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Yuji Naka reveals that 6 months before Balan Wonderworld came out he was removed as director and therefore filed a lawsuit against Square Enix

Draugoth

Gold Member
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Thanks to Nibel

Yuji Naka reveals that 6 months before Balan Wonderworld came out he was removed as director and therefore filed a lawsuit against Square Enix which is now over He knew that the game was unfinished and criticizes both SE and Arzest for going forward with the release.

"I think Square Enix and Arzest are companies that do not care about games and game fans." Until a better translation comes out, here's a DeepL translation of the thread:


FRbn7hkXIAEwLYd
 
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ranmafan

Member
I've been waiting for this news from Yuji Naka ever since that tweet after his time at Square-Enix where he promised to talk more about Balan in the future when he can. I would love to know the whole story behind the scenes on this game. Its got to be very fascinating especially with this new info.
 

Lunarorbit

Member
Nothing to add except I always thought yuji Naka was a last name, not their entire name. I've only heard his name on podcasts
 

Punished Miku

Human Rights Subscription Service
Sounds like he has a solid lawsuit honestly. It's definitely damaged his reputation to plaster his name all over it as director if he was removed from the project. He probably has valid complaints.

But also he was likely removed because the game looked pretty dang rough. Both sides probably messed up in this one.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Video game employee whining on social media. What a surprise.

Still waiting for all the people I have ever worked with in 20+ years who got fired or pressured out to publicly go on social media and tell the world why their company sucked. Havent seen one yet.
 
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cireza

Member
"I think Square Enix and Arzest are companies that do not care about games and game fans."
Seems pretty obvious after the recent quotes from the CEO of the company, stating that players should be compensated for their "work". Guy has no idea what a game actually is, while Yuji Naka only knows how to make fun games to begin with.
 

Furball

Member
Seems pretty obvious after the recent quotes from the CEO of the company, stating that players should be compensated for their "work". Guy has no idea what a game actually is, while Yuji Naka only knows how to make fun games to begin with.
People may shit on Wada but i think majority of the game released during his time are far more polish in their platform and seem to actually has budget , milk the series but with actual passion . Now they cant even make custom UI for new game and reused on so many game and most of them look like they dont even has budget
 
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01011001

Banned
say what you want about him, he always tried to release unique games, even if they sometimes fall flat on their face.

he doesn't follow trends either really, and that is a quality I wish more developers would have
 

LordCBH

Member
This game had so many shit design choices that it wouldn’t have been good even if he hadn’t been removed as director. It was a bafflingly bad game thst honestly should’ve just been canned.
 

Astral Dog

Member
does any company really care about fans and games? look at EA...dice fucked up anthem and bf2042..both are not being really fixxed
there are companies that simply would refuse to release a Balan Wonderworld in that state , not many mind you but they do exist
 
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ParaSeoul

Member
“Naka came to visit with his team to tour our studio [and] look at our tools and engine; we had a lot of proprietary [and] really phenomenal tech – I would say still to this day, [we had] some stuff that I haven't seen replicated quite at the level we had. [Naka] didn't realize that the people on my team, a lot of them spoke fluent Japanese, including my lead engineer. [Naka] started speaking in Japanese assuming that no one would understand; [he] started talking about what parts of our tech they were going take for Sonic and then basically said as soon as they ship, fire everyone but one of the engineers who knows their system and roll him onto our team for Sonic – and my team heard all that, so you can imagine how they felt. Naka was pretty powerful at Sega at that time.”
Square these days is shit but I wouldn't trust Naka's word
 

Saber

Gold Member
He knew the game was...unfinished?
That explains SE recent noves on their games. What a bunch of bastards.
 

TheInfamousKira

Reseterror Resettler
Companies most definitely don't care about fans, Mister Baldass Wunderlame dude. Corporations, either. It's the individuals who make up said companies that you have to put your stocks into and hope that they can worm enough passion under the radar to express their talent, love for their properties, or ambition past the paint by numbers trend chasing.

This is why games felt more personal and focused back in the day, at Square especially. Because the development teams were so small. You had eight guys in a room and maybe four or five more people doing PR, artwork, etc. The more complex and technical it all got, the more hands had to be on deck, and the more diluted the end product was.

There are small glimmers of old school mentality left over. I think FFXIV is the best example, maybe FFVIIR as a distant second, and FFXVI appears like it could be on the list, but yeah. Maybe sixteen people in several hundred care about the player, the rest logically care about the player's wallet.
 

Calverz

Member
Now we know why the game turned out the way it did. The abuse thrown at yuji naka from people online and people in this forum was abhorrent. Man is a legend. And fuck square enix. I’m am done with them.
 

wvnative

Member
Companies most definitely don't care about fans, Mister Baldass Wunderlame dude. Corporations, either. It's the individuals who make up said companies that you have to put your stocks into and hope that they can worm enough passion under the radar to express their talent, love for their properties, or ambition past the paint by numbers trend chasing.

This is why games felt more personal and focused back in the day, at Square especially. Because the development teams were so small. You had eight guys in a room and maybe four or five more people doing PR, artwork, etc. The more complex and technical it all got, the more hands had to be on deck, and the more diluted the end product was.

There are small glimmers of old school mentality left over. I think FFXIV is the best example, maybe FFVIIR as a distant second, and FFXVI appears like it could be on the list, but yeah. Maybe sixteen people in several hundred care about the player, the rest logically care about the player's wallet.
KH3 after Patch 1.07 is also fantastic

I feel super optimistic for Square
 

Neff

Member
Naka is a notorious asshole, I suspect Square got tired of his shit.

Honestly I wouldn't be surprised. And while BW's budgeting/scheduling shortcomings are clear, there are catastrophic issues at a concept/design level which obviously hurt it way more. This one's on him as far as I'm concerned.

The abuse thrown at yuji naka from people online and people in this forum was abhorrent. Man is a legend.

He's a superb programmer but his creative skills are lacking and he's an abysmal people person. The fact that he has to rely heavily on creative types to make videogames, yet tends to blame others when things go wrong is a recipe for disaster, and the fact that his career is in tatters once again is testament to this.
 
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I dont believe a single Word naka says and gaf should not either, the guy was not removed, the guy was FIRED from the project, he have an history of lies and subpar games

Lies like he make the dreamcast 2 if ivy the wiki sold well, and shipped terrible games since the majority of his carrer

And meta not forget how he FUCKED a group of devs over sonic extreme when they needed help most, the guy is an asshole, its well documented the guy is an asshole and his stupid game, balan wondwerold was broken even in the most básic cconcept of game design
 

Notabueno

Banned
Video game employee whining on social media. What a surprise.

Still waiting for all the people I have ever worked with in 20+ years who got fired or pressured out to publicly go on social media and tell the world why their company sucked. Havent seen one yet.

Because unlike Yuji Naka you never did anything notable in your life, so why would you go publicly on social media?
 

Belthazar

Member
Honestly... The game was conceptually very bad and bugs were the least of the problems with this game. So I don't think polishing it more would result in it being any better. It was just not fun to play, at all.
 

nush

Member
My take is that he took too long, spent too much money and wanted more time and money, so Square punted him off the project so they could cut their losses and ship what they had.

He's not Miyamoto and square isn't Nintendo.
 

BennyBlanco

aka IMurRIVAL69
Square is the worst modern AAA publisher by far. All they care about is moneyhats and throwing their westen devs under the bus. Their only good games recently have been Nintendo AA moneyhats.
 
Square is the worst modern AAA publisher by far. All they care about is moneyhats and throwing their westen devs under the bus. Their only good games recently have been Nintendo AA moneyhats.
Yeah because ff7 remake, kh3, dragon quest xi, nier automata and ffxiv endwalker, all of them are terrible games...
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
My take is that he took too long, spent too much money and wanted more time and money, so Square punted him off the project so they could cut their losses and ship what they had.

He's not Miyamoto and square isn't Nintendo.
His track record the past 20 years is junk. His last notable games were on DC, and his best games were on Genesis 30 years ago. The past 10 years or so he's been making indie games most people have never heard of before, including some Wii StreetPass games.

So for him to come out saying the company is at fault on social media is a laugh. He could had had double the budget and double the time and Banal Wonderlaugh would still be awful.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Because unlike Yuji Naka you never did anything notable in your life, so why would you go publicly on social media?
Why would I go on social media ever aside from talking with fam or for careers? I dont even have Twitter or Instagram accounts.

If he thinks Square did hum wrong, them clam up and take Square to court to get retribution. What is social media whining going to do to solve his situation?
 
Why would I go on social media ever aside from talking with fam or for careers? I dont even have Twitter or Instagram accounts.

If he thinks Square did hum wrong, them clam up and take Square to court to get retribution. What is social media whining going to do to solve his situation?
I can tell you 3 possible outcomes

1 he cant find a job after balan Wonder World, the guy is 56,so he is old and expensive, and dont look like he can ship a hit after this fiasco, so he blame square in order to save his carrrer

2 he kill his posibilitys in getting work in the game industry aftwr this, because any publisher is going to question if naka fuck up another project, if he is going to Sue then as well

3 he planned to retire, so hoping to win this legal battle, he can get some nice retirement money
 
A few points to make here:
1) For those of you saying "6 months couldn't have done all that much", it might be a good reminder that most projects Naka was involved literally only start fully coming together in the last three months. Just take a look at any Sonic Team game prototype that's up on HiddenPalace.org to get a gist what I mean here. I'm not saying for certain that 6 months could have saved it, but it'd either be that, or Naka leaving the project anyway (IE Sonic 06)
2) Considering that Naka is discussing the lawsuit and whatnot as though it was past tense, it seems he's allowed to speak on the case as though he won it in court, so it's presumably best to accept his word here, especially as there's no apparent challenge to it yet.
3) Regardless of what you think about whether Naka was any good or not, it was rather scummy for Square-Enix to use Naka as a marketing tool for the game, putting his reputation on the line, with the knowledge that his removal from the project was either imminent or already happened behind the scenes.

Lies like he make the dreamcast 2 if ivy the wiki sold well, and shipped terrible games since the majority of his carrer

I seriously hope this post is an elaborate troll. Nobody ever promised you a Dreamcast 2 except for the imaginary friends in your head.
 
Balan Wonderworld’s fundamental gameplay was the issue, so I don’t think any amount of polishing or additional development time would have saved this game. The game was designed so poorly from the get-go.
 
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