On Tetsuya Nomura
Tetsuya Nomura, the artist who designed many of Square's best-known characters was promoted to the role of director on one of the company's next major titles, Final Fantasy Versus 13, to plug the gap. Despite his studied nonchalance in interviews, Nomura, now one of the company's most senior staff was reportedly an anxious director (during one event in Tokyo a few years ago, when early footage of the game was shown to fans, Nomura sat backstage in front of a monitor relaying live footage of the crowd's faces, so he could watch their reaction in real time.) The game lunged in different directions and, at some point, Nomura was removed from the project. Presumably to recoup sunk costs, the game was retooled and retitled as the next entry to the company's flagship series.
On core values:
As we sit together while Tokyo's sweaty September rain falls outside, Iwata pulls a small piece of card from his wallet, like a well-thumbed photograph of a child. On it, printed in Japanese and English, are the six commandments that he and the other staff designed:
- Don't put the brakes on others' work.
- Recognise others' core values; welcome all ideas.
- Make goals clear, and share information with transparency.
- Speak openly and honestly with everyone.
- Go beyond the scope of your duties.
- Cherish your health and your loved ones' happiness.
On Tabata
Tabata, who until this point had only worked on relatively minor projects, was promoted to director. He arrived to find an exhausted and fretful team. The new director's treatment was severe and controversial. "The entire staff was 'deconstructed' in a sense," explains Akira Iwata, a senior artist at Business Division 2. "Tabata created a flat environment; he got rid of the hierarchy. Everyone was put on the same level and had to make the argument for what they should be doing on the game. Some were freed up to do things that they'd longed to do but had previously been unable to take on. Others felt like they'd been demoted."
These guiding principles were, according to Hasegawa, followed by a tangible shift in attitude across the team. "Suddenly we had this sense of being underdogs or challengers," he explains. "We were allowed to recognise that we had so much to understand in terms of the tech we were working with, in terms of the open world design, in terms of learning how to broaden the game's appeal beyond its niche." In this way, Tabata changed the atmosphere in the studio from one where everyone was afraid about what they might lose, to one where everyone was enlivened by the prospect of what they had to gain. "We became something closer to a task force," explains Kenichi Shida, an artist on the team. "You could be a task leader. Then a few days later you'd join another group as a worker. We're constantly changing desks. The rearrangement had an amazing effect on the team," I think. "By physically moving, it stops you from getting entrenched."
"The fight is with nostalgia as much as anything else," Tabata says. "Every player has their own memories and feelings toward different titles in the Final Fantasy series. At bare minimum, people have a graphical style they particularly like, or particular characters and universes. But deeper than that they want to feel the same feelings they had when they were kids, playing these games for the first time. They want to play a game that allows them to relive the excitement of the past, while also exceeding it in some way. But we decided early on that this game has to stand alone from all of the others; it can't just be a conglomerate of all the past titles."
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-11-02-finishing-final-fantasy
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