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In the game development industry, things always worked a certain way. You had the first party companies -- big hardware manufacturers who supplemented their console offerings with massive internal development studios designed to pump out the sort of content that could sell their produced hardware to the masses. Then there were the big third parties -- independent publishers who had no affiliation with the particular hardware manufacturers. They didn't make the systems, they just created the software that made up the bulk of the releases.
And in between were the smaller guys -- typically restricted developers without publishing assets (the ability to fund the creation of a game, create its physical properties, and advertise and market it to the public). These independent developers often affiliated themselves either with the hardware manufactuers (sometimes existing as wholly or partially owned subsidiaries) or with particular publishers, with whom they'd often strike up long term contracts. These second parties have never been, in the grander scheme of things, particularly influential -- often they served as nothing more than outsourcing codehouses, while other times their hard work received no credit at all. It's the Enix name people are looking for, after all, not the Chunsoft name or the Quintet name. These second parties typically lacked power, to put it simply enough -- reliance upon publisher funding, limited creative control over their own properties, little name recognition. Oh, there are a few exceptions, surely enough -- Rare and tri-Ace have certainly made a name for themselves over the years. But exceptions are just that: exceptions to a broadly established rule.
This is the way things have always been.
But it seems like a trend has begun to take hold of the Japanese game development industry, and it's rather an interesting one. When famed and noted design luminary Hironobu Sakaguchi left Square Enix and eventually formed his own company, Mistwalker, it seemed an unusual turn of events. And Mistwalker, with a massive infusion of capital from hardware giant Microsoft, pretty quickly established itself as a developmental force not to be underestimated. With three big budget console games in development with funding in the millions, Sakaguchi is flexing an incredible degree of developing strength, leveraging his famous name (creator of Final Fantasy!) and the financial resources pledged to him, and all at the same time, has used his status to not just maintain creative control over his properties -- it was the very reason for his monetary influx.
Interesting development, and in many ways exceptional and unique from the industry patterns that had existed before. But it became quickly apparent that Sakaguchi wasn't one-of-a-kind here -- he was at the forefront of a trend that has profound implications in how it may change the face of the games development industry in Japan. Sakaguchi wasn't alone. And the news this week that three of Capcom's top creative giants -- Shinji Mikami, Hideki Kamiya, and Atsushi Inaba, collectively the creators of the Devil May Cry, Resident Evil, Viewtiful Joe, and Okami franchises -- have all departed the company to create their own vanity studios does nothing more than underscore just how much this trend is taking hold. They aren't the first to leave Capcom -- just recently the company also lost Yoshiki Okamoto, the creator of Street Fighter, director of Oracles of Ages and Seasons, and the supervisor of Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter. Okamoto went on to create developer Game Republic. Meanwhile, Sega has lost major talent: long-time Sonic Team leader Yuji Naka, the man primarily responsible for Sonic the Hedgehog, Phantasy Star Online, and NiGHTS into Dreams departed to create a personal studio, PROPE; Tetsuya Mizuguchi, creator of innovative games like the Dreamcast's REZ and Space Channel 5, left to create Q Entertainment. Aside from Final Fantasy creator Sakaguchi's departure, Square Enix also lost mastermind Yasumi Matsuno, creator of Final Fantasy Tactics, the Ogre Battle Saga, and Final Fantasy XII. Kouji Okada, creator of Atlus' keystone franchise, Shin Megami Tensei, left the company and created independent studio Gaia, while Kirby and Super Smash Bros. creator Masahiro Sakurai left Nintendo subsidiary HAL Laboratories to establish his own studio, Sora.
This is far, far more than a few isolated incidents, in terms of the scope as well as the prestige of the designers and the significance of the games and series on their resumes. What we have ongoing is, unmistakable and inarguably, a full-blown trend, the ramifications of which could seriously alter the landscape and structure of the development industry. Think about it. Almost all of these individuals have several things in common: they've left their large corporate homes to create smaller development studios (note: development, meaning focused entirely on the creation of games) headed strictly by themselves in a design capacity; and each of these individuals also is responsible for the creation of pivotal, landmark games and series -- in many cases, the series that defined the companies they departed (imagine Atlus without Shin Megami Tensei, or Capcom without Resident Evil or Street Fighter, or Sega without Sonic the Hedgehog, or Square without Final Fantasy Tactics). Another similarity seems to run through all of their departures -- a desire to stop being consumed in the business itself, to ease creative restrictions, and to get back into the hands' on process of creating games. Their belief seems to be that if they try to create the games, the money will come.
And so far, it is. Microsoft and Nintendo are both ponying up large sums of money for Mistwalker. Sony has heavily funded several projects from Okamoto's Game Republic and Okada's Gaia. Mizuguchi has found willing publishers in Microsoft, in Namco Bandai, and in Buena Vista Games. The prominence and prestige behind these men's names and their gaming talent has publishers lining up to fund them. And for once, it's the second party with vast amounts of control over the creative process. By leveraging their names -- names with proven design talent and the recognition that people will pay for -- the funders (more often than not, they're being funded directly by the first party hardware manufacturers, rather than third party publishers) these men are getting the money to make their ideas reality with less corporate interference than they had to face, even when they were in charge of entire studios (Mizuguchi practically ran Sega's independent UGA subsidiary; Inaba and Kamiya actually did run Capcom's independent Clover Studio subsidiary; Naka was in control of all of Sega's internal development).
What will the lasting impact of this be? It's difficult to say. We have yet to see how financially successful these efforts will become in the long run (they have a mixed track record so far). Sometimes, certainly, these developers will need to take on projects they are less than enamored with, just to keep paying the bills; some will find that the budgets they are afforded are not quite adequate towards the goal of fully realizing the designer's ideas. Nevertheless, we're still seeing talented designers being given autonomy from the true corporate structure, dealing directly with hardware manufacturers so that they don't need to worry as much about the business side of things and can actually have funders bidding over THEIR ideas, and game-makers getting to make... games. Even if this doesn't last, it's a fascinating experiment: designers and developers are calling the shots, getting to be creative and realize long-percolating ideas, and gamers will get to see the fruits of these labors of love. All of these games may wind up being completely financial disasters, and we'll quickly revert to the tried and true industry structure as before. But what if this works, and long term changes come about? Or perhaps we should just appreciate that for one brief, glorious second, the second parties are striking back with a vengence.
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