Square Enix, it's time to come clean about your plans for the future

[Raven2014]

I'd imagine they have a rough outline of where they want to go in the next 10 years. But I doubt it's more then "Expansion 6 sometime in 2026, Expansion 7 sometime in 2028" and so on. I'd be amazed if they have actual storyboards and in depth plans for those expansions. At the same time, plans that far out are extremely subjective to change.

The point is, the admission of "no plan survive contact with enemy" doesn't mean you shouldn't have a plan. Like I said, the long term goal is there to set a focus and maintain coherent. And speaking from experience, working in a large organization it it an absolutely nesseccity. We had hit a few rough patches where we didn't know what was our long term goal is and it was a terrified feeling. Even when I got a raised, even when I have no reason to doubt my job security, when you're working a flux you would constantly question "what am I doing? what gonna happen next? What we will do after this project? Where this company will be in a few years?!?" It's only when the leadership set out a long term goal that you have that peace of mind. Even if after 10 years you don't end up where you want to be, still at the moment you have an idea where you will want to be.


And 10 years may sound like A LOT, but if you think about the game developing cycle, it's not that much. Mst triple A game - and by that I don't mean the FPS that pump out yearly, but stuffs like Elderscrolls from Bethesa, GTA from Rock start ...etc... look at the gap between their flag ship tittles, then safely assume their next tittle should already be in the pre-production cycle even before the current tittle is shipped out. The time line is not that much when you take the whole pipeline into account. Like right now with 7.0 is probably less then a year away, the reproduction and planning phase for 8.0 should already been at least half done. After all, you need to know already what you want to have in 8.0 before you can write how 7.0 gonna end. And if you want 10.0 (assuming that's where they gonna end the story arch) to have a good impact, the team need to at least have a vision so they can start building up the suspend and story momentum now.

Again, 8 to 10 years is not exactly a large time span in term of strategic planning. That doesn't mean it set in stone or gospel, but that kind of goal has to exist. In fact, if Yoshi doesn't think that far ahead, he wouldn't be deserved of his job.