An Industry Based On Endless Growth Is Unsustainable | Castle Super Beast 271 Clip

[@BobbyHopp]

The History of Square Enix is having some of the most talented people in the industry paired with the most inept businessmen known to mankind.

[@leithaziz2716]

A company with the most ludicrious sales expectations that they sold nearly all their western developer studios, even though most of them were a success critically. And they didn't even bomb, they made at least 1 million each.

[@Yinlock470]

that's the history of labor in general honestly

[@RDV333]

Only the geniuses at Square Enix would just REFUSE to rerelease FF Tactics, Vagrant Story, Valkyrie Profile, Terranigma, Brave Fencer Musashi, Ogre Battle, Lufia and Xenogears.

[@TheGraveyarder]

i bet theres a romance comedy anime or manga series with that same pairing

[@Unknownost]

They have rereleased Valkyrie Profile but you wouldn't have known about it cause they did ZERO marketing. It was released a couple months after Elysium and was bundled with the deluxe edition but it was delayed for some dumb unknown reason.

[@petesematary]

"growth without limit is the logic of a cancer cell"

[@MLGHazrad]

Woolie refuses to acknowledge himself as a sort of Journalist so Minh decides to release clips of the podcast in relation to journalism

[@Mr.Faust3]

Minh is woolies stilgar

[@sdbzfan1]

Perfect

[@krispykrim3532]

I'd say Woolie should be proud he's considered a more reliable source of information than modern journalism, but that's less an achievement on his part and more of a failure on theirs.

[@Renoistic]

​@@krispykrim3532What are you on about? All he's doing is repeating the work of actual journalisists and Twitter posters. How does him parroting their work make them more reliable to you? That's a you issue.

[@krispykrim3532]

@@Renoistic It was a joke

[@Confussed-Oddish]

To quote Dr. Aggro from Gigaboots "Oops, the finite bounds of a physical universe!"

[@ToastyMozart]

"If we spend twice as much we'll make twice as much money!" "But everyone who is interested in our games bought our last game, where are these new buyers coming from?" "MoNeY!!!"

[@Biodeamon]

well no, there is a difference between stability and endless growth. another physical example of a plant versus an animal. one is slow and steady but able to maintain a "healthy" form for untold centuries and can regrow limbs easily, whereas creatures that mature more quickly break down more easily A society that grows slowly and carefully will be able to adapt more easily to changes as there less moving parts, but a society with explosive growth will quickly break down into chaos the universe is infinite, its just that there's a finite threshold of how much you're allowed to take (e.g. consuming food faster that you can grow it)

[@stripedgillette3580]

@@Biodeamon No, not "untold". They end for the same reason that things can't grow forever; shit happens. Nothing exists in a closed system and nothing remains 100% the same. Same reason why that society analogy you made doesn't quite make sense; there is no inherent lack of adaptability in places that progress quickly.

[@zaneseibert]

"We always have infinite growth if we keep cutting off our tail every 3 months" - Corpo Lizard Man

[@cyberninjazero5659]

This is like when they gave Curt Connors a clone family in the comics because they regretted the decision to have him eat his real one

[@TheGraveyarder]

"whats that? all the humans own our product?! just have them lay more eggs!"

[@malikoniousjoe]

“Eat your legs to enjoy infinite food” -Uroboros

[@malikoniousjoe]

@@TheGraveyarder “Why didn’t they each buy two of [product you only need one of]!?”

[@banksuvladimir]

I see the strength of the stock market; allocating funds to projects that couldn’t otherwise afford to get off of the ground from some dudes garage. But it’s also become the worst thing ever. The idea that you should be able to put your money into a hole and it magically just make you more money forever is absurd, because the universe REQUIRES there to be consistent input for output, so they just end up squeezing people actually working to make the money harder and harder while the companies for some reason have more duty to people who gave them money 15 years ago than the people making the products and/or providing the services

[@sonicboomers122]

There is no worst chart that explains how fucked the industry is than Sony operating at 3 times the cost of Nintendo and making less than half of Nintendo profits.

[@thatcynicalbastard6636]

If you aren't using all your profits to bet on green, are you really even trying? -GAS Addict

[@Zikk0_o]

Because Nintendo doesn't offer or do what Sony and even MS does when it comes to services and online. It's not that difficult to understand.

[@kricku]

@@Zikk0_o Because it's not needed. Because so many don't want it

[@JacobSteakfries]

It's actually that Sony is making x3 the profits of Nintendo, but at less than half the operating profit. Which is absolutely worse if you ask me.

[@Zikk0_o]

@kricku Wrong. There's a reason more people play online multiplayer games on other platforms. Nintendo isn't good at certain things, so they don't put forth the effort.

[@SimpleBarghest]

Its fucken ridiculous that Woolie pointed out the bit with Final Fantasy 1, because. Like. That's a recurring story with Square at multiple points in their overall timeline. They near the point of bankruptcy and collapse -> One of their bright minds puts out a fucking legendary game that saves the company -> NOBODY LEARNS A GOD DAMN THING IN THE C-SUITE.

[@Polychromatic8]

The FF1 thing is a myth that I'm pretty sure Sakaguchi has disproved multiple times

[@Null_Experis]

@@Polychromatic8 No, it was fairly accurate. Squaresoft had been met with several failed releases prior to FF1 on the PC-88, MSX, and Famicom, with only King's Knight selling anything worthwhile. They were mostly a publisher and did ports to MSX/PC-88 until famicom. A major move of the studio to Ginza and some ridiculous spending (classic Squaresoft C-suite BS, continues to this day) put them in a precarious position where they needed a solid release to justify their continued existence. They weren't going to go bankrupt, but they needed to decide to remain independent, or return to the more stable but less lucrative job of ports and publishing deals. FF1 was a gamble, and if it had failed Squaresoft would likely not have made it except as a publisher for a few years.

[@Polychromatic8]

@@Null_Experis but the game isn't named Final Fantasy because it was the proverbial make or break (in one form or the other). That's the big myth that Sakaguchi talked about when the pixel remaster was coming out. They called it that because they were trying to find a good FF abbreviation and Fighting Fantasy was taken. Regardless of financial situation the game could have been called literally anything with a bite-size abbreviation so it's not in the name. It was just called Final Fantasy because that worked and that's my point.

[@uvaldopalomares8416]

Infinite Growth on a finite planet with finite resources never made sense to me. Even as a kid I felt like we ALL felt like this shit was unsustainable.

[@ralelunar]

Most people are too stupid to realize that, consider yourself lucky. Most people's lives revolve around the supermarket or strip mall in their town. Their consciousness doesn't extend beyond that. As long as the supermarket is stocked, and they can buy their crap at the mall, they don't have any consideration about the greater impact of their decisions.

[@Biodeamon]

our planet DOES have infinite resources, its just the uses of said resources has a finite boundary. A real world example would be how you can get a "infinite" amount of lumber from trees, but only a finite number of trees over time. the SIZE of the resources doesn't increase, but the uses of them does have a limited number. to simplify, think of how a uroboros doesn't increase in size, or matter can't be destroyed/created. however capitalism HATES the concept of renewability as it requires resource shortages (both real and manufactured) to operate and continue running, despite being inherently cannibalistic

[@RavenCloak13]

Because people deluded themselves in thinking the money men are smarter then themselves. No, they aren't.

[@azure98]

Square Enix also had a weird habit of sending out like a dozen games to die with basically no support and then acting surprised when they failed cause nobody knew they even existed or got buried by other releases alongside them.

[@Cactuar789]

There was no way NEO TWEWY was going to sell very well but the advertising was so nonexistent I can only think it was some kind of punishment on Nomura for trying to escape from FF and KH for once.

[@benupdegraft6686]

Wow, castle super beast, the most trusted name in video game news. No, for real, i trust them the most.

[@Secret_Takodachi]

I trust & respect them the most.... which is to say very little. But that's infinitely more than the zero respect for the other so-called journalists in the field 😂

[@Mind_Crimes]

Especially considering most games journalism is just middle management PR for upcoming releases. They barely document shit.

[@Lazypackmule]

"Final Fantasy is an expensive brand, we can't make cheaper games or smaller experiences" I can't even express how annoying that concept is to me, someone who is almost exclusively a fan of Tactics, Dissidia, and Crystal Chronicles. YOU USED TO MAKE THAT SHIT ALL THE TIME, IT WAS GREAT

[@onimaxblade8988]

Yeah, FF is filled to the brim with spin-offs, not to mention "proper-franchise" spin-offs like SaGa and Mana and... Man, Square Enix made SO many fucking games back in the day, and people knew about a lot of them. I played Threads of Fate recently, that game is really solid.

[@dwarfminerwillie]

What they are saying though is that around ff7 or so the main line FF games all gained the reputation that they are the biggest most advanced most graphical and expensive RPG's there are and if they stop doing that then the majority of the FF mainline fans will get pissed off.

[@Lazypackmule]

@@dwarfminerwillie Okay one, more FF fans are mad that it's an action series now And two, those expenses have completely subsumed the spinoff titles and it's the biggest shit they've ever made every time despite consistently declining sales

[@dwarfminerwillie]

@@Lazypackmule I know that fans are mad its action now but thats not what we are talking about. So your saying that the amount of money they've spent on the big expensive mainline FF titles could have paid for multiple of the small spinoff game they've made? Yeah it could of but they also state in the original post that those smaller sales are still not enough to justify their development costs. Your right that sales are declining but that doesn't mean things are going to change much like pat says they have locked themselves into making big budget final fantasy games. Say final fantasy 17 comes out someday and the graphics in it are simplistic ps2 or ps3 looking but are interesting due to their style and it's gameplay is THE BEST it has ever been for a final fantasy game and is amazing in all regards but the graphics do you really think final fantasy fans would be happy? Also bonus thing II just heard in the podcast apparently a "birdy" whispered in pats ear saying that square enix is pissed that kingdom hearts was so badly sold on the epic games store apparently they had no idea it would sell so poorly lol.

[@WokioWolfy]

THEY LIE!!! CHOCOBO RACING EXISTS!!! THEY LIE!!!

[@Kaarl_Mills]

"Nah I'd win though!" *Brain dead shareholder thinking they can make line go up forever, through the power of their Stand [Welcome to the Machine]*

[@superbro6413]

I think the conclusion I have come to from this discussion, is that the stock market is a negative-sum game that will ultimately have no winners. Money does not grow on trees indefinitely, and infinite growth is by definition impossible. If you're a publicly traded video game company, you are playing a game of "the floor is lava", with the lava is continuously rising until you're scorched to a crisp by angry investors who want their stocks paid back to them I believe Pat is right when he says that another video game crash is imminent. It will probably effect AAA game studios mostly, and private companies (Mihoyo, Valve) will be fine It's a sobering reality to contend with, but I do appreciate Woolie and Pat talking about it for an hour or so. Excellent reporting from news anchors I can trust

[@plinfan6541]

Can't wait for Nintendo to swoop in a second time to rebirth the Industry again

[@adams3627]

Not "no winners" exactly, but definitely no more than three or four. The biggest of the big will still be standing, and they'll use their enormous reserves of capital to forcibly acquire every other company that could possibly dream of competing with them. Microsoft tried to buy VALVE. There is nobody they won't try to consume.

[@ralelunar]

I remember taking a Financial Investment class and as the professor was describing the stock market, all I could think was, "this sounds a lot like a shitty casino that's run by the bank."

[@heroicgangster9981]

Square Enix straight up made NEO The World Ends with You and Paranormasight, middle budget games with polish and straight up didn't advertise them. As a business, Square is bad at actually knowing what is good enough to actually sell. *sighs* At least FFXIV is paying their monthly expenses I guess

[@catantcha99]

They did advertise neo twewy hell they even made a anime adaptation of the first game to catch people up with the story like neo twewy didn't sell poorly because of no marketing it just sold poorly because that game series isn't very popular

[@heroicgangster9981]

@@catantcha99 it wasn't featured in ANY nintendo direct, playstation showcase, or even at square enix's own live showcase during E3 tho. A mid anime adaptation isn't going to market a franchise more than actual marketing to people who actually play games. unless if it's studio trigger or on netflix.

[@timpointer6664]

@@heroicgangster9981 it doesn't help that they ported the original title a few times with campaign announcements that were borderline cruel before finally making an actual sequel. not only did they not strike while the iron was hot, they waited till no one was looking and not enough people cared.

[@labladylolo]

oh Paranormasight mention - I have been summoned! lol what's crazy is that from what I've seen it greatly outperformed their expectations, especially in the foreign market, where it wasn't even properly advertised. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it was advertised in the Japanese Nintendo Direct, but not the worldwide version even though it had an English translation at launch. Interesting move, Square Enix.

[@UCannotDefeatMyShmeat]

You know the worst part about all the years worth of news we’ve been provided, it almost never hits the ear of the people it’s fucking over, the extremely casual people that still care in the slightest

[@malikoniousjoe]

Stupidity is a slow and insidious killer. By the time the masses feel the effects, lasting damage has been done.

[@skieth9999]

Square in 1997, inventing the AAA game: Yes, let us create a JRPG with an explosively larger budget than anything that has come before by boosting its visuals to levels hitherto unseen in console gaming and use that as a major advertising angle, beyond the actual capabilities of the hardware's 3D rendering Square in 2024: How could this happen?!

[@GabeSweetMan]

This is why Nintendo will exist for the foreseeable future. They have never cared about a higher stock price for it's own sake, only pulling (MASSIVE) profit and maintaining brand loyalty. They have faults, but they basically appease and wrangle their investors to avoid the trap of infinite growth. They prefer maintaining their foundation and expanding horizontally via the user base (the Wii and Switch did a tremendous job of this). Seeking infinite growth via stock price/valuation is like continuing to add floors to a skyscraper, which slowly becomes unstable as natural elements/market forces act upon its inherently precarious structure. More baffling is when seeing the tower begin to sway under its own weight, American companies in particular have a very stupid habit of bringing in CEOs that are more concerned with adding more floors even at the cost of stability, to the point of stripping lower floors for materials to pad out the upper floors in as ramshackle a manner as possible simply to make number go up. Then as the now weakened structure begins to collapse under its own weight, it's expected that the CEO will take responsibility and fall with the collapsing tower but instead as the support pillars buckle and the walls begin to crumble to dust, investors will hand the CEO a golden parachute and watch them base jump to safety (if they're an insider they jump with him) shouting "It's fine!" as the rest of the ignorant retail investors are left holding the bag as they ride the stock price into the dirt.

[@Vanity0666]

Nintendo is also not publicly owned.

[@TheRogueWolf]

And I keep hearing that Nintendo is "doomed" because they're not constantly chasing next-gen graphics and hardware the way Microsoft and Sony do. I'm no Nintendo fanboy- I haven't bought anything of theirs since the N64 days- but I do have to say "if it's stupid but works, it isn't stupid".

[@Zikk0_o]

Nothing is invincible. People tend to forget that Nintendo laid plenty of eggs such as the WiiU, Gamecube, and N64. Also, Nintendo's largest audience from the 80's and 90's still exist so we've really haven't seen how well their IPs will resonate with a generation totally removed from that era. There's a reason they turned their product into a hybrid, and it's why they cannot afford to remain stagnant.

[@tylerlackey1175]

Maintaining brand loyalty? Theres nothing to maintain, its a cult.

[@Desgaroth]

@@tylerlackey1175 i'm not even a nintendo fanboy, but i see many cults for any console. Surprisingly the people i've seen most claim that the intendo fanbase is practically a cult and hating them for it, are also the people that can not stop talking about nintendo games. Be it good or bad.

[@Lanewreck]

The bad half that pat is referring to is his chat telling him he's not even halfway done over and over bc he put it on the backburner for a few weeks lol

[@jfells4838]

Nah I’m ngl gongoga fucking sucks man.. dreading that part of the game whenever I replay to 100% it. It’s like the only section of rebirth that genuinely frustrates me with how piss poor the level design is.. oh and also that cait sith solo section can literally burn and die for all I care

[@ice_queen9]

i mean tbf he's playing this stuff on-stream so i assume he's not allowing himself to play it like a normal person and just roam around soaking stuff in. gotta keep one eye on donators to thank, gotta keep it entertaining. grow his business.. i take all their complaints about stuff like this with a grain of salt lol

[@jfells4838]

@@ice_queen9 idk about his whole “half bad” take but strictly talking about the gongoga section I just absolutely fucking hated it. Is it beautiful? Absolutely! Are there fun activities to do in it? Definitely! And all the story beats in that region are great imo but holy hell is the world design in that region just god awful from a layout perspective. And the music makes my damn blood boil.

[@Lanewreck]

Hey I'm just keeping the joke running bc he made such a stink about it lol. I'm just glad he's still playing it at all. Can't wait for the neo bah fight. Dude is gonna flip lol

[@Secret_Takodachi]

​@@ice_queen9jeez it's almost likes it's a job....OH WAIT THATS EXACTLY WHAT IT IS. Sympathy revoked.

[@nikobates6897]

What an educational news segment. Thanks, CSB!

[@pranavarora9976]

Woolie 'Walter Cronkite' Madden delivers again

[@pranavarora9976]

>Forever growth is unsustainable Water is wet.

[@ennuiespada]

Greed is an incredibly blinding drug.

[@kareshy6549]

But therein is the insanity, because we are living in a world where many of the most influential people on the planet are sitting around, sometimes owning things we cherish or are even vital to our lives, and going "Water isn't wet. It has nothing to do with wetness. We can have dry water forever."

[@pranavarora9976]

@@kareshy6549 I know. And I fucking hate it every day.

[@iller3]

For them it doesn't matter, they just have to make it to the Next Quarter. The entire Global Financial Sector is built entirely around just making it to the next Quarter and if there's a crash, the Central Banks will just magically "patch up" the shortfalls until *_A new Challenger appears!_* ...to the global currency itself

[@cyberninjazero5659]

​@@iller3>America: I will ensure my eternal hegemony by making the entire world dependant on my currency >Also America: I will punish specific countries by prohibiting trade with them, this will ensure they whither without my currency. This is certainly a foolproof plan with no conceivable flaws nor counters *Curb your enthusiasm music* >Picture of countries that survived sanctions without changing policies/BRICS

[@mikaelm5367]

Underneath all the pretty words of that article is something we've known about Square Enix for 20 years: they spend too mich and are disappointed when they cant make it back.

[@werewolf873]

It's not just games, either Infinite Expansion ideology is basically responsibly for the downfall of every industry right now. quality goes down across the board prices go up across the board, subscriptions, microtransactions, tipping, ai automation employee downsizing etc. are all strategies companies are employing to recapture the growth rates they had during covid.

[@conspiracypanda1200]

It's really true. Our post-covid world has so many companies foaming at the mouth, no matter if they profited or had to be bailed out. Any company (primarily the entertainment, food and delivery services) that profited ridiculously now has their investors expecting to keep and grow the profits they earned whilst under those unusual circumstances, and for companies that were at risk and bailed out (such as travel and housing industries) are now scrambling to scrape off whatever corners they can to make the line go up as fast as possible to "make up for lost time". There will be a point that they've all bloated to the biggest possible size and they collapse under their own weight while still trying to reach higher, and they're going to crush so many employees and economies on their way down.

[@kaneqost]

Capitalism. Infinite growth above anything else is the main purpose of Capitalism

[@BobbyHopp]

Yeah this is the same problem shit like Netflix is getting into as well

[@UCannotDefeatMyShmeat]

I can already feel the handwave coming

[@Vanity0666]

It's just capitalism working as intended

[@enemyv]

An entire economic system based around endless growth is also unsustainable.

[@Vanity0666]

It's almost like infinite growth is the ideology of cancer

[@swift_sam]

Growth, everywhere growth, is not only unsustainable, it's driving human misery

[@king_big_pp]

As of June 3rd, 2024, Foamstars still does not have a Wikipedia page

[@thesirenfox3017]

Oh my God that game released!

[@MrTeucro99]

18:15 to skip the adds

[@Kumo-s6f]

It's almost as if an economic system based on competition will eventually have winners, and those winners will tilt the table to ensure they can never lose.

[@Vanity0666]

It's almost like you should absolutely never gamify society under any circumstances.

[@ToastyMozart]

The table isn't even tilted here, everyone's just trying to dominate a very limited sub-market instead of realistically diversifying.

[@Kumo-s6f]

@@ToastyMozart "Capitalism can work, everyone's just doing it wrong!"

[@malum9478]

waddya meeaaann?? but but but muh free market will decide!!

[@nefariouscritter2436]

​@user-fu9hc3oi3l I have a feeling you're biased against pretty much any argument in favor of capitalism but tbh capitalism has worked. Idk what alternative you believe would be any better.

[@ReverseSkeleton]

I was just in Gongaga and its only now that Pat has expressed this criticism that it absolutely hit me what a fucking chore the whole area was.

[@Secret_Takodachi]

Shut up & consume product. Then get excited for next product! 😂

[@HoChiMints2007]

Me? Gongagagagagagagagagagagaga

[@omegaxtrigun]

Honestly I felt like the open world in general was a chore by the time I finished Junon.

[@gwotkid]

Woolie's continued insistance he's not a perfect journalist ironically keeps making him a great journalist

[@stevsux4442]

He doesn't say he's not a perfect journalist.... He says hes not a journalist at all and wants people to stop calling him one lmao he's not a journalist, he's a content creator who's talking about what he wants to talk about and what he gets paid to talk about, enjoy his content and learn what you can but don't think you're watching a great journalist with integrity and accountability

[@gwotkid]

@@stevsux4442 that's exactly my point, and everyone's actually; Woolie's default state, not going out of his way to have journalistic integrity, has considerably more than nearly every employee of IGN for the last 10 years. His biased and half-baked takes are more objective and fair than the vast majority of serious journalistic work, especially around videogames.

[@stevsux4442]

@@gwotkid I wish I could spit on a comment. When integrity is failing and corruption is taking over the industry saying "I want no responsibility" is not the more integral thing to do, it's the same thing

[@gwotkid]

@@stevsux4442 your spit fetish has nothing to do with the fact that Woolie is ACCIDENTALLY THE BEST GAMES JOURNO. That's my entire point, he is effortlessly outperforming people who do it as their career. Woolie's reluctance isn't innately virtuous like you keep strawmanning, his reluctance shows how much he cares about journalism being done in an ethical way, which is far more than can be said about the entire games journo field right now. At the end of the day, intentions be damned, this show is more reliable at delivering accurate weekly news about videogames than practically every major publication, consistently.

[@stevsux4442]

@@gwotkid fucking stop writing fan fiction good lord, he's not even a journalist, how the fuck are you gonna take someone who gets their information from articles and does little to no research himself and call him the best games journalist in all caps? This is embarrassing for you

[@Noxshade]

There is something perfectly thematic about the idea that game companies have to be more profitable than the baseline growth of the stock market, and then talking about how on the consumer side they have to compete with the baseline entertainment of existing games-as-a-service. It’s like poetry, it rhymes. Or something.

[@eastbluedrew1664]

Omg Tarzan jungle was a perfect analogy 😂😂😂

[@unyieldingsarcasm2505]

the worst was that canopy where you had to pick the specific path to surf down, or you had to track ALLLLLLL the way back to try again.

[@onimaxblade8988]

To me it’s not the layout that’s that bad (though it is eh with the platforming esp)… It’s that the game makes you go and visit almost EVERY SINGLE ROOM to save Gorillas later, so if you end up missing or forgetting a couple you will be wondering what on earth you’re missing.

[@SuperfieldCrUn]

​​@@onimaxblade8988As well as the fact that, even after playing it more times then I care to admit, I still don't have an intuitive grasp of how the Vines and Vines 2 areas are laid out or connected.

[@SuperfieldCrUn]

@@unyieldingsarcasm2505 You land near the tent, which has a save point you can use to exit to the world map, then re-enter the world at the save point at the top of the slide to try again, so you don't have to trek all the way back up if you mess up on the slide.

[@waidixon8965]

So I've been thinking a bit about things close to this topic. Of course, on a strict literal sense, no one industry can have endless growth. The Earth only so big, there's always physical limits. But of course no one's thinking about the term in that sense. What people actually think about is the industry "growing for many long years, it has potential", which is technically true for video games. As more developing countries get more computers and consoles and internet connections, gamers are going to increase. So I think the "long term (decades)" angle of this statement is probably true, because that's a very low resolution statement without details in numbers. What isn't so true however are the actual grow projections that individuals, and individual companies make. No one guy has enough knowledge to do predictions accurately in the long term (even yearly), especially with how fast the world changes nowadays. So when a market buddy makes his projection charts based on a selective amount of information, chances are he's going to be wrong. Then of course what Woolie brought up about the need to impress investors, how other investments ties into how much a game project profits needs to be, that are all piling up the difficulty of doing projections. This also ties into how the longer a game project is, the harder it is to project correctly, which also tells you one of the reasons why the current trend of forever increasing development time is not working well for video games. And then when the CEO wants to brush up that already inaccurate projection just enough that he can brag to the investors how big his PP is, then force the entire company to meet that inaccurate x 1.2 bragging factor projection chart turbo mode expectations, that's where shit truly hits the fan.

[@StonyDucky]

I agree with Pat on the point he made about FF towards the end of the podcast. Final Fantasy is (or maybe, more accurately has), become a victim of its own reputation. The series placed itself at the forefront of graphically impressive games since FF7, and that reputation never went away. By that nature, the games almost feel like they have to be these extremely expensive showcases, because that's how people perceive the franchise. I don't even know if you can put the genie back in the bottle in this case. Especially as a franchise owned by a publicly traded company, you're going to have to make that ROI, and the idea of down scaling a numbered entry for the sake of having a more manageable budget seems insanely unlikely. What is Squeenix even supposed to do in this scenario? It's a dire spot to be in. I don't get the impression that FF's peers are running into the same issue. Persona is only getting more popular, and they seem to be doing it without breaking the bank. Like a Dragon is the king of asset reuse, and although I don't think Infinite Wealth was necessarily cheap to make, I can't see that game being even half as expensive as Rebirth. FF still has the benefit of being the #1 JRPG franchise in terms of popularity and recognition, but that's starting to feel more and more tenuous. It's possible another franchise usurps its spot, and when that happens what the fuck is Squeenix to do?

[@cyberninjazero5659]

SE can "fix" this by just. Not making Final Fantasy games (hear me out) They can just make a new series with Final Fantasy summons and animals but not give it the franchise name, since FF changes everything else with every entry holding only those things constant it's not a huge loss. They can, in that way, space out releases for "real" Final Fantasy games (if they ever want to make them again) building more hype due to absence

[@Zeik56]

Interestingly, FF14 is the game that did more or less put that genie back in the bottle, and it has become one of their most profitable ventures since. One of the big things that caused 1.0 to cave under its own weight was that extreme graphical push to be the best, some argue 1.0 still looks better than even modern FF14 (debatable imo), so they scaled things way back in 2.0 and have focused more on art direction to push the graphics than actually trying to compete with the amount of polygons they can fit on screen. And because of that they actually had the resources to focus on making a good game. FF14 is probably an outlier in many ways, since they're not trying to sell people a new modern experience with every expansion, people who are going to buy the next expansion are already invested, but at this point they are probably better off taking the risk on the main series by just releasing a game with "good enough" graphics while still otherwise being a genuinely good game. They may not be able to recapture the same fervor they once did by blowing people away with their cutting edge graphics, but they'll still likely make more profit if they're not spending absurd amounts of money just to keep that reputation.

[@at0micl0bster]

@@Zeik56 thats mainly cause Se refuses to give them devs and steals their devs for ff7 remake that and they take NO fucking risks and make boring expansions

[@Null_Experis]

You absolutely CAN "Put the Genie Back In The Bottle" in this case. The trick is to eschew graphical fidelity in exchange for a distinct and highly stylized art style. Just look at Nintendo games. They're all low quality visually, but they have consistent and stylized presentation that carries it. Meanwhile, we have FF7 Remake/Rebirth where the main cast looks absolutely stunning with highly stylized outfits, but every NPC walking around looks like a generic art asset wearing modern street clothes and the style is so schizophrenic the player gets tonal whiplash every time they see a non-cast member. Then, look at FF9. It ALSO looks like crap, even for its time (compare it to Vagrant Story), but it WORKS because of the art direction and stylization.

[@cyberninjazero5659]

@@Null_Experis Oh yeah, 9 did scale down after the 7+8 Combo

[@Velkin999]

Ah man our beloved franchise didn't reach our unrealistic goal of infinite growth. Better sell our company to private equity so it can be stripped for parts.

[@Mr.Faust3]

"We are not a news podcast" Posts 1 hour clip of gaming news

[@GeekMasterGames]

Don't make me tap the sign: "I Want Shorter Games With Worse Graphics and I'm Not Kidding"

[@Guiquipedia]

The gap between BOTW and TOTK was 6 years, but in that time Nintendo also released the Skyward Sword remaster and the Link’s Awakening remake, as well as Age of Calamity and all the games on Nintendo Online. All of which makes Square look even worse

[@marzgamingmaster]

2 things on this. 1: You guys are exactly right on the time gap thing. I noticed my nephew just isn't as into the classic mascots as I was when I was growing up, and then I looked back and realized the games he played when he was five or 6 are only now that he's almost 12 thinking about dropping their sequel. When I was growing up, a 6 year dev cycle was, like, a dead franchise. Now it's Tuesday. 2: I believe this will end with those massive price increases you guys mentioned, up to $100 base price. And I know at that point that is completely unaffordable for me, period. $70 is unaffordable, $60 I could BARELY justify for titles I knew were top quality. I know the $10 price hike made big budget titles all but unaffordable for a lot of people I know, I imagine going higher will have compounding effects for that issue. I don't see wages going up any time soon, dropping a cool hundred on frelling "Average Daylife" ain't happening.

[@NanTheDark]

I feel the need to point out that the "Final" in Final Fantasy didn't come from it being the last effort the company was doing before bankruptcy, that was merely a coincidence. They originally wanted to name it Fighting Fantasy, but the name was taken, and they wanted to keep the "FF" acronym. So they went with Final just to preserve the acronym. This was explained by Sakaguchi in an interview.

[@Holesale00]

id like to thank the video game industry for teaching me more about business practices and corporate greed/bullshittery than any industry ive been exposed to in my time on this earth.

[@IstasPumaNevada]

Speaking of the title, an economy and a society based on endless growth are _also_ unsustainable.

[@zanesy6250]

Growth for the sake of Growth is the Mentality of the Cancer Cell... too bad all the companies these days seem to have Terminal Malignant Tumors.

[@ThisNameIsNotTaken99]

Why do I have teeth and hair growing out of my AAA release?

[@Artista_Frustrado]

"we aren't making money, clearly we must throw money at the problem... why isn't it working?!" - Literally every corporate executive

[@IcyDragonPolaris]

Square talking about their expectations gives me flashbacks to my mom telling me that anything lower than an 85 is a failing grade...

[@LyleDyland]

I just watched the FF7 Remake Spoilercast ep, and going from all that optimism, theory-crafting hype to this is amazing.

[@nackskott12]

Publicly traded companies have been a disaster for art. Private trading has It's problems for sure, but less investor control is almost always a good thing for quality. Joe Daytrader doesn't know or care about quality, he just cares about ROI, and that's how you get corporate sludge.

[@sdbzfan1]

Cant wait to play rebirth and 16 when they come to pc

[@TayoJD23]

Pat saying MARIO FUCKING SUNSHINE is the ONE first party Nintendo game people say is mid is fucking insane when Skyward Sword (which I like more than some of the better received Zeldas) and OTHER M exist.

[@Cruddyhorse]

Wind Waker is also still pretty contested both due to the tedium of travel and it's art style being such a departure from OoT/MM.

[@onimaxblade8988]

Remember when people were thinking Skyward would be competing with Skyrim

[@lavenzavantas]

can't wait for Pat and Woolie to start singing the Internationale

[@anascoolcat]

appreciate the Muse's Unsustainable mention

[@joshuar1639]

"Why isn't this working?! Must more blood be shed?!" -Corporate executives when they see they made 0.1% less money than they did the previous quarter

[@sirlenemodesto2665]

Final fantasy XVI having to fight fortnite slop for player count is like some indie dev trying to pull players from the next sports game.. like what are you doing those are not the same audience?

[@omegaxtrigun]

The thing is they want it to be the same audience. And to be fair it used to be. It used to be that FF was the big thing that everyone played. Now it’s not because gaming is way bigger now and the majority of players aren’t FF fans. They’re cod/fortnite/genshin fans. So now FF is a niche because something bigger has eclipsed it. The average gamer is no longer the enthusiast that sinks a lot of time into well made experiences. Now the average gamer is the normie that plays f2p live service slop. Why make stuff for the smaller audience that has actual standards when you can shovel slop to the masses of normies that have almost no standards and will happily eat said slop until the heat death of the universe?

[@ubermenschen01]

"Video game news podcast discusses the contradictions of capitalism for over an hour." This whole "Final Fantasy has to be 'teh biggest evar'" is *literally* one of the reason put forth from Square Enix employees in NoClip's documentary on FF 14. Like I'm pretty sure the "jump from FF 6 to FF7 to FF 10" was mentioned verbatim. The "oh no the GAAS games have our customers forever!" mentality is self-defeating. Particularly when they have FF 14, where the devs have repeatedly said "Hey man, it's cool if you un-sub. Come back for the next expansion, you know it's gonna be good!", and their numbers just keep going up and up. Like the counter-argument is literally coming from inside the house! It's like someone who complains that, after setting up a massive Rube Goldberg machine in their kitchen, they have to flick over a domino to make toast. MF *you* built the machine, you fix it!

[@Quinn2win]

It says something that my reaction to this discussion was "what the fuck is Foam Stars?"

[@ice_queen9]

these video lengths are experiencing endless growth

[@iller3]

In a perfect world without Piracy or youtubers streaming their games, and where every **working family** could afford these titles ...the "Spectacle" model would work. That world will never exist ever again specifically BECAUSE of the stock market speculating on everything that should have been a basic human "need"

[@AngryHomunculus]

50:05 - Woolie kept saying "It's not enough" so many times, my brain was about to autocorrect the next thing he said as Talos' speech from Void Stalker

[@heroicgangster9981]

maybe we shouldn't listen to the consumer base that somehow thinks making Call of Duty, THE MOST EXPENSIVE YEARLY FRANCHISE THAT IS BARELY HOLDING ITS OWN, use more graphics and processing power would somehow evolve the franchise. At this point, I'd accept ps3-early ps4 gen games if it meant getting more great games.

[@TalkingVidya]

Another issue is that we seem to hit a wall graphics wise. Like, if PS4 to PS5 was actually a generational jump, game's like Elden Ring would have not come out in PS4, or at least, it should have been a Shadow Of Mordor situation, but no, the game plays almost the same in both consoles. So a lot if the industriy is in a place of stagnation

[@ApexGale]

there isn't any place left to go with the graphics arms race. it ended with the ps4 era. and the focus on high quality graphics just means games are forced to spend an extra few years in development while devs slave away texturing pores onto a hyper realistic human face.

[@fable23]

Given the makeup of the dev teams, I wouldn't be surprised if the exact same people are responsible for Gongaga and the Tarzan jungle.

[@User5770]

At least it seems Square are maybe possibly making a good decision of "Maybe if we release on more than one platform more people will buy our big tentpole releases."

[@Cruddyhorse]

It's a big nothing burger statement until they actually announce stuff imo.

[@User5770]

@@Cruddyhorse I think that's an extremely fair position to have. While its nice to hear them espouse a solution that is actually smart, we don't actually award the points until they go ahead and do it.

[@thepickles8833]

I will never understand why FF: The Spirits Within came to be. If was the least fantasy thing in the entire franchise and had the opportunity to usher in a new fantasy sword and magic craze right before the Lord of the Rings trilogy came out.

[@crowclaw]

Before LotR, Sword and Sorcery was not cool in public. You had Xena and Hercules TV series in the 90s, but they were camp and cheap. FF 6,7,8 went SciFi, FF9 was initially looked as kid game for babies. It made sense to go SciFi when Spirits Within went into production. In Hawaii, very expensive place.

[@at0micl0bster]

it also got sakaguchi removed from his leadership position and opened the flood gates on shitty sequels (sakaguchi was the one pushing for the series to be an anthology)

[@froginbell9851]

Excellent reporting from the news anchor I can trust!

[@TheRogueWolf]

Finance has become incompatible with art, because investors now want immediate, meteoric profit on every "product" that gets put on sale. Things like artistic merit or even market saturation mean nothing to them- if line no go up, investor sad, and if investor sad, executives no get bonus, and executives sad. "The long haul" has been thrown aside by people who refuse to look past the next fiscal quarter.

[@cyberninjazero5659]

Finance has always been incompatible with life. There's a reason the Abrahamic faiths placed a prohibition on Usury. This is the inevitable end result. Our technological advancement allowed this pyramid scheme logic to go on far longer by spreading much further (and in the future crashing far harder) than would've ever been imaginable centuries ago.

[@RoyalKnightVIII]

I feel like this fella named Marx wrote about capitalists seeking infinite growth somewhere....

[@Biodeamon]

the difference between a tumor and improvement is how stable your growth is one should aim to endure not outrun

[@sir_hammy]

Woolie and Pat too smart for me. I love FF16.

[@pogoacct8611]

Same

[@KingTaltia]

"You know who's not publicly traded? Mihoyo." (To be clear; that's not by their choice, they WANTED to be Publicly traded at a point, got denied because they only made Honkai games, removed the "Honkai" from Genshin's name to make it not the same IP, then, y'know, kicked off Genshin to wild acclaim and then went "Y'know what, we don't need you anyway" to public trading)

[@Kiteazuresea]

I have fond memories of that playthrough! Might go back and rewatch it

[@LearnRX97]

1:05:00 when Pat talks about the entirety of highschool for FF. I remember playing FF13 when I had a ps3 as my first FF and hadn't beaten an FF game since FF XV

[@ice_queen9]

woolie forgot to account for the costs of using Unreal Engine, which Square does. I believe that's another 5% of sales revenue. (not saying that's unreasonable of Epic, it's just how it is)

[@lexofexcel886]

An entire business strategy centered around kicking the can down the field in regards to the step where the investors get their money back and the business goes on without them from that point on.

[@iamnuff1992]

"Oh no, the stock market!"

[@thepickles8833]

STONKS

[@invaderpez12]

I agree with Pat, while Nintendo definitely misses from time to time, most of the time their games are solid and theres no real worry that a first party game is gonna be bad. And they don't cost THAT much to make and make gangbusters. If it wasnt for the dinosaurs in the company who don't understand online or emulation, they'd be perfect.

[@TyranusRex721]

Nintendo has survived because they are able to budget their games and have trained their fans/user base to not just accept cartoony/simple graphics, but love them. That dramatically cuts down on money. Hell, most Nintendo games will have like, maybe two cutscenes. And they are like in engine too. Nintendo does a lot of shitty stuff, but at least they are smart with their money. We saw in the Insomniac leaks that Spider-Man 2 cost over $300 million to make it had to sell something like 8 million units to BREAK EVEN! Thankfully, it sold like 10 million, but having to sell 8 million just to break even is unsustainable, especially in a single player game that launches at full price on a single platform. And we know Wolverine is going to cost even more than that. Sony and Square have put themselves in this situation where they have trained their fanbase to expect these massive, ultra cinematic and expensive games and that is starting to backfire on them really hard. For all their stupid mistakes Microsoft does (mainly talking too damn much) they are moving all their games into Unreal Engine 5. Everyone working on the same engine and sharing info and assets is super smart and will cut down on costs. Now if only they could better manage their damn games. But we have absolutely seen the consequences of not just infinite growth, but how that interacts with AAA games. The amount of money you have to put in these games and then expect them to make money back hand over fist upon release is not sustainable. And seeing a bunch of these companies try to get into GASS games and failing, is hurting them even more. God help Sony with Concord as they try to release that with Marvel Rivals and Valve's new game coming out at like the same time. Sony sank a ton of money into that game and I have the feeling it is dead on arrival. Moral of the story: Budget your games properly and share/reuse assets and engines. Saves a lot of time and money.

[@MiniatureMorpheus]

So glad I was never struck with the curse that is Fortnite and Warzone.

[@1000Tomatoes]

Imagine how much Nintendo would double down on it's strategy if it was the only one to survive an industry collapse a second time.

[@pickledparsleyparty]

That Cliffy B idea that there's only enough room for 2-3 of a thing in an industry is actually a classic unnatural law of business. I think it was a Michael Porter thing, originally. The insight is that any industry can sustain a max of 2-3 main competitors. Use case for it is predicting shakeups (a bunch of companies going out of business). When you see more than 2-3 companies competing for the same customers with the same/similar products, you can count on one or more of them failing in the near term.

[@sebastianbarrios7288]

Pat is completely right. By this point FF cant not be the biggest, most expensive to make jrpg ever, they cornered themselves into this situation. Though I still think they still shoot themselves in the foot unnecesarilly by adding a ton of padding and filler that could have simply not been there, would make their games release sooner and no one would complain if they didnt exist. Did we really need a card and soccer game on Rebirth?

[@cyberninjazero5659]

Maybe by the end of this trilogy they'll have everyone wishing they just made one remake game with trimmed down areas and drastically better pacing

[@Renoistic]

Judging from people's reactions they definitely needed that card game :p

[@Renoistic]

Finding the story-relevant areas in Gongaga is easy. The side quest stuff, not so much.

[@dodiswatchbobobo]

Those minigames are important to making the world feel endless. As long as you’re avoiding those annoying minigames, the game doesn’t feel over. I can spend HOURS not doing the minigames.

[@MattManDX1]

Making the 3 hour long or so tutorial segment of Midgar in the original game a full blown padded to hell mess of a whole game in FF7 Remake was a baffling decision. They could have just made a single entry as a remake that covered the whole of FF7 and just somewhat expanded the original areas a little bit while mostly just cleaning up and smoothing over the old PS1 jank level design and people would have loved it.

[@nahnah390]

Man, replaying Tarzan's jungle recently made me shocked at how short the whole thing was... it's just confusing when you don't know what to do. It's bad conveyance rather than actually too huge or weirdly all over the place. And that makes me wonder if Gongaga has a problem in the same way.

[@Meta_Mage]

Not only is the Gongaga area confusing as hell to navigate, you also get a demonic children choir taunting you all the way.

[@desotodesun3449]

that would also mean capitalism itself is unsustainable.

[@wielderofthetriforce1934]

Yes

[@werewolf873]

Not really. It just means that infinite growth is unsustainable. There's nothing about capitalism that requires infinite growth.

[@wielderofthetriforce1934]

⁠@@werewolf873 And yet capitalism cannot function without constant growth otherwise it defeats the purpose

[@someonelikeable616]

@@wielderofthetriforce1934 A stagnant capitalist economy, you mean Japan? Japan's still hanging on

[@NaderinZim]

I also love the good old "people are doing something stupid and it is about money, therefore capitalism is at fault!". No, it's just that money being backed by absolute air (which in turn makes bonds/shares value turn into just projection) makes it so the line must go up into infinity since there's little to nothing to hold said value into concrete things. Imagine floating in space and having nothing close to you that has any mass, you just go in one direction forever, of course that doesn't work in finance since production and space is finite. You can mainly thank the US government and the governments that followed suit to abolish the gold standard for that, and the ridiculous high inflation caused by mass printing money (which in turn makes companies focus only on the short term, since in the long term they may just lose money anyway) for all the unsustainable growth shenanigans we have.

[@fablion6324]

heyyy i was born in 99. final fantasy was always the game the adult nerds was talking about on youtube when i was a kid, Sephiroth stabing erith was spoiled so hard for me before i even knew there was a ps1. in europe 13 (the first ff i can remember being released) was pegi 16 so if you had strict parents (even if the adults on youtube wherent saying 13 was bad) you where not playing that. the jrpg kids knew was pokemon and when my generation became teenagers persona 5 was the jrpg.

[@sigisecht]

It boggles my mind the game developers have compile reports on all of these factors when making a game, but then the publishers do not have even have to think about them when they make their decisions. Is Sony really going to ask Cory Balrog why did God of War Ragnorok not sell as well as it could have outside of playstation? Can they not see cory balrog coming over the horizon carrying and about to hurl 180 countries in anger due Sony's decision to limit sales to playstation network?!

[@HarukoJisan]

Don't wanna be THAT guy, but if Sony was allowing their PS5 exclusives to release on PC, the sales probably would've been a lot higher. Sony needs to bite the bullet a little on all the PS5 exclusives tbh, we shouldn't be waiting 4 whole fucking years for games that didn't sell well because no one could buy your console.

[@Zikk0_o]

They've already explained why they don't do it. They don't want to cannibalize their console platform. It's not too different than Rockstar deliberately not releasing GTA day and date on PC.

[@HarukoJisan]

@@Zikk0_o This is gonna drive developers away from partnering with Sony, Final Fantasy has done really well with them for years and now arguably the two biggest installments in years "flop" because of Sony. Going from the most available console ever with the PS2 to the least available with PS5 really destroyed the idea of the PS exclusive hit.

[@Zikk0_o]

@@HarukoJisan So then explain why JRPGs don't sell on Xbox and how a game like Remake can run on a Switch.

[@artvandalleigh7894]

I don't know how true that is. FF7R has been on PC for over a year and hasn't set sales charts on fire.

[@Zikk0_o]

@jack_reaver Just look at the past history of sales on the Xbox. FF and majority of major JRPGs do not sell very well on the platform. During its worst console era while millions behind, the PS3 version of FF13 outsold the 360 version, and it wasn't even close. The Xbox console itself is struggling to sell outside the U.S.

[@manticorephoenix]

Why does Square Enix keep accepting exclusive deals and then whine about lack of expected sales

[@heroicgangster9981]

they probably expected ps4 sales on the ps5 generation. ps4 very much WAS the most biased heavy console because the competition were doing nothing to compete. But now it's PS5 against Nintendo, and the economy, and the investors.

[@crowclaw]

Money now is better than money later. At least for the current quarter of a company on the stock market.

[@Zeik56]

Exclusivity usual comes with financial backing and incentive. It is part of what allows many of these AAA games to have their ridiculous budgets. Not to mention saving costs and time on the ports. In the past that was fine, because exclusives still sold like crazy, so accepting those deals tended to be more profitable. (Exclusives tended to be more polished and better products too, which meant a better reputation and sales.) But times have changed and doesn't usually pan out that way anymore, but many publishers have not caught on to this fact yet. They still see that money up front as a win and expect exclusives to sell like they did 10 years ago.

[@23kurtzy]

Because your company gets 3 million dollars for this quarter. The game comes out 3 quarters down the line which might as well mean after the heat death of the universe, and if they don’t see money now they sell.

[@IamNster]

I will never forgive Namco for saying, "SC6 sold well, but it didn't sell *enough* , so we're pulling the plug."

[@powerfist1340]

It's not... exactly the publicly traded bit, its that fiduciary responsibility in the modern day means that the SOLE PURPOSE of the company is to provide value to the shareholder, rather than, you know, creating product which satisfies the customer - the part that actually creates profit for shareholders. The Corporations first and primary responsibility should be to it's customers, and then to it's employees.

[@wolflance64]

Lethal Lethal Company and Balatro laugh at the face of AAA Silk Song we need you more than ever to show us the way!

[@plinfan6541]

Honestly, Silk Song's continoued not showing has killed all hype to me. People acting like it will come out as the Messiah of Indie, when so many other games pop off all over the place, is silly.

[@azimulhoque1497]

​@@plinfan6541it's in the position of being a very good game and that's all it needs at least. Fans act like it will change the world by being a metroidvania

[@PunishedDad]

@@plinfan6541 I've been giggling at the silksong cope for years now

[@loganwernicke7604]

12:40 Pat apparently doesn't understand patience and that you can get to something later

[@Ravensgale]

Neo:TWEWY looking over at FF VII Rebirth and FF XVI like: "Quit bitching, at least Square-Enix gave you guys advertising. All I got was a shitty anime adaptation of my PREVIOUS game and some stupid AR café bullshit. Hell, they didn't even put ads for our game on the main website until SIX MONTHS after release and we got the 'failed to meet expectations' speech too. Hell, Square-Enix gave all our advertising space to that Balan Wonderland fucking flop."

[@TheLucidChiba]

Sounds like they combined Gongaga with the little forest area that opens after you kill Ultima weapon

[@eastbluedrew1664]

Rebirth is too big for its own good 😂😂😂😂😂😂 i just reached cosmo canyon mind u i got this game on lauch

[@ceriani1234]

Dang, maybe instead of putting all that extra content in, they 1st should have made a good game.

[@NEETproxy]

Damn this was a good discussion about a nerdy thing that I like. Hell yeah.

[@christopherhenson50]

There’s one more aspect of this in regards to gacha I feel people don’t want to talk about, but the overwhelming success of the gacha business model to me reflects a reaction to the ever increasing gap between the rich and poor. Rich people get the opportunity to dump as much money as they want into a game for “a better experience” and that fact allows the game to exist and continue putting out content for the rest of us plebeians.

[@HavenKhaos]

I did my Masters Thesis on FFXIV and Anthem and it was FAILURE IN THE VIDEO GAMES INDUSTRY. And it was told to me at that point it was the most coherent and in-depth thesis anyone had ever done on the topic and if I put in the work it could be used in business classes as a case study. And all of this shit is so basic.

[@Cruddyhorse]

Is there somewhere I could see it? sounds like an intresting read.

[@HavenKhaos]

@@Cruddyhorse In Public? Nah. I do have it up on G-Drive though so if you wanna read it I can link it.

[@deko97]

was the title a muse reference i just realized

[@Burnie_96]

Sunshine is amazing

[@The_Queen_Chrysalis]

castle super beast clips? Dropped us a whole movie!