Forum - View topicThis Week in Games - Good News, Bad News, and Just News
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TheKoniverse
Posts: 6 |
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If Kotaro Uchikoshi of Zero Escape and AI: The Somnium Files is of any indication, people will simply blame the creator themselves and claim that they're not actually the creator but rather someone from California. Yes, this actually happened. |
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Joe Mello
 Posts: 2302 Location: Online Terminal |
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At this point, the only other thing I can think of is government scrutiny and intervention, though it's not to intervene to stop closures, it's to intervene to stop acquisitions. Between this closure and Sony complaining about its lack of IP (and that's just w/n gaming, never mind what other tech and entertainment companies are doing outside the scope of the column) it's becoming increasingly clear that M&A's aren't helping anyone other than the C-suite and minority shareholders who understand Number Go Up. They harm the industry, the workers, and the consumers. |
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Beatdigga
 Posts: 4590 Location: New York |
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Saying this has been a busy week for games is an understatement. That being said between Shadow of the Ninja and Haunted Castle Revisited it has been a GREAT few weeks for retro updates of games.
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Avec ou Nous
Posts: 148 |
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Are we sure YoshiP was talking about the English localization and actors? The interview was in German for a German website held at a German convention so it seems a bit strange especially if no one is mentioned by name. I also don't understand why the localization would be involved here if it was specifically about one English voice actor. Perhaps there are complaints about the German localization we don't know of?
As much as Visions of Mana looked interesting (have yet to play it myself) I feel like seeing the first week sales in Japan are only going to reinforce the decision that shutting down the studio was the right call. I don't know why they didn't release a Switch version like with Seiken Densetsu 3's remake. |
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FinalVentCard
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 635 |
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Homeboy could have been speaking to the Qu from All Tomorrows, he's still making a request of the fanbase to not harass people. It doesn't exclude any harassment from any individual team or person, and it doesn't diminish that people harassing Sena Bryer are being major tools and that Yoshi-P has asked them to cut it out. Simple as. And First Week sales still don't justify closing a whole studio on release day. Used to be, projects were given time to make a profit (a film that bombed in theaters could eventually make its money back in the home video market). The decision to shut a studio down when a game only just hits the market is still short-sighted as all get-out. Gotta let the devs cook, as he kids say. |
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LinkTSwordmaster
 Posts: 532 Location: PA / USA |
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I was watching Kyle Bosman (one of the GameTrailers/Easy Allies folks) talk about the Concord shutdown this morning with breakfast, and something he mentioned was that the Astro Bot game is hitting some pretty high critic reviews. While I've heard in passing that there's actually a shocking number of Astro fans and that the series is kinda functionally PS5's Mario 64 sort of game, I cant help but notice (and even Kyle points this out in his video) that Sony is just not marketing or paying too much attention to the brand at all.
I look at the Visions of Mana news - for all intent and purpose it looks like a fine-enough JRPG to go for, nothing is visually wrong with it at a glance - but the character stylings and aesthetics make me wish this was a Chrono Trigger Remake. The world traversal and exploration make me want to go play the copy of Dragon Quest XI I've been sitting on. The combat doesn't look any more or less intense than a YS game's - isn't there another new one now? And this is at the same time Wukong is blowing up for anyone wanting a 3D action-combat game. It doesn't at all seem like Visions of Mana is a bad game, but I don't know why I should spend money and play it when I already have access to vastly superior experiences I paid way less for ages ago. And yet it sounds like this was a game expected (in error) to compete somehow with FF7RB this year, that got its studio cancelled upon "meeting the goal but still falling short". The industry is very much or has already become one where companies only want mega-hits and there's no room for the sort of game I'd have loved grabbing on sale for $25 on my PS1 or renting it for a weekend or two just because it's shorter than something like FF7. Off the top of my head, NetEase and Tencent are already the sort of vulture companies you don't want to see on a list of devs/publishers already, but I bring up Astro Bot because I look at it topping critic review lists during a time where Concord and Visions of Mana are responsible for pushing their idiot publishers into nuking whole development studios, and I just cant shake the creeping feeling - that companies like Sony will have to purposely sabotage stuff like Astro Bot in the future, just so it doesn't outshine their big money-makers. Imagine all of these goofy acquisitions and live services that Sony has been doing as of late, being instantly undermined by a less-expensive or invested-into Astro Bot title or a Bloodborne remaster - why would I ever consider touching any of the garbage Sony has coming up soon unless it was literally the only options available to players? I still love the original Demon's Souls so much that pulling it up to emulate is a more desired way to play than buying the newer PS5 remake - and the only way to stop that scenario from happening in the future is making sure their next big game is "great enough that everyone buys it, but not tooo good that people refuse to move on from it". |
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AiddonValentine
 Posts: 2339 |
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Visions of Mana's team being furloughed is pretty shitty. Between that and Tango (which admittedly was saved) this is definitely a year for showing how ghoulish executives are.
As for Itsuno, it seems he just wanted to do stuff other than Devil May Cry and Dragon's Dogma for the rest of his career. With DMCV being one of the best-selling Capcom titles of all time and an animated series on the way I have no doubt in that DMC6 is going to happen, if not already being worked on. |
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FilthyCasual
Posts: 2368 |
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Paul Soth
 Posts: 142 Location: Columbus, Oh |
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Speaking of Wizardry, there was the recent passing of co-creator Andrew Greenberg. You did mention the game's influence on the development of Japanese computer/console RPGs, which can not be understated.
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LinkTSwordmaster
Posts: 532 Location: PA / USA |
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IMO, that's sadly a pretty low bar to clear. I cannot fathom suffering through the game with the English audio turned on. It's incredibly depressing too, figuring that practically EVERY character NPC standing around in Final Fantasy XI back on the PS2 had something interesting to say about their life or the region they lived in (in the sort of way that a Souls game does when you talk to characters at the Nexus). It's gotten better-ish in recent years on FFXIV, but there's a lot of mis-cast inflections and tones during the English story (Alisaie is a great example), and I still have a hard time recommending that anyone bother talk to NPCs outside of an active story zone when there are still way too many moments where the English text box will distill two+ sentences in Japanese down to five words or omit whole segments entirely. As a 1.0 player, it kills me any time the White Raven is brought up - it's a mess because localisation never corrected their early errors and they keep having to (sloppily) paint over it. I think I mentioned this the last time it was reported that the actress voicing the new Dawntrail character was being targetted, it's important for companies to draw a hard line in the sand with this sort of stuff and note that the behaviour is unacceptable. Sooner rather than later preferred. For as much whining as non-FGC window gazers tried to make Bridget a wedge issue, the devs took an interview and put the issue to rest. Afterwards, the mob moved on to the next hot topic while Strive has actually gone on to be one of the big games at EVO this year and no one seems bothered that Bridget is just another lady added to the roster. One of the big FGC content creators Maximilian_Dood was talking just last night about how classic fighters like the Marvel VS collection generally tend to draw in an older & more level-headed/mature demographic. Folks that are just happy to talk about a shared hobby and interest, one that hasn't been widely seen as much in a couple decades, and the recent surge in everyone sharing their stories and experiences from back in Capcom's prime fighting era is really inspiring. But then the moment something a bit more bloody & violent like Mortal Kombat shows up, the audience tone immediately shifts younger and sounds more like a Call of Duty lobby. Barring some moments of stumbling, the FFXIV team has always seemed to treat the playerbase as "mature and generally well-intentioned". 18+ spaces exist and have usually not caused any larger+public issues and have been fine as self-policing. In the same way you would expect to walk into a Japanese bar and simply just find a community of adults enjoying each other's longtime company, FFXIV has usually kept a general tone among the community that doesn't particularly reward someone for acting immature. It occasionally happens, but then you also risk getting blacklisted from anything requiring larger groups to assemble outside of the automatic party-finder. It's actually something a lot of newbies are surprised by when they get started with Monster Hunter - up until recently the series greatly benefited from community teaching and was rather difficult to break into due to the sheer skill level required to gain ground. A lot of players remember the PTSD of their first Plesioth encounter and will take new folks under their wing to foster new interest and keep the playerbase alive and healthy. In turn, it was very inspiring when the usual mob of window gazers tried to take shots at the new Monster Hunter Wilds game, and the Hunter playerbase slapped that shit down so hard.... hopefully anyone that has an issue with the FFXIV actress will self-reflect and back off now that Yoshida has spoken. There still needs to be a larger discussion about the quality and thoroughness of FFXIV's localisation team - they really need to go back and clean stuff up in spots, but in general this should signal to the adults playing that it's time to act age-appropriate and behave. (Hopefully) |
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Zoltan Kakler
Posts: 46 |
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I take issue with this framing because it sounds like you are trying to glaze your own community by thinking any negativity is coming from the outside rather than within the community. I'm sorry but if you think all that Bridget stuff was coming from outside the community and not from Guilty Gear fans then I have to question how old you are or if you were around for the "everyone is gay for Bridget" stuff that was everywhere in the early 2000s where the character was a huge meme and gay icon. This attempt to dismiss anyone complaining as "window glazers" is like how people using the word "tourist" to describe people as being fake fans or something. As far as the XIV community goes I'm seeing that again with people trying to blame it all on WoW players jumping over to this community in the past few years. But this community has had complainers from the start. Whether it was the folks who harass YoshiP and accusing him of whitewashing Y'shtola, or getting upset at the sexualization of the female characters like Ryne and Alisae, this community has had plenty of toxicity. In terms of other actors and staff I recall seeing people trying to call Bakool Ja Ja's VA a groomer for getting cozy with a fan at some convention. And then there was the people who sent death threats and harassment to Susan Calloway for liking tweets they found offensive to the point she has deleted her X account and withdraw from appearing at Kupocon out of concerns for her safety. In this specific case I'm sure non FFXIV people have weighed in but that's because Sena Bryer has involved herself in other fandoms over the past couple months like accusing Wit Studio of whitewashing Usopp among other things. So if One Piece fans QRT dunk on her posts about then then that's to be expected she attracted attention from elsewhere. I think part of the problem is we've never had anyone on the FFXIV team be so abrasive before. For awhile it seemed like she was dropping hot takes every day labeling people as racist for not liking the bad train song in Dawntrail or accusing anime studios of racism and other stuff, or trying to get other VA to step down (Bridget's ironically enough given you brought that up). She's stopped doing it for almost a month now which makes me think either she either wised up or someone behind the scene tapped her on the shoulder and told her to cut it out. |
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FinalVentCard
ANN Reviewer
Posts: 635 |
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Similarly, I take issue with your framing criticism towards the devs as inherent harassment or framing that maybe Bryer "deserved" being harassed for some take you disagree with. I'm going to ask you to not do that. Especially since your mealy-mouthed argument falls flat in the face of the outright attacks Bryer faces for her identity. |
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Zoltan Kakler
Posts: 46 |
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In no way did I say or allude to she "deserved" being harassed. I'd appreciate you not putting words in my mouth, thanks in advance. |
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i got the shivers!
 Posts: 112 Location: Brazil |
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I've heard the German localization is more in line with the English localization than Japanese while the French localization is the most accurate to the Japanese. But it could still be more accurate than the English one regardless. I wonder what YoshiP meant by saying the localization "is really not that they are trying to bring forward an argument about a certain movement or anything like that". I don't know what "movement" he means. The closest thing I can think of is hearing one time one of the English localizers bragged that she got the English script to refer to the pixies as "they/them" and head-canons them as non-binary rather than female. Or maybe he means the people who are saying Wuk Lamat is trans or some kind of trans icon because the English VA is trans which is obviously not the case in the lore. I guess he's trying to assure people that none of this stuff affects the game itself. |
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FinalVentCard
ANN Reviewer
Posts: 635 |
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When you say stuff like:
... it leaves very little room for interpretation outside of "this person said things that justified the response people had". So for the second time: don't imply people deserved harassment. I will not ask a third time. |
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