World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy 14 are both owned by mega corporations. I analyze whether or not that’s a good or a bad thing for the quality and longevity of these titles.
Steve Jobs Interview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4VBqTViEx4
TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 WoW started indie, FF14 started corporate
1:14 WoW – The Bad
7:38 WoW – The Good
9:26 FFXIV – The Good
11:19 FFXIV – The Bad
source
Interesting take, but I think you've got a few misconceptions here. Nothing to say about the Steve Jobs bit. but in regards to comparison between Wow and FF14, thing is, you seem to think that FF14 transitioned from being created by a corporation then took more and more independance, with Creative Business Unit 3, the team led by Yoshida. This, I feel, is only partially true, let me explain.
In an interview in the NoClip documentary about the death and rebirth of Final Fantasy 14 (great watch, I higly recommand watching it, you probably already have), Yoshida speaks about one of the pitfalls the first version of FF14 fell into, and it was not really corporation stiffling creativity. In fact, it was pretty much the opposite, with Square-Enix being too proud of having the best videogame artisans, craftsmiths of the industry at the time, and letting them keep making the equivalent of katana's in videogame form, using technology that was not fit to make an MMO. To elaborate on the katana analogy, I think it was like trying to build an army, but arming your soldiers with only the finest katanas there is. The problem, is that yes, they were a couple of soldiers with katanas, but then you also had to arm the rest of the soldiers, and some artisans would decide to craft polarms, other would raise horses, and it would still be not enough so they would give basic spears or even gardening tools to the rest. And it was a mess. The problem was not creativity vs corporation, it was lack of leadership, they had the creativity, they just didn't know how to channel it.
Thing is, the bigger a society gets, the more difficult it is to run it. We can see it in another form with the recent news about AAAA studios failing, and their leadership giving up. Imho, if Blizzard started to deteriorate after the Activision acquisition is not because Activision is evil, but moreso because you had two big entities becoming one, generating even more leadership problems (having to please shareholders for exemple). Whereas I do think that Creative Business Unit 3 is maintained at a realitvely healthy size, and managed well by Yoshi-P. So while bigger doesn't always result in failure, and in fact brings more strength and workpower, it is more difficult to run, it tends to create more problems to solve…And that's where I think Yoshi-P shines, he's not a creative, he's not an artisan, but he is a darn-good leader (again, in the NoClip documentary, the way he convinced people to give him a chance as a leader, they way he organized the staff to create ARR, while knowing and communicating it was only a temporary solution…and no, I don't mean he's perfect, but…he's just good at his job, and his job is not being creative, it's project management).
Now, about the NFT bit…I am cautionly optimistic in regards to them never coming to FF14. The letter from the Square-Enix president was…something else, let's say, but we have to remember that he's not thinking like us, he's basically in another world, finance, yay…And yes, it is worrying that these people keep trying to push the limits of monetization, especially with their "play-to-earn" nonsense. Thankfully, as of now, it is still nonsense, and I mean this very literally, play-to-earn is not a viable model on a large scale, because for someone to earn money, you got to have people that pay that money, it has to come from somewhere. NFTs have not yet find a real use aside from speculation and shady monetization (and I sincerly hope they'll never do).
Back to FF14 and Yoshida's answer…I think it is clear he has not total control over FF14. Point in case, the cash shop. That being said, I do think he understands the playerbase, so he had to quell the worries…but he also can't directly call his superior on his bullshit. That's why he took the stance of FF14 not being built to support NFTs. And I do think it's very smart, because it gives him a solid argument to prevent NFTs coming to FF14…for now. Of course, the problem is that…Square-Enix president can change, and pushes for NFTs can become more aggressive. Hell, Yoshi-P is almost sanctified by the community (some would argue for good reasons), but he's only human, he can also make mistakes, and he's not immortal. So my stance about it is this : don't be too worried about the future, enjoy things as they are now. Things change, they get worse, they get better. Of course, stay vigilant about how things are changing, and be ready to adapt. Let go of an MMO or any game if you no longer enjoy it. Keep playing if you still enjoy it. Be very mindful of the sunken cost fallacy and other psychological bias we all have, and be ready to move on if necessary. It'll always be a balancing act.
It's worth noting that Yoshida has a seat on the board of directors in SQEnix. How much influence that gives him is unknown, but it's potentially further weight to being against NFTs.
myhr2 brought up some further points about how we know FFXIV worked with Yoshi-P's clarification as a counterpoint to corporate vs corporation, but there is also some corporate influence in what happened in 1.0 and that was company culture (arrogance from previous successful projects) and brain drain (as engineers were siphoned off to work on Crystal Tools, which led to poor optimization issues in 1.0). What it basically boils down to is "Do you have the correct people handling the job with the correct ability?" (the biggest factor that Steve Jobs alludes to, essentially).
One of the biggest reasons why 2.0 came about the way it was was that AFTER Yoshi-P was brought in, he ended up taking time off for research and then conceived of the concept of 2.0 after understanding the issues in 1.0…but only as one of 2 plans, the other being to just truck on with 1.0 with the understanding that it would never be good enough. And the way he convinced corporate to sign off on 2.0 was corporate's understanding that Final Fantasy was their main brand, and irrevocably damaging it would destroy the company (they were already heavily struggling around that time, owing back all the way to the Spirits Within movie). And that's a big part of why having proper employees for the proper job is important. Awareness of the correct issues. A lot of Acti-Blizzard basically ignored festering issues in lieu of what they perceived as other problems, until the real issues became too big to ignore. This is also what the Steve Jobs issue alludes to, in that people who have marketing skills have the wrong awareness about what is an issue within the company.
Where Indie vs Corporate tends to influence in that regard is the closeness of the leader in charge to the front-lines, so to speak. As companies get larger, the issues of coordination and proper skillsets for employment becomes harder to handle. FFXIV 1.0 actually presents a really good example in that one of the reasons for its failings was that their lead producer/director had previously worked on successful stuff before…including FFXI which was really popular and revolutionary as an MMO for its time! They could arguably be considered as products of a more "independent" structure. But corporate were not aware of the changing MMO landscape and neither were those producer/directors before and that producer/director were not up to the task of adapting. In fact, one of those two still stayed on as lead designer for FFXIV 2.0, but many of the worst historical systems in FFXIV (Heavensward in particular, such as how HW handled crafting) were known to be his doing or under his leadership, despite his supposed more independent history.
In the end of the day, we don't reaaaally know how "indie" we can count CBU3. In many ways, they still inherit a lot of the pipeline that the Final Fantasies of old have used, and many of the failings of many other Final Fantasies (such as FFXIII) have a lot to do with company culture, which CBU3 could still be subject to as just being part of the company given all of the shenanigans SqEnix keeps getting themselves into. But we do know that they're more "independent" in the sense that they're more trusted within the company. And that's all we can say cleanly on the matter.
And, at the same time, a lot of those failures SqEnix have gotten into recently are actually pretty murky on how much they're responsible for (Babylon's Fall, for example – SqEnix were the ones who demanded the gameplay be changed to be more of a cozy co-op experience, but Platinum Games were the ones who originally proposed a Live Service game project. Was it because SqEnix always wanted a Live Service cash cow and Platinum tried to jump on it? Or was it Platinum's own ideas, given their recent studio mottos and interviews that their leaders have done? Hard to say – while Platinum Games are beloved for the best games they make, they also make plenty of bad games and generally undersell even on their good games, in addition to some other unknown controversies such as being sort-of, sort-of-not being kicked off the upcoming Granblue Fantasy game. But that's an example of a supposed "independent" studio of SqEnix not being necessarily free from issues just because they're more free from the established company).
Hey, your vids are so good, keep going! 😃👊
Well, I hate the state wow is and I've quit for a long time now and maybe forever since the story is wrecked but Microsoft hasn't had the chance to have any influence. The purchase hasn't even taken place as of yet.
He's one of the 4 or 5 board members of Square Enix, he was put there a few years after FF14 relaunch so, he's there because the stakeholders and the other board members approve of what he done there, so when he wants to persuade his "boss" there aren't many up there really. Probably more on talking to the stakeholders on its his way or the blizzway.