Development Credits

So about an hour before this post I had the urge to research the actual individuals who have crafted this game to what it is. I was very curious to see how many people came and left between 2003 and now. It's not completely unheard of for a development crew of an MMO to go through different changes over time in order to help relieve people who have been there since preproduction or bring in fresh new concepts to stay relevant. I wanted to see how FFXI crew held up and where some individuals might have left or came in from FFXIV or other games.

I went over to my book case full of retail boxes and jewel cases and pulled out the instruction manuals for Final Fantasy XI, Chains of Promathia, Treasures of Aht Urhgan and Wings of the Goddess. I thumbed through each of them carefully expecting a section at the end with several pages filled with funny Japanese names and obligatory special thanks. To my complete astonishment there wasn't a single credit to anybody who had any involvement in the development of this game. Not a single stakeholder. Not even to the cover art or the company that printed the manuals.

I thought in an effort to reduce cost the credits were taken from print and put into the game so I logged in really quick to check. At the main menu I was unable to find a credits button and after waiting a minute or two during the zone fly through there were no rolling credits. I then entered the game state to check the different options in the start menu. Nothing. I logged out and fumbled around play online viewer to see if it was there. After going through each menu in viewer and finding nothing I finally made my way to the Final Fantasy XI page.

Bam! Right there underneath that big Play button we know and love is a section called "Developers' Room". When you click this there are several interesting subsections including the census, update history dating back to the north american release and finally the staff list. After clicking this link I was brought to a painfully slow presentation of about 150 individuals ranging from the almighty avert-your-undeserving-eyes Directors and Producers to the woefully under appreciated QA. Although this was what I was looking for it was only a part of it. There is no indication of when these people were credited. This dawned on me a second time when I went back and clicked on the Vana'diel Census and found it dated for April, 2008, a hearty 3 years ago. The people credited in the staff list were simply listed by department and not by expansion or any other important milestone.

To me this was extremely alarming since unlike many of the other games on my shelf Final Fantasy XI is more of a living product or a service that has continued from before the game was even released. Those of you who have ever dedicated yourself to a project lasting a long time know how the project eventually impacts you physically and mentally and then how that in turn impacts the project. I used to worry about Final Fantasy XI like all of us since MMOs are still relatively young by video game standards (ignoring MUDs and other types developed for much smaller user bases years and years ago) and because an aging game/community somehow spells doom for the game(despite constant reassurance from other old games like everquest and runescape). Now I worry more since I know nothing about the way this staff has changed over the last decade and I really can't help but imagine a team of cynical and insular people who have been stuck with us since the beginning.

So now down to the point of this excessively long post. What's it going to look like in the future for FFXI and FFXIV? Yes, I have seen the roadmap for 2012 enough times now that I simply saved the image to my pictures folder in case I need to reference it again in the future. What I mean and what we really need to see are future goals for the game, development philosophies and methodologies. These are essential because it seems every day there's a flood of new posts here about the PS2, seemingly vindictive or intentionally frustrating content and cries for attention from CRs or GMs. This may be 8 years of pent up frustration of not having a forum or place to vent, or the cultural differences between the Japanese and their differing communities. But I also believe it's because the parts of SE important to us are only half getting the idea of progression and current generation game development. We know they are trying though, the twitter feed, move to microtransaction content and these forums are proof of that. In my opinion the next step is more transparency so development can help us help them.