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Yuji Naka is going off on Square-ENIX & Arzest on Twitter right now [Says he was removed from Balan during dev & that SE doesn’t care about fans]
- Thread starter ZeroDS
- Start date
Because the execs at square gave him and the team the resources to do it
you can't discount all the good stuff the company does and say the company is shit and doesn't care about games etc
they released FF7R, GotG, LiS TC, Triangle Strategy, Voice of cards, BD2, Nier Reincarnation, NEO Twevy in the past 12ish months
Even Sony releases shit games
I think this is mostly on Yuki Naka himself
Translation of Twitter thread
Initial translation. It's very much a rush job, so any Japanese speakers can feel free to correct my translations where needed.
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I... feel like we are missing A LOT of context as to how this actually went down
Thanks for the translation. I appreciated the effort.
ZeroDS May I request for a threadmark to Kanhir's translation post?
OP
OP
My everyday life is lived in Japanese. I didn't make this thread under a weird pretense to shit on Yuji Naka or Square ENIX.
I liked Balan Wonderworld, but Yuji Naka has always been an asshole who will take the quickest and most opportune time to knock down his colleagues. However, the fact that they removed him as director with half a year of development and he hat to take them to court is incredibly fucked up. It's also incredibly obvious it's unfinished when they were forced to make an e-book out of the game's actual story.
Yeah, this point in particular sticks out to me as being kind of odd. But it also fits very cleanly into Naka's history of wanting to take credit for anything good about his games and point fingers at everyone else for anything that goes wrong.
My opinion: i doubt SE would of meddled in the Naka's development of Balan unless something was actually wrong.
me looking objectively says sure SE has fault as well, but the game had problems at a core level which were Naka's decisions so he is not without big blame as well
SE does fuck up all the time and say dumb things. But to ignore all the good things they do, or at least the good ideas they give but fumble (like some of their remasters and ports lol), is not a good thing to do
End Of day there is a line you have to draw between company and developers 95% of the time. Companies eexist to make money, so to say they don't care isn't wild either. At the same time you can't completely absolve creators of fault either
me looking objectively says sure SE has fault as well, but the game had problems at a core level which were Naka's decisions so he is not without big blame as well
SE does fuck up all the time and say dumb things. But to ignore all the good things they do, or at least the good ideas they give but fumble (like some of their remasters and ports lol), is not a good thing to do
End Of day there is a line you have to draw between company and developers 95% of the time. Companies eexist to make money, so to say they don't care isn't wild either. At the same time you can't completely absolve creators of fault either
He's a reverse Koji Igarashi. Where Yuji Naka always wanted to be center stage and play blame games, Igarashi would always take time to mention the work of others, take responsibility for mistakes, and even be humble that they did the best they could given development timelines. Both would be credited by media journalist groups as "creators" of their games but only one of them would always mention the work of those who worked alongside him.
Only one of these developers has shined after leaving their parent company. It is not Yuji Naka.
And before anyone asks for my motivation here, I was looking for an excuse to post this picture. I do think the different outcomes of game developers associated with a company going on their own and having completely different trajectories in accomplishing that is fascinating, though.
OP
OP
Oh, it wasn't aimed at you, apologies for not being clear. I was more going for the stream of hot takes in the thread up to that point.
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According to the translation he was removed from the project six months before release.
That's like, really late into development. Game was probably set in stone by that point, there was no salvaging it.
That's like, really late into development. Game was probably set in stone by that point, there was no salvaging it.
Bloodstained was good, but lets be real, the kickstarter itself was a disaster. What we got at the end of the day wasn't from kickstarter funding, it was from outside investers.He's a reverse Koji Igarashi. Where Yuji Naka always wanted to be center stage and play blame games, Igarashi would always take time to mention the work of others, take responsibility for mistakes, and even be humble that they did the best they could given development timelines. Both would be credited by media journalist groups as "creators" of their games but only one of them would always mention the work of those who worked alongside him.
Only one of these developers has shined after leaving their parent company. It is not Yuji Naka.
And before anyone asks for my motivation here, I was looking for an excuse to post this picture. I do think the different outcomes of game developers associated with a company going on their own and having completely different trajectories in accomplishing that is fascinating, though.
Honestly, the whole "the father of [insert classic franchise here]" narrative always seems to wind up problematic in the end. Outside of Miyamoto, who has his own suite of problems but who has largely stepped out of actively making games in the modern era, almost all of them - Inafune, Naka, Igarashi, Sakaguchi, etc - are kind of case studies on how the "father of X" thing is mostly marketing branding that doesn't work once the creators are removed from the franchises that made them household names.
I will at least give IGA credit for fighting really hard to make Bloodstained work, even if I don't think it's anywhere close to as good as the Castlevanias he worked on, though.
I will at least give IGA credit for fighting really hard to make Bloodstained work, even if I don't think it's anywhere close to as good as the Castlevanias he worked on, though.
Their shitty PC ports already show that Square doesn't give a damn about their customers or games. They're just a shitty publisher that only cares about making a quick buck.
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Oh sorry. I read it wrong then. Apologies and thanks for the translation.
If I was trying to setup alignments for game developers, I would sooner put Yuji Naka close to Keiji Inafune than to Koji Igarashi.
That was the goal of the Kickstarter though. It was to fund 10% of the game which then ballooned to half of the total budget. The only issue I find with the game was the Switch port and the content rollout post-release, but much of that can be explained to salvaging the Switch version and COVID.
Square-Enix issued an process to put me away from the project. This request was co-signed by: director, producer, sound producer, sound designer, art director, technical manager, quality assurance lead, 3d artist 1, 3d artist 2, programmer 1, programmer 2, programmer 3, janitor, cleaning staff, Human Resources representative, marketing lead, finance representative, gameplay designer, level designer, mocap animator, voice actor 1 and backend programmer. I was also asked to not interact publicly with promotion for the game and to not engage with people who were still potentially going to buy it.
No idea what the deal was tho.
No idea what the deal was tho.
As far as we know Square Enix management re-routed a lot of staff to make A Realm Reborn happen that was working on other games.
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Other than that, when you have a director, 2 producers, 1 sound designer, and I do not know who else saying that you shouldn't manage the project anymore..
I love that even Miyamoto has a "what the fuck am I doing on this list?" look in his picture.Discounting Yasuhara's contributions to Sonic is just the norm unfortunately. Google literally lists Shigeru Miyamoto over him when you search "creators of Sonic".
Rare to think of times where Sega themselves acknowledged him alongside Naka and Ohshima either, so the onus is on many.
From all we know about Naka, there would almost definitely be a Rashomon effect if we were to hear what happened from anyone at SE or Arzest.
SE has been very shareholder centric / money hungry for the last decade. If you look at the amount of flops, particularly with their western branches it's pretty obvious.
I remember they acquired a western dev and they left relatively promptly because they didn't like the culture etc.
Together with cases of abuse.
I think only their main final fantasy ip's or those attached to veterans are the only ones not cutting corners. But even then we get things like ffxv.
While I think balan could have been decent, it had really weird decisions made I assume at the start, so I doubt it would have been a good game, maybe only decent if it wasn't mismanaged.
I remember they acquired a western dev and they left relatively promptly because they didn't like the culture etc.
Together with cases of abuse.
I think only their main final fantasy ip's or those attached to veterans are the only ones not cutting corners. But even then we get things like ffxv.
While I think balan could have been decent, it had really weird decisions made I assume at the start, so I doubt it would have been a good game, maybe only decent if it wasn't mismanaged.
So basically, Naka is saying that he was fired because someone else told the managing producer that Naka's complaints about unfixed bugs caused a breakdown in the relationship with the developer.
Depending on the way Naka communicated those complaints, if Ohshima is correct, then I'm not surprised Square fired him, because if you're working with an external developer to make a game, one of your chief goals as a director should be making sure the relationship with that external dev is positive, otherwise something exactly like this happens.
Rampaging around blaming the developer and calling them out for shoddy work isn't a great way to make sure a development partner feels engaged and delivers a quality product.
On the other hand, the Yoshi games are also comparatively far less ambitious. They were pretty blasé despite the fact that they had clear design blueprints to work off of. Balan in comparison being a multiplatform 3D game, as a completely new IP and concept with more of a visible budget than their previous works, is a big leap compared to their already unremarkable portable games that had been their stock and trade up until that point. It's easy to believe that from a developer perspective they were being put into a position of punching above their own weight.
Of course, a lot of things that can go wrong in these cases can usually be held to management, and it's also the mark of a good director/producer to steer them in the right direction.
Ironically, I think it's one of the parts of the game that's generally decently received. If a bit generic.
Maybe Yuji was right? Perhaps they should have used a song from the OST instead of a piano arranged YT track!
SE is no angel but Yuji Naka is an arrogant dick who thinks he's a hotshot and acts like creation of Sonic is all him. I give no shit to how Balan could have turned out in his visions and nobody else should.
Didn't he participate on marketing videos before the release of the game with one of the tops of Arzest, that also participated in Sonic Team many years ago? I have the feeling that he was still involved in the game until launch date.
True that we may never know objectively what happened behind the scenes. I wouldn't discard discussions and problems between Naka, Arzest and S-E. However, considering what kind of person Naka has been in the past, I wouldn't be surprised if his toxic behavior also was a problem in development and things are not exactly as he mentions.
Another thing would be if the game was released without bugs or technical issues, if the game would have still been good, which honestly I doubt.
True that we may never know objectively what happened behind the scenes. I wouldn't discard discussions and problems between Naka, Arzest and S-E. However, considering what kind of person Naka has been in the past, I wouldn't be surprised if his toxic behavior also was a problem in development and things are not exactly as he mentions.
Another thing would be if the game was released without bugs or technical issues, if the game would have still been good, which honestly I doubt.
Given all ive heard of Yuki Naka from the sega years I take anything that egotist says with a grain of salt. All theyd do is openly talk about their collection of sports cars, insular methods of running teams and uncooperative tactics and hatred of doing the job they were hired to do. They even went on record as saying they wanted Sega to keep making hardware even though they know it wouldve bankrupted them solely for the selfish reason that they enjoyed developing hardware more than games. Dudes a self centered shit who doesnt care whats best for companies or games or design they just wanna do whatever is their comfort zone. Dude was 100% a John Romero wannabe. A knockoff of another game dev celeb poser.
Id never put them in charge of something after all the info that slowly trickled throughout the decades since dreamcast era Yuji Naka. Ditto for Takashi Iizuka even if I respect them for saving Sonic Heroes by 1 man doin everything to the point of serious health issues.
Some folks dont work on teams well, dont take feedback and adapt design, and overall dont help projects. They trend jump, do halfass derivatative work, or are entirely just living on past success. Naka is one of the biggest that exemplifies this. Theyre largely a one trick pony and know it. Its why theyve always been so insular and refuse to share tech or control of design as theyre quickly outpaced.
Id never put them in charge of something after all the info that slowly trickled throughout the decades since dreamcast era Yuji Naka. Ditto for Takashi Iizuka even if I respect them for saving Sonic Heroes by 1 man doin everything to the point of serious health issues.
Some folks dont work on teams well, dont take feedback and adapt design, and overall dont help projects. They trend jump, do halfass derivatative work, or are entirely just living on past success. Naka is one of the biggest that exemplifies this. Theyre largely a one trick pony and know it. Its why theyve always been so insular and refuse to share tech or control of design as theyre quickly outpaced.
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Square could certainly be to blame. That said, Naka was an amazing programmer but has a very checkered history as anything else.
And then some. He liked Geist Force so much he was wanting to FIRE theyre studio just to steal their engine for Sonic. Wouldnt work with them, do collab work or share credit. Just wanted to prop his portfolio on their work.
This vid doesnt even cover ALL of the shit that went down with Naka from the Sonic Team years but it paints a solid image of what he is really like.
Dont depend or trust Naka. Hes an egocentric self serving asshole.
Damn. Really puts another perspective on Peter Moore's "tell Yuji Naka to go fuck himself".Naka is anything but genuine. He was known in the industry for talking shit about western devs directly on their faces but doing it on Japanese so they couldn't understand him. I'd wait to see how this lawsuit ends before we say who's right and who's at fault.
Yuji Naka Killed "Dreamcast's Star Fox", Says Former Sega Producer
"I'm going to tell the truth, and if it comes back to bite me, so be it"www.nintendolife.com
Yeah, it's surprising the Game was announced in 2018 and in the trailer mentioned 2019 release lol. If they stuck with that game until now, I have really wonder about this one, Their failings seem like different things. LIke I'm just reading on Yuji's history and with that recent chain of tweets, doesn't really paint him in a better picture than he thinks it does but much worse since it sounds like lack of self reflection. Like the part about the breakdown in relation to complaints is totally exactly that and then goes on about other aspects of SE which in that case ,more people within the organization seemed to have issues and thats not even reading through the whole past for which has repeated behavior. It's like that saying, You run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. You run into assholes all day, you're the asshole.
I want to say I remember reading that literally every internal team at the time had at least a few staff members pulled into helping right that ship. That was definitely an all hands on deck team effort.
Basically where I'm at on this.