A good news story, Korean Game Devs Nexon tell shareholders they'll release games when they're ready and without forcing any crunch

[Master Disaster]

I make no secret of the fact I've become pretty jaded with the state of the video game industry over the last 4 to 5 years and this topic really caught me off guard.

 

Korean game Dev Studio Nexon, known for Maplestory and Dungeons & Fighters, held an investor Q&A recently and did something I thought the industry was incapable of. They told their shareholders to wait until they were ready, no pressure on their staff and no enforced deadlines.

 

When asked about release dates for their 2 upcoming games CEO Owen Mahoney said this

Quote

It will depend on when our developers feel they have an outstanding game that they are proud to show to their closest friends. Getting there is all about iteration, play-testing and polishing. And any game company that is experienced and who is being honest with you will tell you this is not a linear process. Iteration is about making the game fun, and that is an art challenge, not an engineering challenge.

 

So, we could give you a date. That would satisfy your near-term need to plug something in to your model. And it would generate near-term excitement from users. But then it would put the WRONG type of pressure on the game developers. They would have to hit a date regardless of what is right for making the game fun.

In our industry that’s called Crunch mode, which is industry parlance for “put a game out by a certain deadline, no matter what the costs on the employees.“ Even after crunch mode the game is often still not ready to launch. The result of all this is frequently disappointed customers, burnt-out, demoralized developers, and damaged brands and impaired financial returns for investors.

 

Crunch mode is one of the most pernicious problems in our industry. The charade of launch timing serves little purpose except this dance with equity analysts. Instead, the right thing to focus and push for is a game that blows people’s minds. If we achieve that, the game will last many years and the revenues will dwarf what we would have made by launching a quarter or two earlier.

 

I’m sorry nobody in my industry has explained this to you before. Within the industry, we ALL know it’s true and yet few talk about it openly. Everyone should. So rather than giving you a date, this team is going to give to our customers and employees a commitment to make the best game we can, as soon as we can.

 

None of this is to imply we are pushing back the date for any of our games, or that we are experiencing delays at NEXON. It is only to let you know as fully as we can how we make our decisions on product launches. If your primary job is to fill in your Excel model, you’ll hate our approach.

 

But if you consider your job definition to be making money by identifying mis-priced assets in the entertainment industry, we think you’ll find our way a lot more lucrative.

Source - https://wccftech.com/nexon-ceo-tells-investors-to-wait-until-games-are-ready-for-release-condemns-crunch/

 

Gotta agree with WCCF on this one, this is how it should be done and hopefully both upcoming games go on to sell well so other industry members can learn from this.

 

Honestly, I might go and buy their existing games just to support them.

[Spotty]

Didn't CD Projekt say the same thing about Cyberpunk 2077?

https://kotaku.com/cd-projekt-red-boss-again-promises-that-cyberpunk-devs-1835518344

[Guest]

16 minutes ago, Spotty said:

Didn't CD Projekt say the same thing about Cyberpunk 2077?

https://kotaku.com/cd-projekt-red-boss-again-promises-that-cyberpunk-devs-1835518344

Uh oh.

[CTR640]

Impatient shareholders and stupid managements are cancer to the gaming industry and also to any other industry too.

[tikker]

CDPR has shown this doesn't mean much, so I'll believe it when I see it.

[xAcid9]

Plot twist: Shareholder told them to release the game a.s.a.p + microtransactions and fix it later. 

[RejZoR]

1 hour ago, CTR640 said:

Impatient shareholders and stupid managements are cancer to the gaming industry and also to any other industry too.

It's when gaming industry filled with game enthusiast turned into money printing factory. That's when all changed. It's not something people do with passion, it's because they have to do to make big money to suits up top. Investors pressuring them just make everything even worse.

[Moonzy]

Inb4 pull all funding and they just go bankrupt, because that's not what investors want

[BuckGup]

Are you sure this isn't just a move by shareholders to make nexon look better? That's what CDProjektDead did 

[StDragon]

2 hours ago, Spotty said:

Didn't CD Projekt say the same thing about Cyberpunk 2077?

https://kotaku.com/cd-projekt-red-boss-again-promises-that-cyberpunk-devs-1835518344

Didn't COVID19 throw the entire industry with that curveball? Work from home means less personnel interaction within an office; critical for creative collaboration. No?

[StDragon]

1 hour ago, RejZoR said:

It's when gaming industry filled with game enthusiast turned into money printing factory. That's when all changed. It's not something people do with passion, it's because they have to do to make big money to suits up top. Investors pressuring them just make everything even worse.

The industry has advanced so much that I don't think there's room anymore for independent devs like John Carmack. 

[Spotty]

13 minutes ago, StDragon said:

Didn't COVID19 throw the entire industry with that curveball? Work from home means less personal interaction within an office; critical for creative collaboration. No?

Well, yes. That may have played a part in it... However that interview where CD Projekt Red said they weren't going to make their employees do crunch hours to finish the game was in June 2019, well in to the COVID-19 period where lockdowns and disruptions were expected. It wasn't like they said it in 2018 and then they were suddenly blindsided by COVID-19.

 

Edit: Nevermind, I'm a fool. Mixed up my years.

Fair point then, that statement was before COVID-19 and they would have been blindsided by COVID-19 which would have caused a lot of disruptions.

 

COVID-19 is still a thing so Nexon would be just as susceptible to COVID and work-from-home related delays. South Korea appears to currently be going through their highest average number of reported cases so far. They could still face COVID-19 related delays (which is understandable).

Edited August 16, 2021 by Spotty

[Quackers101]

3 hours ago, Spotty said:

Didn't CD Projekt say the same thing about Cyberpunk 2077?

https://kotaku.com/cd-projekt-red-boss-again-promises-that-cyberpunk-devs-1835518344

yues, rip.

Then delay upon delay, working more and more.

Sometimes there is forced crunch, or "social engineering" to crunch due to not crunching will leave other developers behind and being forced emotionally or by the workload.

[CTR640]

1 hour ago, RejZoR said:

It's when gaming industry filled with game enthusiast turned into money printing factory. That's when all changed. It's not something people do with passion, it's because they have to do to make big money to suits up top. Investors pressuring them just make everything even worse.

Yes, customers falling in their traps are cancer too. For example, look at the microtransactions. Half-assed and unfinished games are releases, you pay "full price" and still you still keep paying. And from the looks of it, it will stay like that forever. And oh, did I mention looting boxes, I mean..."suprise mechanics"?

[Kisai]

4 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

Honestly, I might go and buy their existing games just to support them.

You can't buy their games, they are all F2P, and easily the worst kind of (lootbox) gacha-heavy mechanics, that you end up extremely behind in competitive elements of the games if you're not dropping $1000's of dollars a week.

 

Nexon literately is the company that started the microtransaction trend in the East. "Free to Play" was literately coined by them.

 

https://venturebeat.com/2015/10/13/how-nexon-accidentally-invented-microtransactions/

 

Now that said, Nexon is not the "worst" when it comes to microtransactions, as they do have the philosophy that players should be able to play the game without paying...

Quote

Mahoney believes that if game developers see free-to-play games as business models to “pull money out of people’s pocket,” consumers will enjoy the game less.

 

“If you fool people once, they don’t come back, and it’s death to your game,” Mahoney said.

 

However if you've ever played western localized versions of their games, that's easily not the case. The European and American versions of their games are easily 100x more expensive to play than WoW or FFXIV.

 

Nexon's Mabinogi had one player steal 36 million yen to "try" buy the wedding dress in the game. That was back in 2008. Because of the gacha mechanic, it's impossible to outright get the items you want, in the colors you want, and buying it from another player using the in game currency is usually impossible, having to trade the virtual currency cards, which for rare items might have you spending hundreds of dollars as well.

 

Trust me when I say this. Nexon can say whatever platitudes they want about their game development culture, but they are no less greedy than Electronic Arts. They are not a Japanese publisher, they are a Korean publisher with a HQ in Japan which is a larger market and so they could eventually IPO. This is a company I've been aware of since 1996.

 

Nexon is the publisher for most American titles under a F2P model in Korea and Japan, where the US publisher might have a completely different revenue model. This is why exporting the Korean F2P model always fails in the US. 

 

[RejZoR]

54 minutes ago, CTR640 said:

Yes, customers falling in their traps are cancer too. For example, look at the microtransactions. Half-assed and unfinished games are releases, you pay "full price" and still you still keep paying. And from the looks of it, it will stay like that forever. And oh, did I mention looting boxes, I mean..."suprise mechanics"?

It's generally not an issue if lootboxes are present in free to play games and they can all be unlocked by grinding. Especially depending on game. If it's multiplayer only where you don't have any general progress, it's whatever. But when they put them in full price games, hide best stuff under paid only lootboxes and tuck the free stuff under insufferable grind, then they can just F right off.

 

Other issue is that often it's just more profitable releasing some stuff as F2P and people just drop insane 4-5 digit amounts of money and whine how 80€ story driven full fledged single player games are "too expensive". These people should be castrated with rusty spoon coz they shouldn't procreate further...

[Quackers101]

16 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

It's generally not an issue if lootboxes are present in free to play games and they can all be unlocked by grinding. Especially depending on game. If it's multiplayer only where you don't have any general progress, it's whatever. But when they put them in full price games, hide best stuff under paid only lootboxes and tuck the free stuff under insufferable grind, then they can just F right off.

 

Other issue is that often it's just more profitable releasing some stuff as F2P and people just drop insane 4-5 digit amounts of money and whine how 80€ story driven full fledged single player games are "too expensive". These people should be castrated with rusty spoon coz they shouldn't procreate further...

would say that lootboxes can be more complex about if or if not it's a problem.

But sure, sometimes it being free to play could reduce how bad it is, it's still not a good system if using money for random items.

also in the way it's implemented, to what kind of game or players in the game. (Fifa, fortnite to overwatch)

[kpluck]

They are probably a little short staffed now so they just said that hoping to attract some talent. They will be back to normal software development standard operating procedures once the positions are filled.

 

-kp

[xtroria]

13 hours ago, tikker said:

CDPR has shown this doesn't mean much, so I'll believe it when I see it.

Kinda ironic how they didnt learn anything from star citizen.

 

Both games overpromise and probably kept on adding features while the minimum requirements weren't reached yet

[Roswell]

Now all they need to do is to stop being one of the most predatory F2P publishers in the business.

[Kadzo]

I played their Combat Arms franchise for about 2k hours, (years ago) and they are one of the slimiest game company`s that i came across. Literal definition of pay-to-win game model with special lootboxes that can be unlocked with cards that you by with real money, faster and better equipment for real money then the one you can purchase with in game cash. 

So IMHO anything they say is a PR stunt and nothing more.

[StDragon]

11 hours ago, xtroria said:

Kinda ironic how they didnt learn anything from star citizen.

 

Both games overpromise and probably kept on adding features while the minimum requirements weren't reached yet

Star Citizen is the perfect example of burnout. You can only keep the hype so long while dragging out development in perceptual Alpha testing. Eventually, people lose interest as development turns into a "forever project" with not much to show for it as a "Game".

Eventually people just move on. They have lives too, and individual priorities change. 

[spartaman64]

great now they just need better servers

[Kisai]

3 hours ago, The Unknown Voice said:

 

Anyone who played ANY of their games in 2011 knows about the hacker wars, and Nexon's attempt to sue hacker devs.

 

I quit playing their games primarily because of the amount of hacking going on their games. Like it wasn't just the low level "manipulating the dye colors to always get perfect", but the high level "swap item id's to get unlimited use of P2W items", and where I finally had enough was the "blackrobe incidents", which I wasn't playing when it happened, but it basically lost ability to enjoy the game because there was a potential for some scriptkiddie to target people they didn't like in the game and destroy their data irreversibly. It happened to the European version of the game that was subsequently shutdown.

 

And to point out how abusive the P2W mechanics are. It is impossible to play the "archer" type class/race because the quivers only hold 100 arrows, but the P2W quiver holds 1000, that you have to buy over and over.

 

Imagine a gun game where, your ammo clip holds 10, and can can hold a maximum of 10 ammo, and only works with one gun (if you switch guns, you lose all of them,) but the P2W clip holds 1000, and you can hold as many as you have inventory slots, and works with every gun. That's literately how egregious the microtransactions are in Nexon games.

 

Likewise the repair mechanic in Mabi required P2W items to not lose/destroy the items, because even the "best" repair shop in the game, only had a 98% chance of not destroying the item completely. Then there was the soul weapons, which ate gacha items for experience, and could only be repaired with P2W items.

 

I lost very few items in the game due to server crashes (which was another thing hackers were doing), but it tool only losing one expensive item to realize Nexon is forever trying to patch holes in their cardboard boat.

 

[JZStudios]

Koreans as a people aren't known for not crunching, whether it's company "mandated" or not. They're right up there with Japan.

 

x.