Yuji Naka filed a lawsuit against Square Enix, was removed as Balan Wonderworld director

[Polkadi~☆]

(twitter thread, click to read more)
Rough English translation (source):

Quote

I was removed as the director of Balan Wonderworld about half a year before release, so I filed a lawsuit against Square Enix. Now that the proceedings are over and I’m no longer bound by company rules, I’d like to speak out.

I think it's wrong of Square Enix not to value games and game fans. According to court documents, I was removed as the director of Balan Wonderworld for 2 reasons. It was done by the producer, head of marketing, head of sound, managing director, and HR.

First, when a YouTuber's arranged piano performance of the game music was released in a promotion instead of the original game track, turning the composer into a ghostwriter, I insisted that the original track be released and this caused trouble.

Second, according to court documents, [Naoto] Ohshima told producer [Noriyoshi] Fujimoto that the relationship with Arzest was ruined due to comments I made wanting to improve the game in the face of Arzest submitting the game without fixing bugs.

Also, in an e-mail from Ohshima to Fujimoto, he wrote: 'I just told the staff about the demo delay. When I told them, 'This was prod. Fujimoto's decision. Let's do our best for him,' the staff applauded and cheered. This was unexpected, and I was moved...

The staff's been down lately, but their spirits have been revived. Thank you very much. All of us on the staff will work hard.' So the schedule wasn't up to me, but the producer, yet the schedule being tight was the producer's doing. Something was off.

We were releasing an original game, but only putting out an arranged track was definitely wrong. I believe that the game music that everyone can hum out are the original tracks.

I believe that every effort must be put in to make games the best they can be until the very end so that game fans will enjoy what they buy. It wasn't right to, without discussion, remove and completely disassociate from the project a director saying so.

Retweeting, liking, etc. on SNS and such was banned, so I don't think Square Enix values game fans. There were many comments and wonderful illustrations about Balan Wonderworld, and I'm really sorry that I couldn't react to them.

Myself, I'm truly sorry to the customers who bought Balan Wonderworld in an unfinished state. From this point onward, I will be able to react to posts tagging me or directed only toward me on SNS and such.

I believe that when making games, asking for fixes in order to make something good should be a given, and if that's not possible, it should be talked over, but it looks like they can't. I don't think they value games.

For Sonic the Hedgehog, 2 weeks before finalizing, the spec was changed so that if you have even 1 ring, you won't die. This now well-known rule was the result of improving the game until the very end, and people world-over have enjoyed it as a result.

Improving a game until the very end is what being a game creator is all about, and if that's not possible, something's wrong. I asked my lawyer to negotiate my just being able to comment until the end of production, but their refusal led me to file suit.

I think that the resulting Balan Wonderworld and the critical reception it received have a lot to do with what happened. I'm really disappointed that a product I worked on from the start turned out this way.

 

New details came out about Yuji Naka's work on Balan Wonderworld, namely how he was removed as director during development and barred from conmunicating with the team afterwards, was aware of the glitches that the game had that were not fixed, personally feels that the game is unfinished, and did not have a good relationship with Arzest, nor did he agree with many of Square Enix's PR decisions (on top of already available information that he did not agree with Square Enix's insistence on CGI cutscenes).

Most importantly, Naka had filled a lawsuit against Square Enix for this poor working relationship.

This is all new information posted on Twitter by Yuji Naka himself.

 

As an aside, Naka shares that the ring's life-saving feature for Sonic the Hedgehog was a last-minute addition to the game, as proof that he deeply cares about working on his games until the very end of it's development.

Edited April 28, 2022 by Polkadi~☆
wonderland flows better than wonderworld, and you know it too

[DaBigJ]

4 minutes ago, The Great Egg Emperor said:

#ReleaseTheNakaCut.

Why must we start another hashtag that will be spammed and annoying? I hated it with Justice League, I don't wanna see a repeat.

Please

 

[GX -The Spindash-]

As someone who played it start to finish, this game's problems couldn't have been resolved with a simple delay. There are just a handful of design decisions that are otherwise core to what this game is that anything short of an extra year couldn't resolve. I feel bad that he got pushed out of a project his name got inexorably tied to, but extra polish and squashing bugs weren't the game's biggest problems.

That said, if you told me Arzest's top priority above all else was to just get a game done and out... I've played enough of their stuff to believe that wholeheartedly.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

To be absolutely honest, as someone that played it and 100%'d it on top of that, but as GX said - it was very much the least of the game's problems. And while I don't doubt Naka at least cares about his games, I don't think it can be entirely pinned on Square either. I mean, I wouldn't put it past Square to do what they've done, and if they have indeed done so, then they're utterly horrible, but trying to act as if the game's problems is lack of polish is just...not it.

The game's flaws are fundamentally baked into the game design of the game - hell, they are problems that have existed as far back as Sonic Adventure 2 with the context-sensitive B-button playing havoc with what actions you want to commit at whatever time. He's done interviews where he's basically admitted some of the flaws of the game himself, well before the release date (IE - the fact he wanted 120 costumes in the game, despite only believing that he only could pump out 40).

And to be absolutely frank, the game doesn't even feel that unpolished to me, at least on PS5. I didn't encounter any major bugs throughout the game, and if anything, there's far too much content in the game as is, let alone it being unfinished. I also don't know how much in general to take Naka on his word here, because we do know there's some aspects of polish that he had to be fought to be included (In particular - Square's CG team had to lobby in order to make the beautiful CG cutscenes in the game, practically one of the few bright spots in it - Naka wanted in-engine ones). 

Not to say I don't believe Naka here - I completely buy that Square would do something as utterly shitty as this. But Naka is also someone who might care about his games, but is also someone who is utterly stuck in his ways and refuses to adapt or change - and it's his exact same design philosophy that completely infects most aspects of the game and makes it the boring mess that it is. And that's kind of the problem for me at the end of the day - I can buy that Arzest would shove a game out to be done, but...what difference does it make when the core of the game is so incredibly shaky and uneven? I can't imagine anyone being able to take this design that Naka has created and be able to make it work. 

At the end of the day, even if this game was spit-shined and polished to an absolute tee, it wouldn't really change anything, because all of the biggest problems with the game is just ones that have been there from the word go, problems that were created by Yuji Naka refusing to adapt to modern design sensibilities, and go beyond "simple two button gameplay".

So yeah, shitty move on Square's part if it's true, but it doesn't really change anything with Balan. It certainly doesn't remotely excuse all of the problems Naka himself did contribute to it.

[GX -The Spindash-]

9 minutes ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

as someone that played it and 100%'d it on top of that

Oof. Yeah. Sympathy pains there. I still intend to hit the 100% for Stadium's Twitch because I'm some sort of masochist, idiot, or extreme academic, but that had to have been an *experience*.

[UberHoax]

Man, this game was truly a trainwreck from the very beginning! But then again, Yuji's career has been like that since he left SEGA.

[Wraith]

Read the wording very carefully.



He wasn't ousted by higher ups, but by other people on the team, a lot of them below him. You don't' get pushed out by human resources unless you really fucked up in your interactions with others, and, well, this is hardly the first time it's happened with Naka.

I think he's also a bit naive to think that the game would have been fixed with a delay. There was a lot of fundamental things wrong with it that they needed to rework entirely. If square decided that it wasn't worth that kind of investment then I can't blame them. It was established to the public that the project was considered a risk some time ago.
 

[KHCast]

I 100% believe Naka when he described Square Enix as a company that doesn’t care about games or it’s fans. We’ve this this routinely this year especially, with that damning NFT letter dropped at the very beginning of it that very blatantly expresses contempt for those that play video games for fun, and shitty cynical live services they’ve been pumping out like Avengers, Babylons Fall, and Chocobo GP, live services they seem hellbent on continuing to push despite what absolute failures they are. You got some good games like FF7R, TWEWY, and KH every now and then thanks to the creative talent still sticking around, but from a strictly business perspective, looking at them as a corporation, they absolutely reek of the cynical atmosphere you’d usually think of when you think of an EA or Take2. 

 

So this would not surprise me if found true that he got dicked over on the games development towards the end. However, that’s towards the end, when a lot of the foundation for the game was already made, a foundation that, in itself, was a terrible mess from the start, so can’t see the game being made all the better had naka stayed on. On top of that, Naka doesn’t exactly himself have the best track record when it comes to being great to work with, he’s been detailed in the past as an asshole to be around when developing games, so you also gotta keep that in mind. This definitely reeks of a mess coming from all parties 

[azoo]

My read on the whole situation is pretty much:

1.  Square Enix saw the business proposition that getting the two known creators of Sonic the Hedgehog / NiGHTS together could make them a hit, pretty much greenlit the project and then did nothing to help; just let that game happen with no oversight or assistance. They've got this, right?
    
2. Arzest, being Arzest, quickly threw together a game and barreled it towards the finish line with little interest to keep whittling at it, because it's all they know how to do, considering their track record.

3. Naka, being Naka, was upset about this and wanted to improve the game's shallow mechanics (albeit with naivete that they could patch it up in six months as if this is gaming circa 20+ years ago), but Square Enix and Arzest insisted that they expedite towards getting it out the door without a snag in the schedule. (Granted, they should've made it not be shallow/unrefined to begin with, but yeah.)

4. Naka, again being Naka, rose hell and probably acted like a huuuuge asshole to people because of this; causing multiple people to call HR on him and have him ousted from the project half a year before scheduled release; because simply put he doesn't have the chops to pull this kinda shit on people anymore (as if he should've been able to in the first place, but I digress).
    
5. With their director asserting for QA being ousted for dickhead tendencies, Arzest just wanting their paycheck, and Square Enix staying out of this, Balan Wonderworld tumbles haplessly down a flight of stairs towards release date.

I'm more than willing to bet whatever follows this information blowout Naka is giving, it's probably gonna read like that. Fun stuff! Signature image related!

[TSS Classic Comment Bot]

Posted By: N

I feel really bad for the guy. Whether you like Balan Wonderworld or not, I don't think it was hard to see from the outside that Square Enix WERE sabotaging the game. Refusing to delay it, very clearly rushing it out before the end of the fiscal year so they could write it off taxes, doing a miserable job at the promotion and the damage control, etc.

And that's on par with how they're treating basically ALL of their properties currently, with the sole exception of their moneymaker Final Fantasy XIV.

I don't blame the guy for feeling so upset as to pursue legal action. It won't change the past, it won't change what the game is right now, but I can't blame him for feeling that emotionally charged over it.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

1 hour ago, GX Echidna said:

Oof. Yeah. Sympathy pains there. I still intend to hit the 100% for Stadium's Twitch because I'm some sort of masochist, idiot, or extreme academic, but that had to have been an *experience*.

Oh it definitely was - the game's main levels are crappy, but the hard/extra levels, and the boss trophies are massive pains in the ass, and don't even get me started on the Tims. Because for some reason, the team decided they should do the Chao Garden, but you can't do *anything* to make these creatures do what you want. So you have to rely on horrid AI to do what you need them to do, and just ugggh.

The only way this game becomes remotely fun is getting the Balan costume and using it to break the game sideways, and even that gets considerably old by the time you hit the extra stages.

19 minutes ago, azoo said:

My read on the whole situation is pretty much:

1. Square Enix saw the business proposition of letting the two known creators of Sonic the Hedgehog could make them a hit, pretty much greenlit the project and then did nothing to help; just let that game happen with no oversight

2. Arzest, being Arzest, quickly threw together a game and barreled it towards the finish line with little care to keep whittling at it

3. Naka, being Naka, was upset about this and wanted to improve the game (albeit with naivete that they could patch it up in six months like this is gaming circa 20+ years ago), but Square Enix and Arzest insisted that they expedite towards the finish line

4. Naka, again being Naka, rose hell and probably acted like a huuuuge asshole to people because of this; causing multiple people to call HR on him and have him ousted from the project half a year before scheduled release

5. With their director asserting for QA being ousted for dickhead tendencies, Arzest not giving a shit and just wanting their paycheck, and Square Enix staying out of this, Balan Wonderworld tumbles haplessly down a flight of stairs towards the finish line

I'm more than willing to bet whatever follows this information blowout Naka is giving, it's probably gonna read like that. Fun stuff!

While I agree mostly, I think you've downplayed Naka's role in it a bit - at least on the idea that Arzest barrelled it to completion - given that many of the game's issues are problems that come from Naka's core game design philosophy, he had to have had some hand in the game's creation - I very much doubt Naka was just chilling to the point it was rushed to completion, and then kicked up a stink about it. 

And again, I need to reinstate as someone who has completed this at 100% - QA and polish is the least of this game's issues. Again, it's not as if the game is some unfinished, buggy mess. Apart from the haphazard Switch port, and the seizure bug (which tbf, I am amazed it got past QA), my experience was more or less entirely bug-free, apart from a visual glitch with the Tim's badges. And as I said, if anything - the game could've done with some levels being chopped out, let alone more added, or polished.

To me, it feels like saying it's unfinished is just Naka's rational for the harsh reception it's gotten - despite the fact that the sheer majority of complaints people have with the game is how Naka himself wanted it built. It's the exact same rationale that has him claiming that all it needed was more polish - he can't accept the idea that it was his own very outdated design philosophy for 3D gaming that caused this game's downfall - so he instead chooses to blame the rest of the team and Arzest for it, claiming that they rushed it to completion and it's an unpolished mess, despite the fact that again - it's the least of the game's issues. 

To me, it just reads as an easy excuse for him to shift any of his own role with the game's issues towards Arzest and Square. He didn't want to put out a bad game, they did. He got ousted before he could make it better, it's an unpolished game, that's why it's bad. Yet, it isn't. He can't seem to get that the majority of problems people had with Balan wasn't glitches and performance (Well, mostly - the Switch port is a different story), but actual structure and game design problems that came right from him and he's once again literally *admitted* to such (with the costumes in particular). 

I'm definitely not saying Square or Arzest aren't to blame either - Square's had no shortages of shitty moves over the past few years, and Arzest are a shoddy company, but that doesn't excuse Naka's own role in how things got this bad, and this definitely reads to me like he's downplaying his role in how it happened, and shifting it over to Square and Arzest. In particular - again, I genuinely don't know how any team could've made this design philosophy work whatsoever.

[KHCast]

The excuses naka is making here certainly remind me of, not even kidding, Sonic 06 and how so many will attribute the issues with that game, to simply just glitches and bugs and being rushed out, as if nothing else in the game was the problem. It’s like he saw that, and figured he could get away with making the same excuses here.

[azoo]

 

1 hour ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

While I agree mostly, I think you've downplayed Naka's role in it a bit - at least on the idea that Arzest barrelled it to completion - given that many of the game's issues are problems that come from Naka's core game design philosophy, he had to have had some hand in the game's creation - I very much doubt Naka was just chilling to the point it was rushed to completion, and then kicked up a stink about it. 

And again, I need to reinstate as someone who has completed this at 100% - QA and polish is the least of this game's issues. Again, it's not as if the game is some unfinished, buggy mess. Apart from the haphazard Switch port, and the seizure bug (which tbf, I am amazed it got past QA), my experience was more or less entirely bug-free, apart from a visual glitch with the Tim's badges. And as I said, if anything - the game could've done with some levels being chopped out, let alone more added, or polished.

To me, it feels like saying it's unfinished is just Naka's rational for the harsh reception it's gotten - despite the fact that the sheer majority of complaints people have with the game is how Naka himself wanted it built. It's the exact same rationale that has him claiming that all it needed was more polish - he can't accept the idea that it was his own very outdated design philosophy for 3D gaming that caused this game's downfall - so he instead chooses to blame the rest of the team and Arzest for it, claiming that they rushed it to completion and it's an unpolished mess, despite the fact that again - it's the least of the game's issues. 

To me, it just reads as an easy excuse for him to shift any of his own problems with the game towards Arzest and Square. He didn't want to put out a bad game, they did. He got ousted before he could make it better, it's an unpolished game, that's why it's bad!. Yet, it isn't. He can't seem to get that the majority of problems people had with Balan wasn't glitches and performance (Well, mostly - the Switch port is a different story), but actual structure and game design problems that came right from him and he's once again literally *admitted* to such (with the costumes in particular). 

I'm definitely not saying Square or Arzest aren't to blame either - Square's had no shortages of shitty moves over the past few years, and Arzest are a shoddy company, but that doesn't excuse Naka's own role in how things got this bad, and this definitely reads to me like he's downplaying his role in how it happened, and shifting it over to Square and Arzest. In particular - again, I genuinely don't know how any team could've made this design philosophy work whatsoever.

Oh no I don't mean to downplay it; it's on him for designing a game this shallow to start with. What I mean is that the "polish" he referred to seems to be him wanting to refine shoddy game concepts over the course of development until they work, which seems to be how a lot of Sonic games (especially during his tenure) were made lmao.

Edited the post to clarify that a bit.

[TSS Classic Comment Bot]

Posted By: Metal

I sympathize with the man, but at the same time, I don’t think a few more months would have made the game better. This thing needed a radical rework to actually be anything worth talking about.

Nonetheless, good on him for taking on Squeenix. They’ve been a real dogshit company lately imo. I hope he wins just based on principle.

[TSS Classic Comment Bot]

Posted By: Greatsong1

I like to hear S-E’s side on this someday (even though I know they wouldn’t be honest on everything that went on), but I’m not really surprised, considering the way they are nowadays. That said, I don’t think Naka is entirely blameless here either. Both Naka and S-E dropped the ball at some point to create the mess that became Balan.

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

This is pretty much a case where everyone was in the wrong at some point.

Naka is lucky that Square do have precedent for bum-rushing out mediocre products or he wouldn't have gotten as much a leg to stand on as he has now.

[Mangoaxe5]

Good riddance. Yuji Naka is nothing more than a xenophobia asshole. He probably deserved to be fired.

[VO.SUPER]

I definitely feel everyone is at fault, but when Naka was being ousted by so many people, INCLUDING Naoto Oshima, you can't help but wonder where he stepped out of line, considering his history.

[TSS Classic Comment Bot]

Posted By: DK Fan

Clearly, they pulled a Sonic ’06 all because they fired him, and he’s pretty mad.

[TSS Classic Comment Bot]

Posted By: Megasis

Not surprising. IMO, Balan Wonderworld has great potential as a franchise, but even before this revelation I always felt like Square-Enix just didn’t like having Yuji Naka around and didn’t want Balan Wonderworld to succeed (either because of personal/creative differences or because Balan didn’t align with their existing game portfolio). I just hope that Yuji Naka is able to retain the rights to the Balan IP as part of this lawsuit so he can take the franchise elsewhere and hopefully make a better sequel.

[Zoomzeta]

Suffice to say, this overall feels like a case of everyone being at fault in some shape or form, and not wanting to take responsibility.

Edited April 29, 2022 by Zoomzeta

[Scritch the Cat]

On 4/28/2022 at 1:01 PM, Vampfox said:

Good riddance. Yuji Naka is nothing more than a xenophobia asshole. He probably deserved to be fired.

Let’s not sell him too short.  At one point in his life, Naka was instrumental in making Sonic what it was.  He programmed something that had never really been done in games before, and for what this is worth, Naka has been rather supportive of fans who have attempted to recreate his work in their own projects.

But that doesn’t mean I doubt that Naka is a xenophobic asshole.  If nothing else, he has little patience for how non-Japanese employees think, but if this game is anything to go by, he’s not too good at working with Japanese employees either.  
 

I get the feeling he’s the sort of man who likes to perpetuate his own echo-chamber and would rather not hire anyone who isn’t a yes-man.  This is all the more problematic because it seems like Naka’s tastes in gaming are rather unique.

But incidentally, does anyone here have a link to proof that the one-button gameplay in BW was actually Naka’s idea?  It feels like this is conjecture based on his creation of Sonic and so far I have not been provided proof of this.

[Shade Vortex]

The one button thing has literally been Naka's trademark philosophy. I really doubt it came from anyone else, honestly.

It's literally been his philosophy since Sonic 1.

The most relevant quote:
Naka: When you think of fast characters, rabbits are a natural match. We’d conceptualized it that far. But more than his image, I placed a higher emphasis on the controls themselves, and had decided the game would use just one button for his controls. Having only one button, I thought that button should probably be used for an attack.

Let's also not forget the game Let's Tap, which literally was based around the same concept- one button controls. And Ivy the Kiwi, which uses a very simple draw-the-path control scheme.

There's giving Naka the benefit of the doubt and then there's ignoring his entire philosophy on game design.

[Tornado]

Does that mean Ohshima is off the Christmas card list like Yasuhara was by 1995?

On 4/28/2022 at 10:43 AM, Polkadi~☆ said:

As an aside, Naka shares that the ring's life-saving feature for Sonic the Hedgehog was a last-minute addition to the game, as proof that he deeply cares about working on his games until the very end of it's development.

I don't understand the context in which he's bringing this up supposed bombshell. How late is "last minute"? While we know that Naka was busy tinkering with the game even after the US release (leading to all of the improvements the Japanese version had); we have the holy grail Sonic 1 CES(ish) prototype now and that was half a year prior to release and that had rings work the same way as far as I can tell.

[Roger_van_der_weide]

I suppose it's possible the rings system was a temporary inbetween state of programming, SonicTeam did inplant a proper health system later on, and then 2 weeks before release they decided to go back to the classic Rings setup again. All conjector of course.
Guess nobody but Sonic Team will know, unless we have beta dumps of Sonic 1 for each month of it's development.

Like how I suppose he could have decided to give Box Fox a seperate jump button 2 weeks before Balan's release, and fix 0.001% of it's problems.
We'll never know.
That is, if adding a seperate jump button suddenly wouldn't cause a domino effect of other programming pillars to fall over one by one. Coding can be wacky sometimes.