Should Motohiro Okubo remain the lead on future games in the series?

Nyte

Nyte

Fu-ma's Shadow
Just wanted to gauge what fans here think of Okubo's work on Soulcalibur VI, and how they feel about the prospect of him continuing to lead in the sequels?

Personally, I think he should, mainly because his vision for the series isn't one that alienates fans but actually aligns with what the fanbase has wanted. It goes without saying, that Daishi's vision... was not this. But I'm not here to talk about what SCV did, that's a game that's old news and came out seven years ago. Let's focus on the series going forward from this point. I feel like Okubo has the right skills and knows how to please the fanbase, which means he's less prone to making statements that piss people off. Granted, I think his communication in general could improve, because we're still waiting for news on the CAS DLC, but I think the series has found a good leader with him.

What do you think?
 
I'll admit i may not know what exactly the producer's job is. I kind of assumed it was in charge of things not associated with creation, such as financial. Anytime i've ever cared to follow a game's news or development, the director is credited for the overall direction of a game.

Edit:
Although, if i think more on it maybe there is less of a "creative process" in a fighting game sequel than on other types of games. How much truely new material was there to create? Maybe that has something to do with it.
 
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AMillionHP said:
I'll admit i may not know what exactly the producer's job is. I kind of assumed it was in charge of things not associated with creation, such as financial. Anytime i've ever cared to follow a game's news or development, the director is credited for the overall direction of a game.

Edit:
Although, if i think more on it maybe there is less of a "creative process" in a fighting game sequel than on other types of games. How much truely new material was there to create? Maybe that has something to do with it.
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I think it might vary? Because for example, Harada isn't the director of Tekken but he's still the boss of the series. Seeing as how Okubo is as visible with Soulcalibur, I think that's the case.
 
I think Okubo's done a fine job. If I had one gripe, it's that he leaned a little more heavily towards the casual player in some respects (RE as a panic button/meter builder is one of the worst design and balance decisions the series has ever seen, for example), but clearly there was a sense of urgency in the effort to infuse the franchise with a large base community, so i try to discount such decisions as a factor of context. I also don't much care for how much of the base game was engineered towards story (told through pretty uninspired scenarios presented in light novel format), at the cost of requiring a small base roster and somewhat limited CaS selection. But again, you can't fault a director for playing towards certain industry expectation and economic factors. I feel to some extent the "back to basics"/retell the original story was a decision that was made for the team this time around, on account of SCV and its poor reception, so I can't really credit them with adopting that as the over-arching design objective. Nevertheless, the execution has been, at a minimum, entirely capable.


AMillionHP said:
I'll admit i may not know what exactly the producer's job is. I kind of assumed it was in charge of things not associated with creation, such as financial. Anytime i've ever cared to follow a game's news or development, the director is credited for the overall direction of a game.

Edit:
Although, if i think more on it maybe there is less of a "creative process" in a fighting game sequel than on other types of games. How much truely new material was there to create? Maybe that has something to do with it.
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Nyte said:
I think it might vary? Because for example, Harada isn't the director of Tekken but he's still the boss of the series. Seeing as how Okubo is as visible with Soulcalibur, I think that's the case.
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Just so. The terms, "director" and "producer", and the roles they represent are not as strictly defined within the context of game development as they are in film and television media. The official role of the lead developer and/or creative director of a project varies in this respect from genre to genre, company to company, and, indeed, even between different games in the same franchise, at times. To some extent this maps to the type of game being made: directors tend to have the most pull when the game is something like an expansive JRPG that requires lots of coordination between various scenario staff, but for, say, an FPS with a focus on online play, a producer is likely to be top dog in development.

Those aren't absolute rules, of course, but it does more or less map to what AMHP was speculating about: any time a game is trying to break new ground on a unique stroytelling experience, particularly in a single-player focused game, the director's role is more prominent. If it's more of an iteration on an established formula (particularly where the game mechanics are the central selling point and it's an online experience) a producer is more likely to be guiding overall development. And then there are occasions where the team is so small that both positions are rolled into a joint title, like "lead designer" or "head programmer". And obviously internal company structure can nuance all of these titles even further. For Soul Calibur, as best I can recall from all press related to the last three entries, the top development position was a producer, including Okubo most recently.
 
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It sounds like SC6 would have been cancelled if it weren't for him so he should definitely stick around, but people might be giving him a bit too much credit (probably because he's been the public figure for the game).

Daishi was the creative director on SC5 so he was responsible for a lot of the decisions for the game and its overall direction (this was made especially clear as he talked a lot about the game's development on Twitter and in interviews). Yoshinori Takahashi is the lead creative director on SC6, so he's most likely the person to credit for the game's overall direction (he also worked on SC4 as system and character designer, as game designer on SC5, and as battle director on Pokken).

Okubo is one of the producers on SC6 (not even the lead producer based on the credits). A producer's role is to manage the team to ensure everything is progressing at a pace where it will be completed on time without going over budget. It's more likely a producer will lead to features getting removed (to ensure the game gets finished at all) rather than making creative decisions (although I imagine what each person does varies greatly on the game and company).

The development of SC6 seems pretty unusual in many ways. It would be fascinating to read a detailed story about what happened behind the scenes. First of all, based on tweets from Harada and Okubo the game was close to being cancelled (Harada said it would not have been finished unless Okubo volunteered to join the team as producer. That makes me think the development team was very poorly managed and/or they were overly ambitious and had goals which they didn't have the time and budget for.)

Secondly, this is the first SoulCalibur game where the majority of development wasn't even done by Namco. They contracted DIMPS to help make the game.
 
Sectus said:
Secondly, this is the first SoulCalibur game where the majority of development wasn't even done by Namco. They contracted DIMPS to help make the game.
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Why do you say the majority was not done by Namco? Perhaps you are aware of sources which have spoken more extensively on the topic than I have seen, but the impression I got was that Dimps worked exclusively on the single player modules. That to me suggests that they created the light novel stories (in all their uninspired, canned dialogue delivered through tin-earred voice-acting glory), the libra map and storyline, and menus and interstitial content, but that their contribution to the actual gameplay was limited to creating scenarios out of the core assets created by Project Soul. Now granted, that would still account for many dozens of hours of media produced by Dimps (a not inconsiderable contribution given the prominence given to the story modes this time around), but I would think it still left the lion's share of labour needed (that which went into creating the basic infrastructure of the game--objects, models, movesets, animations, staging and choreography, music, gameplay audio, stages, lighting effects, atmospheric elements, ect, ect.) to Project Soul. Or am I unaware of something that suggests Dimps contributed to those elements of the game as well?
 
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Rusted Blade said:
Why do you say the majority was not done by Namco? Perhaps you are aware of sources which have spoken more extensively on the topic than I have seen, but the impression I got was that Dimps worked exclusively on the single player modules. That too me suggests that they created the light novel stories (in all their uninspired, canned dialogue delivered through tin-earred voice-acting glory), the libra map and storyline, and menus and interstitial content, but that their contribution to the actual gameplay was limited to creating scenarios out of the core assets created by Project Soul. Now granted, that would still account for many dozens of hours of media produced by Dimps (a not inconsiderable contribution given the prominence given to the story modes this time around), but I would think it still left the lion's share of labour needed (that which went into creating the basic infrastructure of the game--objects, models, movesets, animations, staging and choreography, music, gameplay audio, stages, lighting effects, atmospheric elements, ect, ect.) to Project Soul. Or am I unaware of something that suggests Dimps contributed to those elements of the game as well?
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Namco has mentioned some specifics during interviews, but most of the stuff I'm saying it based on the credits:

First of all, there are far more Dimps people there than from Namco. I think you're right that Dimps is probably responsible for 99% of the work on the singleplayer-only modes, but they definitely did far more than that. There are many more programmers from Dimps. Stage creation was done by Dimps. Dimps had "battle designers" (whatever that means). They had animators. 2D artists. Effect artists. They did a lot of the sound work. Character models were done by Dimps. And more.

From Namco's side, it looks like they're responsible for a lot of visual concepts, character illustrations, stage music, some animation work, some programming work, and some other stuff. And then there are some other companies they outsourced very specific work to.

It's also apparent from looking at the game assets that Dimps did a lot. There are many systems and assets with some variant of Dimps as part of the filename.

Here's my theory as to how the development went:
  • It started off with Namco doing a ton of concepting and planning, and they set up a very basic playable version of the game (basically porting SC4/5 assets and code to run on UE4). Some assets are in formats very similar to the ones used in SC4/5, and I'm assuming this was done by Namco.
  • They contracted Dimps to help them develop the game (there are timestamps all over the assets, and the earliest ones I could find are from January 2017, which is when Dimps created some debug commands. Maybe that's close to when full production started with Dimps at the helm).
  • From there, Dimps set out to make the game following a feature list and concepts handed to them by Namco, with Namco working alongside them to do music and movesets.
My theory could easily be wrong, but it would match up with what we know. But we'll probably never know the full story as many developers like to be very secretive of what happens behind the scenes (especially Japanese developers).
 
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Sectus said:
Namco has mentioned some specifics during interviews, but most of the stuff I'm saying it based on the credits:

First of all, there are far more Dimps people there than from Namco. I think you're right that Dimps is probably responsible for 99% of the work on the singleplayer-only modes, but they definitely did far more than that. There are many more programmers from Dimps. Stage creation was done by Dimps. Dimps had "battle designers" (whatever that means). They had animators. 2D artists. Effect artists. They did a lot of the sound work. Character models were done by Dimps. And more.

From Namco's side, it looks like they're responsible for a lot of visual concepts, character illustrations, stage music, some animation work, some programming work, and some other stuff. And then there are some other companies they outsourced very specific work to.

It's also apparent from looking at the game assets that Dimps did a lot. There are many systems and assets with some variant of Dimps as part of the filename.

Here's my theory as to how the development went:
  • It started off with Namco doing a ton of concepting and planning, and they set up a very basic playable version of the game (basically porting SC4/5 assets and code to run on UE4). Some assets are in formats very similar to the ones used in SC4/5, and I'm assuming this was done by Namco.
  • They contracted Dimps to help them develop the game (there are timestamps all over the assets, and the earliest ones I could find are from January 2017, which is when Dimps created some debug commands. Maybe that's close to when full production started with Dimps at the helm).
  • From there, Dimps set out to make the game following a feature list and concepts handed to them by Namco, with Namco working alongside them to do music and movesets.
My theory could easily be wrong, but it would match up with what we know. We'll probably never know as many developers like to be very secretive of what happens behind the scenes (especially Japanese developers).
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Very elucidating--thank you for this! Well, at least they maintained control of the balancing and mechanics design. So long as they keep control of the development and quality control in that respect, it may be a way forward for the franchise, since Namco's internal teams seem to be stretched rather thin these days. At least, the final product here seems to have come out quite competently. Again, I'm not the biggest fan of the mode of storytelling embraced in VI (I was quite happy with those tiny little snippets of in-engine interaction prevalent in previous entries), but as to the core gameplay that I am concerned about, I never would have suspected it wasn't mostly in-house, if not for you sharing your deductions arising out of the clues in the assets and so-forth. I think it would very obviously become a problem for fidelity to the classic gameplay formula if the movesets/actually fighting system were not designed and substantially developed by Project Soul, but if it makes further entries more feasible for Namco, I think it's a bold step to work in collaboration on other facets of the game.
 
Rusted Blade said:
Very elucidating--thank you for this! Well, at least they maintained control of the balancing and mechanics design. So long as they keep control of the development and quality control in that respect, it may be a way forward for the franchise, since Namco's internal teams seem to be stretched rather thin these days. At least, the final product here seems to have come out quite competently. Again, I'm not the biggest fan of the mode of storytelling embraced in VI (I was quite happy with those tiny little snippets of in-engine interaction prevalent in previous entries), but as to the core gameplay that I am concerned about, I never would have suspected it wasn't mostly in-house, if not for you sharing your deductions arising out of the clues in the assets and so-forth. I think it would very obviously become a problem for fidelity to the classic gameplay formula if the movesets/actually fighting system were not designed and substantially developed by Project Soul, but if it makes further entries more feasible for Namco, I think it's a bold step to work in collaboration on other facets of the game.
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Speaking of Namco's teams being stretched thin, one thing I find a bit funny is that while Namco outsourced SC6 development to Dimps, Namco became a bit busy having the development of a gigantic fighting game outsourced to them:
Nintendo was a bit mean not listing what company individual people work for, but if you look up random names in the credits, you'll find most of them work at Namco. Namco was also the lead developer on Smash Bros for Wii U.

The one thing which would make this perfect is if Dimps were to outsource the development of a fighting game to Nintendo (though that would naturally never happen).
 
Sectus said:
Speaking of Namco's teams being stretched thin, one thing I find a bit funny is that while Namco outsourced SC6 development to Dimps, Namco became a bit busy having the development of a gigantic fighting game outsourced to them:
Nintendo was a bit mean not listing what company individual people work for, but if you look up random names in the credits, you'll find most of them work at Namco. Namco was also the lead developer on Smash Bros for Wii U.

The one thing which would make this perfect is if Dimps were to outsource the development of a fighting game to Nintendo (though that would naturally never happen).
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Well, I guess cross-pollination is good for keeping any one franchise innovative. Though hopefully it doesn't also contribute too much to each game in this common developer cluster feeling "samesy".
 
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