to reach periodic benchmarks as far as development goes, too. Okay, so then let's be completely mathematical and say that of the remaining 118 devs, half keep working on the main game and the other half work on getting the remaining 600 Pokémon in (this is assuming Game Freak only has 25 non-gamedev-related employees and 118 people dedicated to dev work). I can't calculate how many man hours this takes away from the main project, so let's assume that dev work on the main game goes off without a hitch and the reduced team doesn't affect matters that much. I wanna remind you of how many assumptions we're making in the development of a video game, in an industry where game development can and will go wrong ALL THE GENTLY-CARESSING TIME. We're making the assumption that nothing goes wrong and time on basic elements don't get extended. Cool? Cool. So that leaves us with 59 people to work on the remaining 600 Pokémon. In one work week of 40 hours, the 59 employees can crank out 2,360 hours of work. Hey, that's almost twice what's needed for the remaining 600 Pokémon! You could crank out a whole 'nother 600 Pokémon in that time! Except... we made a buttload of assumptions, remember?! This is assuming nothing goes wrong, there are simply thatmany devs that they can spare from the main Pokémon game, that Game Freak isn't working on anything else (when IRL we know they're working on Home and Town, so the number of employees working on SwSh is probably far lower), that development on the main game is far along enough that half the team can be spared to work on a spurious addition to the game to begin with, that the added assets and coding for the remaining 600 Pokémon doesn't need additional bugtesting (note: which is a big freaking assumption right there), that none of the models conflict with the new graphics engine or get improved in any capacity whatsoever, and that the logistics of the Pokémon (where they'll spawn, when, how, all that) is just "dealt with" (which in-and-of-itself would be a lot to work through for devs--they don't just sprinkle Pokémon all over the map willy-nilly, balancing needs to be considered). Those 1200 hours could very easily balloon to at six times that amount--three years. Those 59 employees could be as low as ten Assuming that Game Freak started work on SwSh the very day after Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon were released, that means they've been at it for two years already. So then you also have to add in the logistics of paying the theoretical 118 devs for their time for an extra three years--to say nothing of all of the tie-in media, merch, games, toys, cards, and events that have to be postponed. That's millions of dollars in paychecks, contract re-negotiations, product storage, fees related to extending product storage (you don't think warehouses will just hang on to several tonnes of Wooloo plushies for free, do you?) and distribution. At a time when the game is just four months away from release. And that is why it's not just a matter of just adding in all the missing Pokémon into the post-game content. This isn't just a copy-paste deal. This is a thing that could exponentially extend SwSh's release... at a time when a great deal of time and money and red tape has already been extended. Nintendo is famous for their quote, "A delayed game is eventually good, a rushed game is forever bad"--but delays are never done spuriously. Not for Zelda, not for Mario, not for Animal Crossing. That represents potentially millions that the company has to continue to invest to balance things out. All that. For a shiny Watchog. It's late. It's past my bedtime now. I'm tired. Gamers exhaust me. Fandoms exhaust me. Brands aren't your friends, consumption doesn't entitle you to anything, never enter a land war in Asia, never eat raspberries. |
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 6232 |
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.....Because isn't that exactly what most people did especially if they didn't have a secondary system and a link cable to pull off a trade? And also up uptil the Bank came around?
Oh yeah I definitely would kill to see all the "THIS SHOULD'VE BEEN IN THE GAME TO START WITH" complaints.
I think he might've become them in the eyes of some people with regards to the asshurt over these "developments".
....Well except for the gen one games.
Are we talking about PvE or PvP cause as far as I know the latter almost always runs into problems regarding the metagame.....almost every generation. I mean it's all fun and games until you take your lv100 Pokemon and try battling against a dude whose pokemon are at lv130 and get wiped out. |
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Commander Cluck
 Posts: 123 |
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All I could really hear was "Don't ask questions, just consume product and then get excited for next products"
The kicker is they're charging AAA pricing for Sword and Shield too. Sun and Moon were 40 dollars games, since they were handheld games. This is going to be 60. For even less content. Kind of impressive. They want the console market pricing but none of the bonuses that consoles have over handhelds. |
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Megiddo
 Posts: 8360 Location: IL |
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Yeah, the price is also really amusing. I suppose this will be a good measuring stick for how little effort Game Freak can put toward the series while raising the price without the majority of fans feeling like they got fleeced. I think this will smooth over eventually and the Pokefans will submit in the end, likely purchasing the Pokemon Plus Plus pokeball thingy as well.
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Ambimunch
 Posts: 2012 |
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Do half the work and charge double the price.
I won't be supporting anymore Pokemon games going forward if that's their attitude from now on. |
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matt78
Posts: 260 |
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To be fair they are just charging the standard price for a Switch game just like they did for previous games. You could always buy the games used so that Gamefreak doesn't get any money from you. I think that is what I am going to do for Sword and Shield. |
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Commander Cluck
Posts: 123 |
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It's sad because you can look at Youkai Watch 4, which also moved from the 3DS to the Switch, and see they put a ton of effort into revamping and improving everything to take advantage of the console power. Much better graphics, real-time, action oriented 3D battles more in-line with their Ni no Kuni series, and pretty much a huge leap in all aspects over the previous 3 games. And that's with Youkai Watch on the decline and knowing it will never sell anywhere near as much as Pokemon does and has a much smaller budget. Fans have been begging Gamefreak to bring Pokemon to home consoles for years now, and we were excited to hear that the 3DS line was abandoned and what new possibilities the Switch would bring. It's frustrating to see companies who do listen to fans not succeed while big companies who can skate by on name brand recognition put in minimal effort and be rewarded by it. |
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 6232 |
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To be pretty fair Yokai Watch was just another franchise that was coasting on brand recognition until it just became another game chasing the same audience that Pokemon was chasing but with diminishing returns each time. |
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