Just so surprising that treating staff well and keeping them around lets you do consistently high quality work. Boggles the mind really.
this post was submitted on 24 Feb 2024
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Well, this may not actually be the case. 7 or so years ago FromSoftware was pretty notoriously known to Japanese workers in the gaming industry to have very harsh working conditions, even among other Japanese studios that also have harsh conditions. Allegedly programmers at FromSoftware at that time were making an annual salary of only $27k USD. Compare this with Konami, who was paying an annual salary of $40k USD for the same position.
Its possible in the last 7 years things might have changed, but Japanese companies are usually very resistant to change. Japanese work culture honestly sucks, I would never want to.live in Japan because of this.
EDIT: You can see here that the overall worker satisfaction rating for FromSoftware is only 2.8 out of 5, which seems to be nearly the same as it used to be.
NOTE: Some readers may see something about the "Whiteness/Blackness" of the company. This has nothing to do with race or racism. This is a slang term from Japanese culture that refers to how ethical a company is. A company that is very unethical (overworking employees, borderline illegal treatment of employees, etc) is called a "Black Company," and everyone will tell you to avoid them. Conversely a "White Company" would be a very ethical company and one that everyone would be fighting each other to work for.
Ah so FromSoft went pure black company tendency.
Japanese work culture honestly sucks, I would never want to.live in Japan because of this.
You can find Western companies and semi-westernized Japanese companies where the work culture is better.
Yes, but in Japan the large majority of businesses are Japanese, and most conform to the expected conditions of underpaying or not paying for overtime ("voluntary overtime"), etc.
Just like there can be some companies that do the same thing in the USA, though it is not.common because there are laws specifically to prevent that.
I'm just saying that you can live in Japan and avoid this work culture.
Yes but it is easier to avoid the work culture if you do not live in Japan.
keeping them around
It's rare for employees to move companies in Japan. A lot of people will work for the same company their whole life. Japanese companies aren't really known for treating their employees well either.
I'd guess what they're doing well is hiring employees that are very passionate. I hear the anime industry is the same in that people who are in it are willing to work themselves to death because they want to work on big name projects
Just be clear, there is a reason that's not in the quotes of the title. The author basically makes up that they're "treating staff well* because they're not randomly firing people right now. (The empowering bit is basically fabricated)
For starters they keep making mostly the same game over and over. They're essentially doing the Bethesda shtick except their end results are better. Sticking to stuff that can mostly be made in the same engine as the thing you finished 15 minutes ago is going to shave off a lot of time compared to making a new game.
Of course that's not to shit on incremental improvements or engine reuse or anything. That is just sound thinking as long as the games are good.
They also had great success with Sekiro, which was (and still is) very different from their other titles.
It's still the same engine and general gameplay concept though. The combat was the big difference.
This studio is not just known for an even by Japanese standards exploitative work culture, but it also reuses assets of all kinds far more liberally than other developers. Art is by far the biggest cost factor in games development and they are taking significant shortcuts wherever they can.
I will say that reusing assets is 100% okay, and I actually wish more studios did this. You don't need to make everything from scratch. It's okay to reuse the thing you made previously.
It is definitely a smart move. But still, maybe we can retire the Asylum Demon?
I dunno. If the dlc is like the rest of the game and I see the same dungeon changed slightly 20 times I'm going to be disappointed. But I guess that's what reviews are for.
Japan as a whole is fairly notorious for 24/7 work culture. The way he repeatedly mentions their quick production and pivots feels a bit… crunchy.
But...they don't? Their mainline games are always a few years apart (with the exception of Bloodborne, which they had a separate team doing concurrently).
Unless you're referring to the other games they publish that no one really knows about or comments on? I don't think Metal Wolf Chaos XD, Déraciné, or Monster Hunter Diary: Poka Poka Airou Village DX should really factor into the discussion.
Metal Wolf Chaos should factor into all discussion, even those that have nothing to do with FromSoft.
LET'S PARTYYYYY!
"At the cost of our staffs sanity!"
So frequently? Dude it's been like 2 years since they announced DLC for their last game and it's only finally coming this June assuming it does not get delayed.
They also release real products and not "games as a service" shit.
I wouldn't say FROM SOFTWARE's games are AAA like other AAA studios.
What does that even mean... Elden ring is as AAA as it gets.
Other AAA games have hand holding I guess...
AAA literally just refers to games published by big publishers that are large scale and have huge budgets.
I dunno. But I'd like to see queen pwnsalot blind fold play a fromsoft game.
If it was actually a blind fold