seeing people frame the SnS stuff as "the developers at game freak are just being lazy" instead of "the developers at game freak are being squeezed for every last cent and forced to crunch to get a new game out every year in order to meet an unreasonable quota" is so depressing

i know this even the #ThankYouGameFreak stuff is framed around the idea that morale is low at gamefreak bc everyone is being mean to them on the internet. im sure it doesnt help, but their morale would be a lot higher if they had time to make something they were proud of.

feels like people see the two sides here as "people who hate gamefreak" and "people who are excited about the game and think it looks great". dont blame the developers. blame capitalism. blame sequelizing. blame annualization.

game looks kinda bad but so was sun and moon. this isnt new. theyve been running this series into the ground for quite some time now. wish people had a grasp on why. its cus they can just sell you a bad product and it doesnt matter. so they make them every year.

theyve done sun and moon into ultra sun and moon into lets go pikachu into sword and shield with a release every single year since sun and moon came out. imagine what a pokemon game with a 4 or 5 year dev cycle could look like.

shareholders could give a fuck about the quality of a video game or the quality of developers' lives if they can keep making the money they used to make every 3 years every single year now

did some youtuber rt this or something

for clarity: capitalism is designed to encourage shareholders and executives to do this. its how our system is built to work. video games are just an easy way to demonstrate it because the issues are so obviously reflected in the product.

when you buy an apple you don't see the slave labor reflected in the apple. its obfuscated. you see an apple.

the video game industry is a useful teaching tool because when people are being death marched to release a new game every year, the games start to suck

when i say "the developers at gamefreak" i am referring to the workers. coders, artists, designers, etc. i am not referring to upper management, executives, or shareholders.

no one here is being "lazy". its not about laziness. its about making more money.

its not "lazy" for the workers to cut corners on development to meet an impossible deadline. they do that because if they don't they will lose their jobs.

executives aren't being "lazy". they're being calculated to maximize profit.

all of you who talk about workers and execs and shareholders as a monolith and just call all of it "game freak" have big "i have never held a job" energy

youre going to the grocery store and complaining to the cashier about the price of wheat thins

when youre a worker you dont get to decide "we're gonna take the time to rebuild this inefficient system so the games run better". you get your assignment and you do it or you lose your livelihood. you dont get to choose.

even as a middle or upper manager, you get the deadline. you dont choose it. so you tell your team "we dont have time to rebuild this" or you lose your livelihood. capitalism is really cool like that.