What does "generation shift" mean Fujito?

[Vonima2]

Sorry, double post.

[Pixela]

Not replacing someone implies that they are just going to allow the people to coast into retirement one after the other, and after Matsui leaves it's all down hill. What a wonderful company we give our money to.

[Pixela]

We do? List them.

Masaru Taniguchi
Iori Watanabe
Yasushi Yamazaki
Takashi Hisag
Akihiko Matsui
Yoji Fujito

One is missing for some reason.

Fujito: Simply put, two issues always stand in the way. One is the issue of “human resources.” Creating content requires staff who know how things work and how to make it. Currently, we have seven members including myself, all of whom are planners. There is one member who can act as an engineer, but essentially, the team is only able to implement movement with scripts for planning

For comparison, Everquest (which looks laughably archaic) has 9 designers 5 programmers, 11 artists, 1 sound engineer. It is free to play and sell currency, and has far less players than 11 and certainly far less paying players.

[Pixela]

In the anni cast he suggested he was foremost focused on creating an environment where FFXI could be preserved for a long while to come. The suggestion I believe is that the game would not see any major updates or course changes going forward. They are going into time capsule mode.

As much as I want it to be like other posters here, the tone was certainly not one of passing the helm off to a new director for them to open a new chapter FFXI development.

Hope I am wrong but unlikely so.

The strange part is, why would they say "generation shift" though if that is the case.

[Alhanelem]

Source?
"One is missing for some reason."
OH NOES. THEY MUST BE GONE AND WE MUST BE DOWN A MAN oh wait you didn't actually say that? o.O

why would they say "generation shift"

Because the current leader is passing his role down to a younger generation. That's what a generation shift is.
There's also the possibility that statement wasn't translated well but I don't think that's the case.

[Pixela]

Matsui is the most important person on the team, if he leaves and they don't say they took someone new on that heavily implies they didn't take anyone else on and instead just put extra work onto Fujito.

Considering they are already understaffed that means less content.

[Alhanelem]

It means nothing.

Look man, if you want to live in gloom and doom and just prophisize the end of FFXI, be my guest. But all you have is a doomsday hypothesis that is not based in fact. You are in "let's panic" mode for no good reason.

These people play critical roles, you can't just transfer the #2 man to #1 without putting someone in their place. It's a critical role so it will be filled. Otherwise they would be saying "FFXI is coming to an end on X date." rather then talking about "generation shifts."

[Rinuko]

Lowkey feels like people panicking in this thread, never worked in a company before.

[Zenion]

Lowkey feels like people panicking in this thread, never worked in a company before.

To be fair, in most North American companies it certainly feels like "let a senior staff member retire, and replace them by shoving their duties on everyone below them" is Plan A. Saves a ton on payroll. Forget the long-term consequences, it's all about better numbers this quarter.

[Pixela]

A problem they have I suppose is that ff11 is more popular in the west than in Japan (same applies to ff14), so it's probably harder to get someone to join the team from a standpoint of it being a passion project and less of a career thing.

However we will see.