Last year I fulfilled a lifelong ambition to compose a full JRPG soundtrack. It was intense, scoring almost an hour of material across 27 tracks with limited time (1-2 days per piece). I would have liked more time to polish the mixes but still I was proud of the final result 👇

If you call yourself a creator, you must at the very least feel a sense of aversion toward the idea that your work might turn out to be "mediocre." And if you're not a genius, you shouldn't skimp on the effort it takes to avoid that.

8 years ago, preparing for a piano diploma. Who says men can't multitask? 👶🎹

Two down, 10^120-2 to go.

It feels like our game is the antithesis of modern gaming 🙈 It has little hand-holding, time-driven mechanics and a weird mix of genres (turn-based RPG+adventure game) Just like the PS2/GC era, when the over-standardization of systems&genres hadn't taken over the industry yet

Does there exist a more 90s memory than JoeJam & Earl? youtu.be/m1JXmIIqoms?si=19Jq… Absolute banger of a soundtrack.

I recently started a new Disco Elysium save after an abortive first run a couple of years back, and so pleased I did. I always loved the story and dialogue, but felt a bit overwhelmed with all the lore dumps. This time I nerfed Intellect/Encyclopaedia in favour of Psyche/Inland Empire, and what a huge difference it makes. Amazing game.

Denshaattack is the latest example within the game industry that when you properly invest music into your budget + marketing to have a decked out soundtrack, your game will have permalasting appeal. game music is not just background noise only to be in service of its gameplay!

That would be cool, though personally I'd prefer they rework Ever Crisis into a proper, fully-playable non-gacha game and use the same model for VIII & IX.

Happy birthday @sonic_hedgehog! Sonic 1 was the first game I ever played, and I still consider classic Sonic (& Mania) to be the best platform games ever made. I made a celebration of the series last month and wrote some music for it inspired by the Sonic games. 👇

Someone yesterday told me "they suck, that's why sales suck." Classic correlation does not = causation. If quality determined success, then Housemarque and Remedy games would sell crazy. They don't. I'll give you a perspective with a POV from my day job (marketing) 👇 FF is in a very strange spot. It was one of the first breakout hits as a "story game." It wasn't just a "popular JRPG." It exceeded the bounds of that genre. It was the #2 selling PS1 game of all time. It was the first big "story" game I ever encountered. It was the "The Last of Us" of its generation, a game that made people think, "games could have stories like this.... games can LOOK like this!?" Being turn-based or a JRPG was secondary to its impact on gaming as a whole. It brought in a lot of people who didn't tend to play RPGs, me included. And over time, a decent amount of those people moved on to other story-based games in other genres. I feel like I'm fairly representative of the non-RPG fans that got into FF because of FF7. I did keep playing FF through FF12, but the broader gaming industry had evolved so much that it was no longer the standard bearer for "amazing graphics + great stories." If that was your #1 priority, then there were more games than ever that offered those things. For example, almost the entire PlayStation 1st Party library caters to those people (God of War, TLOU, Tsushima, etc). And sure enough, I moved on to playing a lot of those other options. That means FF games started once again competing primarily with other JRPG experiences for the wallets of JRPG gamers. And in that sense, it has done things that shrunk its appeal to that audience as well. But let's bring numbers into this conversation (from VG Sales Wiki): FF6: 5.6 million FF7: 15.7 million FF8: 11.2 million FF9: 8.9 million FFX: 14.6 million FFX-2: 5.7 million FF12: 7.9 million FF13: 9.3 million FF13-2: 4.3 million FF13 Lighting Returns: 2.4 million FF15: 10 million (probably more by now, but no update) FF16: 5 million (last total they can find) As you can see, FF7 was an outlier, which did boost the franchise for a while. 13 struggled as that trilogy played out. I didn't even play it. Then FF15 dropped and it got me -- and a lot of people -- back in. "For fans and first timers, huh? Sounds like a reset and fresh start. I'll give it a shot." In the opening hour, I found myself stranded at a gas station having to hunt some wolves (or something), with very little in the way of a clear narrative "hook" or reason to be invested other than the game clearly wanting me to care about the bros that I just met. I played a bit more, but I ultimately said to myself, "if I want a good story game, there are a lot more options with better stories and better gameplay. I've thought this with recent FF games. Maybe FF just isn't for me anymore." Ironically, I did eventually go back and beat FF15 after FF7R rekindled my interest in the series. I'm even fully caught up with FF14. But if you look back at the sales list, FF16 did about as well as FF6. In sum, the appeal of the single-player games in the franchise exploded with 7, had some successes in between, and has ultimately returned to a pool of people about as big as right before FF7. They're in between a rock and a hard place: they're not JRPG enough for true JRPG fans, and they're no longer quite up to the gold standard of storytelling, presentation, or even marketing that other AAA story games outside of the JRPG genre offer. With all that in mind, the last rumored number of 8.7 million copies sold for FF7 Remake is pretty solid. For Rebirth, we've never heard any number other than a rumored "2 million" at some point. If I had to guess, it's probably closer to 4-5 million. And as seen by FFX-2 and FFXIII-2, direct sequels selling less than the first is kinda to be expected (in general, but especially with FF) tldr; Final Fantasy has the oddest position in the gaming industry. It's neither the clear option for JRPG diehards or AAA story-game diehards. It's at a weird in-between and its sales pretty much reflect THAT dynamic more than any particular indication about the quality of the games. The FF7R games ain't perfect, but they are mechanically fun to play and provably well reviewed by critics and players. How many people want THAT experience is where it gets hard to predict, however, because its so hard to clearly identify what FF is and who its for.

Takashi Iizuka explains why big companies like working with indie devs 🔥

One of the most devastating stories I've ever experienced in a game, masterfully told. TLOU2 did something that I don't think non-interactive media can - it put us in the other person's shoes and forced us not just see their perspective but to live it out ourselves. I don't think I've ever felt more uncomfortable playing a game, but that's ok - not all art is supposed to make us feel content.