I'm real tired of people screaming and calling the devs at Game Freak incompetent and lazy. It's time for a thread about Sword and Shield.

And why what's going on is, actually, the developers taking the heat for their publisher. A story that is not new, at all, in our industry.

A lot of people are spewing some incredibly intense heat at the new Pokemon games, and some are offering valid critique. The game lacks polish in its presentation, and the lack of the national dex is felt by everyone. But, why is everyone's first response to blame Game Freak?

A lot of people seem to believe because Pokemon is a big IP, they have access to all the money and resources in the world. But that's... demonstrably not true. They're a game developer, like all others. They're not some unique anomaly just because they make something popular.

That means they have a boss, that means they have someone who pays their payroll, pays for the ridiculous amounts of marketing these games get, and ultimately, takes the lion share of the money these games make.
So, who is Game Freak's publisher?

Well, when it comes to Pokemon, there are two. Nintendo, of course, but primarily, The Pokemon Company, a largely independent company that's responsible for the ENTIRE Pokemon IP.

They handle production and distribution of:

The Anime
The Movies
Merch
The TCG

Around the world.

And that's sort of the kicker, innit? People know that pokemon makes buckets of money, but not all of that is from the games. I think most people agree that Sword and Shield needed to be delayed a few more months, maybe 6 or more, for polish, etc. But, TPC would NEVER allow that.

It'd be a logistical NIGHTMARE to delay a mainline pokemon game for any reason at all. You'd have to delay the production of all those other things because they can't come out before the games, that'd break their marketing schemes. And they've spent a *lot* of money on marketing.

It'd cost millions and millions of dollars to delay manufacturing everything. What do you do with the anime? Do you air it anyway? Just store the cards in a warehouse somewhere for a while? It'd be a mess. So, the solution is that no main game can ever be delayed. For any reason.

Game Freak has had a yearly release schedule for the past 4 years. The last break year being 2015, between ORAS and S&M. It is entirely possible that an extra year between US&UM and LGPE, or between LGPE and Sm&Sh would've gone a long way. But that's not a luxury Game Freak has.

What other franchises have done yearly releases? Let's take a look. Assassin's Creed did those for quite a while, and not only did people get burned out, but they severely dropped in quality. Only until they took a break and stopped doing a yearly cycle, did the games improve.

Call of Duty is another big one, but unlike Game Freak, a single studio of 130 employees, Activision has two studios who make CoD games, each one releasing every other year, so the devs functionally have consistent, two year dev cycles. Rough, but doable.

No dev wants to release an unpolished game. No dev likes cutting features, cutting content. You make the best you have with the time, and budget you're given. And if it isn't enough? Well, you just have to accept it and move on. You're never 100% happy with any game you make.

Between Little Town Hero getting middling reviews, no marketing and little sales as a result, all the crunch involved and now with all this controversy surrounding SwSh, boy, is there little wonder that morale at Game Freak is so low?

If you want someone to blame for the national dex, or the lack of polish. Look at the publisher. Look at the ones with actual control, with capital behind it, and their choices. No devs wanted this. And no 'interviews' posted without a source on tumblr will convince me otherwise.

If you want more prime examples of the greed of a publisher ruining a potentially great game, I'd suggest you check out @MattMcMuscles 's youtube series, Wha Happun? It documents all sorts of gamedev trainwrecks, and weirdly, publisher interference tends to be a common theme???

So, harassing devs won't get you anywhere. You're screaming at those who are most ACUTELY AWARE of everything missing, of everything that went wrong. Because they were the ones who had to say "yeah, we have to cut this to meet the deadline we don't control."

Come off that shit.

As for the #GameFreakLied people? God, can you imagine the absolute shitshow if they went on an interview and said "yeah actually the people who pay my checks are to blame for the amount of cut content, yell at them." Boy, they sure would absolutely have a job the next day, huh?

Also, last minute addition. Massive fuck you to the guy invoking Iwata's name here. Dude's first act as president of Nintendo was to help debug Melee to prevent the team from even MORE massive crunch then they were already dealing with. How dare you.

Holy Moly! This thread blew up really hard. I think now that I've had a few hours to ruminate on my points that were originally just me Honestly Being Mad Online, I think an amendment to my previous points need to be made. Including something several people have reminded me.

People have pointed out that GF does own an undisclosed amount of the TPC. Which is correct, as does Nintendo and Creatures, Inc.

I think my main mistake in this threat was sort of... framing it as a "hey blame this nebulous group, not this nebulous group." Which isn't smart.

Instead it should have focused more on the inherent difficulties of developing a product with such a strict development limit, especially when it is meant to spearhead a massive media machine across a half-dozen different forms of media. You don't have much wiggle room there.

So, my point really is, hey. Yearly releases? Not great. Blaming individual lack of creativity or laziness when issues are instead part of a much more systemic issue in how these products are made is exceptionally not fair and frustrating to watch as a gamedev myself.

So, yeah. I hope that gives the subject a bit more of the nuance it deserves. Thanks for reading this far! I appreciate you.

I work on games! I write for games, and my incredible gf @kirakirakat is an amazing artist, so please go check out her stuff!