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How does FromSoftware release AAA games so frequently? Elden Ring boss says "we are just blessed with a great staff" that the studio empowers and retains

https://www.gamesradar.com/how-does-fromsoftware-release-aaa-games-so-frequently-elden-ring-boss-says-we-are-just-blessed-with-a-great-staff-that-the-studio-empowers-and-retains/

"We're able to understand quickly what we want to make"

121 comments

games

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Video game news oriented community. No NanoUFO is not a bot :)

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My goal is just to have a community where people can go and see what new game news is out for the day and comment on it.

Other communities:

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For starters they keep making mostly the same game over and over. They're essentially doing the Bethesda shtick except their end results are better. Sticking to stuff that can mostly be made in the same engine as the thing you finished 15 minutes ago is going to shave off a lot of time compared to making a new game.

Of course that's not to shit on incremental improvements or engine reuse or anything. That is just sound thinking as long as the games are good.

FooBarrington

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They also had great success with Sekiro, which was (and still is) very different from their other titles.

rambaroo

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It's still the same engine and general gameplay concept though. The combat was the big difference.

FooBarrington

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It's the same gameplay concept on a basic level, but that simply comes with the genre. I don't think you could really change much more than they did without changing genres.

Montagge

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It really isn't except it has a decent and intelligible story

all-knight-party

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I mean, make no mistake, it is fundementally different in lots of ways, but in terms of what the engine needs to do to work, what the character needs to do, how the player interacts with the world, at those basic building block production points Sekiro is almost the same as Dark Souls, I so can agree there.

GeniusIsme

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Sekiro can jump, climb, grapple and swim. Those kinds of more agile behaviors add a lot requirements and considerations to the engine and content makers.

all-knight-party

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Definitely, but I'm also agreeing that a hugely significant chunk of what they'd already accomplished could save time when moving on to Sekiro. They did of course have to work on the engine and new mechanics as well, but it was far from starting from scratch.

chunkystyles

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I love the Dark Souls games. I use two moves in those games: swing big sword, dodge.

In Sekiro, there were many more moves I was forced to use, with precise timing, and split second reads to know which moves I needed to use. My aging brain cannot do that. So I didn't enjoy Sekiro.

sneezycat

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You're only forced to use one move: parry. The moves you can't parry, you just dodge. You can finish the game just with that.

Give it a try again! Sekiro is a rhythm game, and when it clicks, the combat becomes one of the most fun of all FromSoft games.

Blackmist

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I used parry on like 2 bosses across 3 Dark Souls games. And each time it was a pain in the arse.

Maalus

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There is an art to parrying. It's a deep rabbithole with parrying frames, different weapons being better or worse, and a lot of practice. Parrying in Sekiro is way different than souls parry

rambaroo

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It looks fun as hell if you can get it down, but it was just too difficult for me. I really didn't enjoy dying repeatedly until I figured out the rhythm. The other soulsborne games felt more fair somehow, and often give you a way to make the boss fights significantly easier.

AdamBomb

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There’s a candy you can use to reduce posture damage so you can start out just holding block instead of trying to parry. That can make learning attacks and timings much easier.

Almost every mini boss can be backstabbed

Most can be made much easier with the right prosthetic tool

Consider giving it another shot someday!

Maalus

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Well, it's still the same as Dark Souls. Engine wise, it's the same. Someone who made models for Souls, can make models for Sekiro. The debugging tooling is the same, etc etc.

The best example of this is actually Armored Core. They used their engine again, yet the game obviously plays different than anything else they released. And yet, it's the same techstack, the same engine and the same programmers. Nothing changed.

Compare that to the jump from Oblivion to Skyrim, the engine is no longer recognizable. The models need to be of a very different quality. Etc etc.

leftzero

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To anyone who's played the games it's very evidently exactly the same engine used in Morrowind, running on faster hardware and with less functionality due to it being unable to handle the higher quality graphics. (Morrowind had mostly open cities - except for Vivec - and flying, for instance; later games had to sacrifice those and add more and more loading screens...)

FooBarrington

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The mechanics are pretty different. Grappling (both terrain and enemies), high vertical jumping, less equipment (but strong diverse builds) and very different combat mechanics with deathblows.

I don't know if it could be much different without literally changing genres.

narc0tic_bird

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I'd like to add that from a technical point of view, their games don't really push the boundaries and at least on PC, their games often aren't the most polished. Elden Ring had severe shader compilation stutter at launch and a 60 FPS limit - which is a big no-no on PC if you ask me. Nothing game breaking like the state some publishers (EA) release their games in, but not great either.

Jarmer

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Not to mention they were actively hostile towards ultrawide gamers. The engine would render it, but then put black bars overtop the sides. Kind of amazing really that level of hatred towards gamers.

Jakeroxs

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I think it's less hatred and more... Not understanding the wider audience, afaik it's just not as common in Japan for uw to be a thing in general. Also it adds even more complexity to performance tuning which... They're not known for. They clearly make games targeted for consoles over PC, the Bethesda comparison is pretty apt in engine reuse and odd decisions to limit fps/uw gaming, Bethesda is at least more open towards modding, but they also don't make multiplayer games mainly, and while the MP aspects of FromSoft games are unusual, it's definitely a large part of the appeal/design process and does inherently limit modding due to cheating.

Jarmer

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I guess that makes sense, if it's not that common ... but then ............ why go OUT OF YOUR WAY to make the experience worse? It's like, why didn't they just say "oh hey, they have a wide monitor, nice!" but instead they said "oh hey, they have wide monitor, GO FUCK YOURSELF"

Gabu

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It's not common, period, but because the people most likely to brag about a setup are those with more money than good sense, it gets misrepresented. Same deal with top of the line hardware – look at Steam surveys, most people are still gaming with 5+ year old hardware.

Jakeroxs

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Ultrawides aren't even prohibitively expensive these days though, you can get a off brand uw for around $150-200

Don't HAVE TO go crazy with it and get a Samsung Odyssey or what have you :p

Gabu

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You're the weirdo for having a weird monitor...

GoodEye8

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There was a time when 16:9 was also weird because 4:3 was the norm. I wouldn't call it weird, I think over the next decade it's going to become a bigger norm in PC gaming.

I was a sceptic as well but when I needed a new monitor and saw a decent UW monitor for cheap I decided to give it shot, after all if it sucks I'll just use it in 16:9. Turns out it's one of those "once you try you can't go back" things. I love it for gaming, it feels so much more immersive. So much that 16:9 feels small and constrained. It's just a superior experience in my humble opinion.

I don't think UW is a, must for games, I'm well aware how small minority UW monitors are. But having UW support increases my enjoyment of the game.

SpaceCowboy

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The three games I was most interested in last year were Kerbal Space Program 2, Cities Skylines 2, and Zelda Tears of the Kingdom. Two of them had newly designed game engines. The third used the engine from the previous game.

Guess which one I enjoyed playing the most?

In software development sometimes you do have to rewrite some code to improve things. But if you have something that functions really well, it's better to be just continually making improvements. A lot of what makes a game great is going to be artwork, story, creative level design, creative enemy design, etc. But all of that work can be wasted if the software is buggy, which will happen if most or all of the code is written on a tight deadline.

kadu

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Huh... Not really? How is Armored Core 6 "mostly the same game" as Elden Ring?

Button777777

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Ac6 is "basically" the same game as ac 1 through 5 or whatever. Elden ring is "basically" the same game as the dark souls saga.

kadu

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Have you played any of the games you're mentioning? Doesn't sound like it, to be honest.

This would be like saying "all those Marios games are all the same, Super Mario World is "basically" Super Mario Odyssey"

Button777777

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Played and have beaten them all. Youre not seeing what Im trying to say

Kolanaki

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If he hasn't played them, he's managed to get the right answer. I have played them, and AC6 is to AC1-5 as Dark Souls 3 is to Dark Souls 1 and 2.

A_Very_Big_Fan

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All of the 2D Mario platformers are the same format with unique aspects on top. The same can be said for the 3D games, but it couldn't be said about the Super Mario series as a whole.

LemmyIsFantastic

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All the Mario platform games are basically the same. You have the 2d ones and 3d.

kadu

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Yeah - I won't bother replying, this is the most absurd simplification I've ever heard. This place is like Reddit, except with even denser comments.

I guess all games are the same - you just press buttons and lights go blinky blinky on the screen.

ShepherdPie

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"Yeah I won't bother replying"

Goes on to write a couple paragraphs why.

BudgetBandit

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You’re totally right. I’m a fan of the Xenoblade series and it’s obvious that they use the same engine with some slightly different tweaks and mechanics.

LemmyIsFantastic

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Yes Mario games are fictional the same thing over and over again. I'm collecting sunshine rather than stars this time and I have a new hat!

snooggums

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Just so surprising that treating staff well and keeping them around lets you do consistently high quality work. Boggles the mind really.

RightHandOfIkaros

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Well, this may not actually be the case. 7 or so years ago FromSoftware was pretty notoriously known to Japanese workers in the gaming industry to have very harsh working conditions, even among other Japanese studios that also have harsh conditions. Allegedly programmers at FromSoftware at that time were making an annual salary of only $27k USD. Compare this with Konami, who was paying an annual salary of $40k USD for the same position.

Its possible in the last 7 years things might have changed, but Japanese companies are usually very resistant to change. Japanese work culture honestly sucks, I would never want to.live in Japan because of this.

EDIT: You can see here that the overall worker satisfaction rating for FromSoftware is only 2.8 out of 5, which seems to be nearly the same as it used to be.

NOTE: Some readers may see something about the "Whiteness/Blackness" of the company. This has nothing to do with race or racism. This is a slang term from Japanese culture that refers to how ethical a company is. A company that is very unethical (overworking employees, borderline illegal treatment of employees, etc) is called a "Black Company," and everyone will tell you to avoid them. Conversely a "White Company" would be a very ethical company and one that everyone would be fighting each other to work for.

Neato

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Ah so FromSoft went pure black company tendency.

RightHandOfIkaros

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Well, I wouldn't call From a Black Company. 2.4 White rating is almost exactly in the middle.

A real Black Company would be something like the V-Tuber Agency Wactor (and more recently maybe Nijisanji). This company has engaged in behaviour that is legitimately abusive to its employees, to the point that nearly all of its liver talents have quit.

For Black Companies, it is most common that there is bullying or some other kind of abuse from higher ups, as well as threats of disrepute if the abused employees quit voluntarily. This doesn't seem to be the case with FromSoftware. Just that they don't pay overtime because it is considered voluntary (incredibly common among Japanese companies) and pay below industry average.

Neato

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Yeah that makes sense. My comment was a callback to Demon Souls feature of Pure White/Black World Tendency.

RightHandOfIkaros

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Yeah I fully got that. Its too bad World Tendency was such an obtuse mechanic.

I just wanted to clarify that From wouldnt exactly count as Pure Black World Tendency, it would be more like a Neutral World Tendency.

oce

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Japanese work culture honestly sucks, I would never want to.live in Japan because of this.

You can find Western companies and semi-westernized Japanese companies where the work culture is better.

RightHandOfIkaros

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Yes, but in Japan the large majority of businesses are Japanese, and most conform to the expected conditions of underpaying or not paying for overtime ("voluntary overtime"), etc.

Just like there can be some companies that do the same thing in the USA, though it is not.common because there are laws specifically to prevent that.

oce

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I'm just saying that you can live in Japan and avoid this work culture.

RightHandOfIkaros

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Yes but it is easier to avoid the work culture if you do not live in Japan.

ImplyingImplications

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keeping them around

It's rare for employees to move companies in Japan. A lot of people will work for the same company their whole life. Japanese companies aren't really known for treating their employees well either.

I'd guess what they're doing well is hiring employees that are very passionate. I hear the anime industry is the same in that people who are in it are willing to work themselves to death because they want to work on big name projects

ferralcat

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Just be clear, there is a reason that's not in the quotes of the title. The author basically makes up that they're "treating staff well* because they're not randomly firing people right now. (The empowering bit is basically fabricated)

A_Very_Big_Fan

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And respecting players, and monetization practices which players respect

DdCno1

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This studio is not just known for an even by Japanese standards exploitative work culture, but it also reuses assets of all kinds far more liberally than other developers. Art is by far the biggest cost factor in games development and they are taking significant shortcuts wherever they can.

echo64

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I will say that reusing assets is 100% okay, and I actually wish more studios did this. You don't need to make everything from scratch. It's okay to reuse the thing you made previously.

Coelacanth

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It is definitely a smart move. But still, maybe we can retire the Asylum Demon?

iTzCharmander

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But the who will sit on me with their dumptruck ass?

Neato

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I dunno. If the dlc is like the rest of the game and I see the same dungeon changed slightly 20 times I'm going to be disappointed. But I guess that's what reviews are for.

echo64

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Note a difference between that and what we're talking about. We're saying that if you modeled a table in your previous game, just use that same table again.

Repetitive use of assets within a single game is another thing

EldritchFeminity

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Like that recent thing where people were talking about how a Halo map used a single rock in it, just scaled and rotated in different ways. Clever recycling of assets happens all the time and people never even notice. Even in the trailer for Shadow of the Erdtree, you can see they reused some model rigs - like how Messmer has the same standing idle pose as the Cleanrot Knights (though knowing FromSoft, there's probably some lore implications behind it).

Though, if they make us fight a pair of Ulcerated Tree Spirits in a Scarlet Rot room or something, I might have some unkind words to say...

Breezy

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Elden ring dungeons and dungeon bosses did get kinda samey. But god i did not care, there was a list of i think 120 bosses in the game, and i had to be sure each and every one got murdered. I honestly hope this new dlc is a window to the past and the whole ass map gets reused to form the new lands, and we get another 120 bosses to slay.

misterundercoat

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They wisely stick to AAA games and avoid the hassle of AAAA games like ubisoft

TimewornTraveler

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what the hell does the number of As even mean? how does one quantify how many As your game has? if I made a game today and shipped it how many As could I get today?

SuperSaiyanSwag

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Recently one of the executives at Ubisoft called Skull and Bones a AAAA game. Now the internet is dunking on it.

yamanii

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I read it's how the companies talked to the stores, AAA meant it would probably be popular and expensive so you better order a big batch.

sugar_in_your_tea

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Is that so?

It fits with my understanding as well, but comes from investment grade bond ratings where AAA usually signifies the highest quality (i.e. the best chance of getting paid back). A AA bond is still a good bond, but it has a higher risk of default.

But in practice, I just see AAA as a "high budget production," both in development costs and marketing. It doesn't mean it's a better product, just one with a lot more money on the line.

T156

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How long before it's less n(A) games, and more screaming?

Potatos_are_not_friends

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https://www.theonion.com/fuck-everything-were-doing-five-blades-1819584036

Duamerthrax

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They also release real products and not "games as a service" shit.

Gullible

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Japan as a whole is fairly notorious for 24/7 work culture. The way he repeatedly mentions their quick production and pivots feels a bit… crunchy.

Kolanaki

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So frequently? Dude it's been like 2 years since they announced DLC for their last game and it's only finally coming this June assuming it does not get delayed.

bogdugg

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They released a whole ass other game in that window.

RinseDrizzle

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Armored Core was pretty dope too. Saying as an old fan

rambaroo

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It's a huge dlc from the looks of it though, and they also released Armored Core during that time.

Silverseren

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But...they don't? Their mainline games are always a few years apart (with the exception of Bloodborne, which they had a separate team doing concurrently).

Unless you're referring to the other games they publish that no one really knows about or comments on? I don't think Metal Wolf Chaos XD, Déraciné, or Monster Hunter Diary: Poka Poka Airou Village DX should really factor into the discussion.

rambaroo

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2-3 years is a very fast turnaround time these days and that's where From is at. Look at Horizon by comparison. It was 5 years between the Horizon games despite using the same engine and some of the same assets.

Horizon is a bigger game with more cinematics and voice acting, so that's part of it. But From is definitely faster at pushing out AAA games than most studios.

Zahille7

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I've been replaying the Arkham games, and I was thinking about that. The first one came out in 2009, and the second came out in 2011. That's a pretty quick turnaround for a video game sequel, even if they had started making City immediately after finishing Asylum.

Shalakushka

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Metal Wolf Chaos should factor into all discussion, even those that have nothing to do with FromSoft.

LET'S PARTYYYYY!

nxdefiant

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The dev team's boss is literally an elden ring boss.

Seraph

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"At the cost of our staffs sanity!"

theneverfox

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What, you think you can make games where the player's sanity can be broken without insane employees?

BradleyUffner

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Massive, massive whips.

yamanii

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Are we just going to pretend Armored Core 6 wasn't a development hell for a good while to the point that the original producer left to do Daemon X Machina?

GoodEye8

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You got any sources for that claim? Because quick googling makes me think it's BS.

EDIT: For anyone not wanting to read the rest, it is BS.

yamanii

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https://www.siliconera.com/daemon-x-machina-makers-talk-about-how-they-create-their-mecha-designs/

Daemon X Machina features two prominent people behind the helm: producer Kenichiro Tsukuda and mecha designer Shoji Kawamori, who also worked together on the Armored Core series.

This is for staff, the hell comes from rumors about armored core 6 being made way before Daemon started it's marketing cycle, then suddenly we have AC staff on marvelous instead of from, just do the math.

GoodEye8

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Feel free to do the math for me, because I just don't see it.

Tsukuda hasn't worked on armored core since 3, he was long gone from FROM before Armored Core 6 was even an idea.
Kawamori did mecha designs for Armored Core 6.
FROM said Armored Core 6 is in early development in 2016
Daemon x machina came out in 2019
The director of Armored Core 6 was Masaru Yamamura who worked on Sekiro until 2019, so outside of concept art and maybe early prototypes no major work had been done on Armored Core 6 before 2019.

At what point was the rumored development hell that you still haven't sourced?

yamanii

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FROM said Armored Core 6 is in early development in 2016

There you go, 7 years to make the game, you did the math.

Gabu

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That's not at all unusual. In fact, bigger studios will often have a few very small teams working on game concepts for years, to test an idea without spending too many resources.

GoodEye8

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Did the development start in hell? Because the Daemon x machina producer, who according to you left FROM because AC6 was in development hell, presented Daemon x machina in 2018. At that point AC6 had already been in "development hell for a good while", but they had only been in development for 2 years?

GoodEye8

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You got any sources for that claim? Because quick googling makes me think it's BS.

dangblingus

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What is a AAA game? A game released by a large publisher? Is that the only criteria? Then the answer is "money".

If a AAA game has to meet some level of quality control before it's called AAA, why is Ubisoft and EA considered AAA?

The_Lopen

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Negative. I don't know if you've heard, but Ubisoft is AAAA now.

Daxtron2

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It really comes down to money more than anything. Quality factors in very little. More marketing, higher budgets, larger teams.

Kolanaki

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I agree and disagree at the same time here. AAA should and used to signify a higher level of quality. Lately, though, it seems like they finally realized they could shovel shit and still turn a buck.

Daxtron2

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Yeah it definitely should be higher quality with all that money, but like you said, the rot of corporatism really fucks that up.

therealjcdenton

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Genuinely heart warming quote

ExfilBravo

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It's also a Japanese company with Japanese work ethic.

Gekkonen

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There were already some rumors about bad working conditions during the Dark Souls titles, now more with Elden Ring: https://www.ign.com/articles/elden-ring-developers-compare-working-at-fromsoftware-to-playing-dark-souls

Even with some negative accounts, other FromSoftware employees said working at the studio has been a great experience. One employee even likened it to FromSoftware's own Dark Souls, saying, "There's a lot of struggle to get things right, but if you get over the hump it is very satisfying. It's just like you defeated a boss in Dark Souls."

I'm not sure if we should be approaching work like Dark Souls.

Outtatime

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I dunno. But I'd like to see queen pwnsalot blind fold play a fromsoft game.

xrtxn

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If it was actually a blind fold

Outtatime

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Karl jobst is right

Even_Adder

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I wouldn't say FROM SOFTWARE's games are AAA like other AAA studios.

boletus

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What does that even mean... Elden ring is as AAA as it gets.

paraphrand

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Quality of the code base? Dunno.

boletus

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Am a professional game developer I can guarantee you that the quality of the code base of the average AAA game is no better than a small studio. It's at times a lot worse, it's just got better documentation or a bigger knowledge base. I hear the current call of duty engine is a nightmare to work on.

DdCno1

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Does it still contain remnants of Quake 3 or have they finally gotten rid of them?

boletus

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They can't strip it out cos it's the foundation of the engine, and I know they still use some form of the original engine so it's probably still there.

Grass

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Other AAA games have hand holding I guess...

boletus

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AAA literally just refers to games published by big publishers that are large scale and have huge budgets.

Gabu

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And most of them are shit

Grass

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I'm aware, though these days it's more like published by heavily "Yeah I've played games, I was the best at pong in elementary school" shareholder influenced publishers and devs that make totally out of touch decisions and then lay off all the staff that were responsible for anything in the game considered good right after the game gets bad press.

Default_Defect

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For all the "From Soft games don't hold my hand" I see, it sure seems like everyone just uses a guide anyway.

"But I didn't" Yes you did.

Grass

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Ok sure... Let's say bugs and incomplete development, shit performance on latest hardware, fixes in a future update tba instead.

Default_Defect

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This is a genuine question, not a "gotcha" shitpost or w/e because I haven't played it a while. Did the microstutter in ER get fixed?

Grass

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I would assume so by now. Valve patched it initially for Linux users via proton but I remember my windows friends complaining about it when the game released. The last time they played to assist another friend who had just started was when the arena update came out and I didn't hear any complaining then. If they still have it with the dlc coming soon I'd be surprised. On previous titles I would expect them to stop patching after the dlc has been out for a bit, but they did patch the previous titles a while after elden ring came out when someone found a critical security flaw in the network code that affected all of them.

HandBreadedTools

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Tbh I have over 250 hours in elden ring and I didn't even know what you're talking about.

Montagge

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You don't have to actually finish the game when a bunch of marks will treat every bug and inconsistency as some grand difficulty hurdle and some deep lore the normies don't understand