Current Events > Apparently, employee morale at Game Freak is at an all-time low.

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://nintendosoup.com/waypoint-employee-morale-at-game-freak-is-at-an-all-time-low/

Today we have some news to share with you about Game Freak, whose latest game Pokemon Sword and Shield is launching next Friday.

During the 277th episode of WayPoint Radio, WayPoints Austin Walker made a very interesting claim about whats going on at Game Freak. He told the audience that the morale of Game Freak employees is at an all time low, though he didnt elaborate the reason why.

If what Walker said was true, this would mean that employees at the studio are aware of the backlash of cutting Pokemon. However, its unclear whether employees at Game Freak had expected the backlash to happen before the decision was announced in June.

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pokefans have been buying the same game for 20 years

not sure why this one has them fuming
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"Gotta catch'em all"
"You literally can't even catch half"
"I wasn't expecting backlash!"
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Remember when Gamers got mad that every perfectly serviceable existing animation wasn't redone from scratch

Solar_Crimson posted...

During the 277th episode of WayPoint Radio, WayPoints Austin Walker made a very interesting claim about whats going on at Game Freak. He told the audience that the morale of Game Freak employees is at an all time low, though he didnt elaborate the reason why.

Sounds pretty clickbaity
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This is about the employees, who likely have no say in those types of decisions. Their morale is low because they are probably fans of the series, and knew people would be pissed, but we're only given the time, money, and direction from management to do what they ended up doing. So of course they would be down. They're probably just as disappointed as the fans.

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refmon posted...

pokefans have been buying the same game for 20 years

not sure why this one has them fuming

-Over half of all previous Pokemon are completely unusable in Sword/Shield.
-The game itself looks very outdated on a console that delivered games like Mario Odyssey, Breath of the Wild, Xenoblade 2, FE Three Houses, and Dragon Quest XI S.
-Poor animations, reusing the exact same ones from the 3DS titles even for humans.
-Game lacks content, even compared to the DS entries, which includes its very poor postgame (again, falling far short of the DS games in that regard).
-There's no guarantee when any missing Pokemon will be usable in a game again, so you're basically paying a hostage fee with Pokemon Home for potentially years until you can use a particular Pokemon again (and maybe even only for that game).

The series has been in a downward spiral for a while now, and the "Dexit" situation was the straw that broke the camel's back.

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Smashingpmkns posted...

Sounds pretty clickbaity

Yeah, to be fair, I'm not even sure who this guy is or how reputable he is.

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what?
who?
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I don't care, they've been getting away with putting in the bare minimum effort into their Pokemon games for more than a decade and now that level of quality is unacceptable for the platform they're working on, they're just relying on blatant lies and excuses to justify their absolute laziness and ineptitude with Sword and Shield.

You only deserve sympathy once you've done something to earn it and Game Freak have absolutely NOT earned that in the slightest
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I'm confused about the anger actually, but im out the pokemon loop.

The first game had 150 pocket monsters, right? Did every game after that only add more and never removed any? So the number only climbed higher and higher over the years? And suddenly this new game cut a bunch of them? Do i have that right?
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Don't be an asshole to game devs, thanks.
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spanky1 posted...

I'm confused about the anger actually, but im out the pokemon loop.

The first game had 150 pocket monsters, right? Did every game after that only add more and never removed any? So the number only climbed higher and higher over the years? And suddenly this new game cut a bunch of them? Do i have that right?

That's right

KyleAllen posted...

"Gotta catch'em all"
"You literally can't even catch half"
"I wasn't expecting backlash!"

Thing is you could never catch all the pokemon in one game. Yeag it's worse now since there is no way to transfer pokemon you already have to the new game. That is the issue as no one expected to be able to catch every single pokemon in the game. That has never been possible.
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spanky1 posted...

I'm confused about the anger actually, but im out the pokemon loop.

The first game had 150 pocket monsters, right? Did every game after that only add more and never removed any? So the number only climbed higher and higher over the years? And suddenly this new game cut a bunch of them? Do i have that right?

Not every Pokemon has been in every game, but there has usually been some method of importing older Pokemon into the newer games if they are otherwise unobtainable in that specific game. That doesn't appear to be the case for this game. And for this particularly standards are higher because of the hardware they're working with. You could maybe excuse them for not having every Pokemon if they were still making games on a dinky little handheld. But the Switch is a legitimate console.
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spanky1 posted...

I'm confused about the anger actually, but im out the pokemon loop.

The first game had 150 pocket monsters, right? Did every game after that only add more and never removed any? So the number only climbed higher and higher over the years? And suddenly this new game cut a bunch of them? Do i have that right?

Yep.

In Sword/Shield, you can only have 400 Pokemon in it, period. Unlike with the original Ruby/Sapphire which also had a similar lockout, albeit due to hardware issues, the missing Pokemon are flatout not programmed in the game.

This means that a game on a home console has less available Pokemon than games that were released on the DS (which had 493 in Gen 4, and 649 in Gen 5), and just barely more available on all of the games on GBA (386 in Gen 3). In fact, the Gen 7 games on 3DS had access to twice as many Pokemon than there are in Sword/Shield, including multiple variations of certain Pokemon.

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spanky1 posted...

I'm confused about the anger actually, but im out the pokemon loop.

The first game had 150 pocket monsters, right? Did every game after that only add more and never removed any? So the number only climbed higher and higher over the years? And suddenly this new game cut a bunch of them? Do i have that right?

Not removed in that you could transfer them if you already have them. Each game only has a few hundred that can be captured in the game itself.

No I'm not defending game freak but people are acting like they could get every pokemon in prevous games but it was never that simple.
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A lot of people don't remember this, but Ruby and Sapphire was seen as the start of Pokemon's decline when they came out. Largely due to the lack of compatibility with GSC. And Game Freak at least had plans to make the old pokemon available there through FRLG.
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pokedude900 posted...

A lot of people don't remember this, but Ruby and Sapphire was seen as the start of Pokemon's decline when they came out. Largely due to the lack of compatibility with GSC. And Game Freak at least had plans to make the old pokemon available there through FRLG.

I remember...
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pokedude900 posted...

A lot of people don't remember this, but Ruby and Sapphire was seen as the start of Pokemon's decline when they came out. Largely due to the lack of compatibility with GSC. And Game Freak at least had plans to make the old pokemon available there through FRLG.

I remember, straight up dropping the series when I learned most my favorites were completely unobtainable.

Then they release FRLG and sucked me back in. Then I bought Emerald.

But the gap between GSC and FRLG was the longest non-Pokemon period of my life.
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pokedude900 posted...

A lot of people don't remember this, but Ruby and Sapphire was seen as the start of Pokemon's decline when they came out. Largely due to the lack of compatibility with GSC. And Game Freak at least had plans to make the old pokemon available there through FRLG.

I remember. That was also the time when Pokemon's popularity hit an all-time low, likely because all the kids who liked Gen 1 and maybe Gen 2 were entering high school, and felt that liking kiddy things like Pokemon made you lame. Though the loss of so many old Pokemon with RuSa didn't help, either.

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Im still not sure why this is as a big of a deal as it is.

I have almost all the Pokmon in my bank but I never transfer them to a new game or anything and dont understand why you would out of competitive play which is like 1% of the user base.

I thought mega evolution was fucking stupid. Z moves and all that shit was stupid. dynamax and gigamax sound and look stupid outside of raiding which may or may not be decent.

But dropping down the scope of Pokmon makes perfect sense.
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pokedude900 posted...

A lot of people don't remember this, but Ruby and Sapphire was seen as the start of Pokemon's decline when they came out. Largely due to the lack of compatibility with GSC. And Game Freak at least had plans to make the old pokemon available there through FRLG.

That's due to hardware limitations as well as the difference in Pokmon system

And the situation is completely different, having the Pokmon coded in but not accessible is completely different from not having in the pokes in the cart at all
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I'd say good. They either need to get with the times or move onto other projects. I guarantee a more competent development team could have pulled off the full scope of the series. From the sounds of it, they're really not that great, and they've only gotten away with it this long due to the formulaic nature of the series.

I think this article is reaching a bit. Waypoint is just a podcast. Austin Walker probably does have a lot of insider sources in the industry but from my experience it's very rarely the case for guys like him to have sources from Japanese studios.
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Zeeak4444 posted...

Im still not sure why this is as a big of a deal as it is.

I have almost all the Pokmon in my bank but I never transfer them to a new game or anything and dont understand why you would out of competitive play which is like 1% of the user base.

I thought mega evolution was fucking stupid. Z moves and all that shit was stupid. dynamax and gigamax sound and look stupid outside of raiding which may or may not be decent.

But dropping down the scope of Pokmon makes perfect sense.

I mean, my first playthrough on a generation, I always use all new Pokemon. But I do eventually transfer over some favorites so I can raise up a my favorites. So for me, while it wouldn't impact my actual story playthrough, I'm still miffed I'm completely locked out of most of my favorite Pokemon.

But really, I'm more appalled that their reasoning for why we couldn't get all the Pokemon was that they were too resource intensive when a) They already had future-proofed HD models for the existing 807 Pokemon and b) the game doesn't actually look all that impressive. Like I'd give their excuse a little more credit if the game was looking like BotW, but it is nowhere close to that.

And Game Freak can fuck right off with their "we are small company, please understand" bullshit. As can fans defending them by saying that Game Freak is used to making portable games so of course they are going to struggle making the game look good. Pokemon is the biggest media franchise in the history of mankind. If you don't have enough people. Hire more. If you don't have the expertise to do complex 3D modeling. Hire people who can. It's just kind of sad to me that after over 20 years, we are finally getting the first mainline Pokemon game on a home console and it looks like this.
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ZombiePelican posted...

I don't care, they've been getting away with putting in the bare minimum effort into their Pokemon games for more than a decade and now that level of quality is unacceptable for the platform they're working on, they're just relying on blatant lies and excuses to justify their absolute laziness and ineptitude with Sword and Shield.

You only deserve sympathy once you've done something to earn it and Game Freak have absolutely NOT earned that in the slightest

@ZombiePelican play the game first before jumping into wild conclusion

Having 'future proofed 3D models' doesn't really mean much. If it was that easy we'd see more games recycling content like that. Even the shitty WWE games constantly redo their wrestlers even if they look worse. They can't just click 'import from old game' and be ready to go. Making video games is difficult.

The biggest reason this game is this way it is because it's an annual series and there's like three different companies invested in this franchise to remain like that.
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Just skimmed:
I wouldnt go to print with this, but from what Ive heard, the morale...

Discussed at around 1hour 40 of that episode of the podcast
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It stands to reason that game devs are aware of the internet, and all the backlash about the new gen so far.
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What wild conclusions? We have already seen it. They use 3ds models and decided to not bring in the rest of them even though they already made them. It would be like if Mario Odyssey just re used the models from 3d World and excluded some of them just cause.
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On one hand I emphasize with the devs who dont get paid to make decisions

On the other hand...yall been making the same game for 20 years. You HAD to be sharing laughs in the boardrooms like you got away with something when you barely had to try and it sells ridiculously
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I want to say the massive amount of leaks hasn't helped any.
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Darmik posted...

Having 'future proofed 3D models' doesn't really mean much. If it was that easy we'd see more games recycling content like that. Even the shitty WWE games constantly redo their wrestlers even if they look worse. They can't just click 'import from old game' and be ready to go. Making video games is difficult.

The biggest reason this game is this way it is because it's an annual series and there's like three different companies invested in this franchise to remain like that.

The Gen VII models were way higher definition than needed and then scaled down to be put into S&M. The entire idea being that it would save time on future generations of the series. Obviously it is more complicated than just dragging them over to the new game, but the idea was that it would save having to recreate the models everytime.

Regardless, I'm done being okay with Pokemon just winging it because it it is expected. You are right that it's an annual series and there are three different companies invested in it, that doesn't mean I have to be okay with or defend that. Mainline Pokemon coming to a home console should be a huge deal and have a game worthy of reflecting that.
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MrNintendo1213 posted...

What wild conclusions? We have already seen it. They use 3ds models and decided to not bring in the rest of them even though they already made them. It would be like if Mario Odyssey just re used the models from 3d World and excluded some of them just cause.

They had rebuild the old from scratch for the switch version. Please do more research before you decided to talk shit about gamefreak

Gheb posted...

Darmik posted...

Having 'future proofed 3D models' doesn't really mean much. If it was that easy we'd see more games recycling content like that. Even the shitty WWE games constantly redo their wrestlers even if they look worse. They can't just click 'import from old game' and be ready to go. Making video games is difficult.

The biggest reason this game is this way it is because it's an annual series and there's like three different companies invested in this franchise to remain like that.

The Gen VII models were way higher definition than needed and then scaled down to be put into S&M. The entire idea being that it would save time on future generations of the series. Obviously it is more complicated than just dragging them over to the new game, but the idea was that it would save having to recreate the models everytime.

Regardless, I'm done being okay with Pokemon just winging it because it it is expected. You are right that it's an annual series and there are three different companies invested in it, that doesn't mean I have to be okay with or defend that. Mainline Pokemon coming to a home console should be a huge deal and have a game worthy of reflecting that.

I'm not defending it. Just saying that armchair analysis that they've done the work so it should be easy to bring them all back so they must all be lazy isn't really an accurate take at all.
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Darmik posted...

Gheb posted...

Darmik posted...

Having 'future proofed 3D models' doesn't really mean much. If it was that easy we'd see more games recycling content like that. Even the shitty WWE games constantly redo their wrestlers even if they look worse. They can't just click 'import from old game' and be ready to go. Making video games is difficult.

The biggest reason this game is this way it is because it's an annual series and there's like three different companies invested in this franchise to remain like that.

The Gen VII models were way higher definition than needed and then scaled down to be put into S&M. The entire idea being that it would save time on future generations of the series. Obviously it is more complicated than just dragging them over to the new game, but the idea was that it would save having to recreate the models everytime.

Regardless, I'm done being okay with Pokemon just winging it because it it is expected. You are right that it's an annual series and there are three different companies invested in it, that doesn't mean I have to be okay with or defend that. Mainline Pokemon coming to a home console should be a huge deal and have a game worthy of reflecting that.

I'm not defending it. Just saying that armchair analysis that they've done the work so it should be easy to bring them all back so they must all be lazy isn't really an accurate take at all.

I don't think Game Freak is lazy. I think they are just not particularly good at their jobs but refuse to bring in anymore talent. I mean the encryption/decryption fiasco alone should be evidence of that.
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How does the game not look impressive? I think it's the prettiest looking game I've ever seen after DQ11

bobbaaay posted...

How does the game not look impressive? I think it's the prettiest looking game I've ever seen after DQ11

Pokemon heart gold still look the prettiest pokemon games to date

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I don't really think lack of talent is their issue as much as it's just a case of time. Stuffing the one studio with more employees doesn't magically make games better.

For things to drastically change they either need to change the frequency of releases or start up another developer to work on it. But considering these games consistently sell 10 million copies I doubt it makes financial sense for them to do either of these choices. So until people stop buying them nothing will change. It is what it is.
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bobbaaay posted...

How does the game not look impressive? I think it's the prettiest looking game I've ever seen after DQ11

Get glasses
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They could've just added in the missing Pokemon in as a patch/DLC over time, but nope. It's now a design decision going forward that all new Pokemon games will have a rotating roster of Pokemon available.

GameFreak is going to take all the wrong lessons from this. >_>

We finally have the potential for them to do anything new with this series and thanks to dexit the best were going to get is the return of the nationaldex.
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AlisLandale posted...

GameFreak is going to take all the wrong lessons from this. >_>

We finally have the potential for them to do anything new with this series and thanks to dexit the best were going to get is the return of the nationaldex.

Good point.

Dexit was just the straw the broke the camel's back; the games were suffering from issues for a while before it.

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All that work they didn't do must have been especially draining.
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All the negativity from the bad fans

Irony posted...

bobbaaay posted...

How does the game not look impressive? I think it's the prettiest looking game I've ever seen after DQ11

Get glasses

Okay? Like it's pretty looking? I don't get your fucking point

Honestly there aren't any series with over 1000 characters that each get as many animations and details. Expecting them to maintain and renew all Pokemon for every game is too much when they could spend that effort making new content instead.

I think the haters are way overblowing things.
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Wetterdew posted...

Honestly there aren't any series with over 1000 characters that each get as many animations and details. Expecting them to maintain and renew all Pokemon for every game is too much when they could spend that effort making new content instead.

I think the haters are way overblowing things.

They can reuse assets. They have reused assets.
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Wetterdew posted...

Honestly there aren't any series with over 1000 characters that each get as many animations and details. Expecting them to maintain and renew all Pokemon for every game is too much when they could spend that effort making new content instead.

I think the haters are way overblowing things.

But I didn't get my Unown and Luvdisc