How does FromSoftware release AAA games so frequently? Elden Ring boss says "we are just blessed with a great staff" that the studio empowers and retains

They also had great success with Sekiro, which was (and still is) very different from their other titles.

I'd like to add that from a technical point of view, their games don't really push the boundaries and at least on PC, their games often aren't the most polished. Elden Ring had severe shader compilation stutter at launch and a 60 FPS limit - which is a big no-no on PC if you ask me. Nothing game breaking like the state some publishers (EA) release their games in, but not great either.

The three games I was most interested in last year were Kerbal Space Program 2, Cities Skylines 2, and Zelda Tears of the Kingdom. Two of them had newly designed game engines. The third used the engine from the previous game.

Guess which one I enjoyed playing the most?

In software development sometimes you do have to rewrite some code to improve things. But if you have something that functions really well, it's better to be just continually making improvements. A lot of what makes a game great is going to be artwork, story, creative level design, creative enemy design, etc. But all of that work can be wasted if the software is buggy, which will happen if most or all of the code is written on a tight deadline.

Well, this may not actually be the case. 7 or so years ago FromSoftware was pretty notoriously known to Japanese workers in the gaming industry to have very harsh working conditions, even among other Japanese studios that also have harsh conditions. Allegedly programmers at FromSoftware at that time were making an annual salary of only $27k USD. Compare this with Konami, who was paying an annual salary of $40k USD for the same position.

Its possible in the last 7 years things might have changed, but Japanese companies are usually very resistant to change. Japanese work culture honestly sucks, I would never want to.live in Japan because of this.

EDIT: You can see here that the overall worker satisfaction rating for FromSoftware is only 2.8 out of 5, which seems to be nearly the same as it used to be.

NOTE: Some readers may see something about the "Whiteness/Blackness" of the company. This has nothing to do with race or racism. This is a slang term from Japanese culture that refers to how ethical a company is. A company that is very unethical (overworking employees, borderline illegal treatment of employees, etc) is called a "Black Company," and everyone will tell you to avoid them. Conversely a "White Company" would be a very ethical company and one that everyone would be fighting each other to work for.

keeping them around

It's rare for employees to move companies in Japan. A lot of people will work for the same company their whole life. Japanese companies aren't really known for treating their employees well either.

I'd guess what they're doing well is hiring employees that are very passionate. I hear the anime industry is the same in that people who are in it are willing to work themselves to death because they want to work on big name projects

Just be clear, there is a reason that's not in the quotes of the title. The author basically makes up that they're "treating staff well* because they're not randomly firing people right now. (The empowering bit is basically fabricated)

And respecting players, and monetization practices which players respect

I will say that reusing assets is 100% okay, and I actually wish more studios did this. You don't need to make everything from scratch. It's okay to reuse the thing you made previously.

what the hell does the number of As even mean? how does one quantify how many As your game has? if I made a game today and shipped it how many As could I get today?

How long before it's less n(A) games, and more screaming?

They released a whole ass other game in that window.

It's a huge dlc from the looks of it though, and they also released Armored Core during that time.

Metal Wolf Chaos should factor into all discussion, even those that have nothing to do with FromSoft.

LET'S PARTYYYYY!

2-3 years is a very fast turnaround time these days and that's where From is at. Look at Horizon by comparison. It was 5 years between the Horizon games despite using the same engine and some of the same assets.

Horizon is a bigger game with more cinematics and voice acting, so that's part of it. But From is definitely faster at pushing out AAA games than most studios.

What, you think you can make games where the player's sanity can be broken without insane employees?

You got any sources for that claim? Because quick googling makes me think it's BS.

EDIT: For anyone not wanting to read the rest, it is BS.

Negative. I don't know if you've heard, but Ubisoft is AAAA now.

It really comes down to money more than anything. Quality factors in very little. More marketing, higher budgets, larger teams.

There were already some rumors about bad working conditions during the Dark Souls titles, now more with Elden Ring: https://www.ign.com/articles/elden-ring-developers-compare-working-at-fromsoftware-to-playing-dark-souls

Even with some negative accounts, other FromSoftware employees said working at the studio has been a great experience. One employee even likened it to FromSoftware's own Dark Souls, saying, "There's a lot of struggle to get things right, but if you get over the hump it is very satisfying. It's just like you defeated a boss in Dark Souls."

I'm not sure if we should be approaching work like Dark Souls.

If it was actually a blind fold

What does that even mean... Elden ring is as AAA as it gets.

where'd you get stuck?

What are you even talking about, like actually, I'm genuinely asking

are you talking Bethesda or From software?

Tell me you're shit at games without telling me you're shit at games