What happened to the 8 years of data and market analysis?

[Grit]

Isn't that exactly my point? The game was released in a completely unfinished state. Meaning the beta testing started early and didn't last long enough.. These forums should have also been available during the beta. Everything was rushed. And Tanaka may have had no say in it. How would we know?

[Chezen]

Isn't that exactly my point? The game was released in a completely unfinished state. Meaning the beta testing started early and didn't last long enough.. These forums should have also been available during the beta. Everything was rushed. And Tanaka may have had no say in it. How would we know?

To tell you the truth... rushing it out sounds like a corporate thing, because it really didn't make sense. The people who design the game don't neccesarily get to call the shots.

If Tanaka had to take the fall when it really wasn't his fault, I feel bad for him.

This is of course, pure speculation. I haven't read or seen anything that gives any indication to what happened other than appologies.

[AlexiaKidd]

Isn't that exactly my point? The game was released in a completely unfinished state. Meaning the beta testing started early and didn't last long enough.. These forums should have also been available during the beta. Everything was rushed. And Tanaka may have had no say in it. How would we know?

They actually had forums for the Alpha and Beta testing and believe me they were filled with feedback and it fell on deaf ears. Everyone could see the game was in no state for release, myself and others thought they must have some kind of huge patch ready for release to fix everything as we couldn't believe they would release in such a state but it just wasn't the case.

[Abriael]

They actually had forums for the Alpha and Beta testing and believe me they were filled with feedback and it fell on deaf ears.

Feedback in beta forums is one of the hardest things to take advantage of for a game developer, mind you, the same goes with feedback in any forum, this one included. You should pretty much be able to notice that feedback doesn't go in only one direction. For each thread that asks for the game to be Final Warcraft XIV there's one that asks for it to be Final Fantasy XI-2, for each person that offers an idea, there's another that offers the opposite. Might seem impossible to the ones that never seen the beta forums, but they were even quite more chaotic than this, with many people utterly refusing to use the feedback threads and just opening hundreds of posts independently because they thought that THEIR idea was the best, and deserved it's own thread. Sounds familiar?

Betas are normally very useful to squash bugs and similar code-level issues, but for real feedback, you don't see many developers following much else than their vision. If they take some idea from them, it's because it already fits their vision, but I wouldn't ever defoine beta forums a valid decisional tool. There's simply too much chaos, and people's opinions are just too different.

So you're saying Tanaka was a figure head for his whole life...which makes him even worse then a failure.

He was the top guy, if he didn't call the shot, and things didn't run through his desk, and he was a "pencil pusher" then he definitely deserved to get fired for that instead.

That's what it means by "It happened on his watch". You're not suppose to sleep, even if you inherited(which he didn't)

And if anyone actually watch the collector's ed DVD "making of" He definitely should have been fired. He pretty much gives a nod of the head to all the controversies that were in the polls.

The truism of "On his watch" is profound since he was the the video game producer. The supposed "super star" position of the gaming world. And they get fame and fortune well because of it.

In fact it maybe more damnation to Tanaka's name because one of the game producer duties is usually the liaison of the development team and the higher management/shareholders. Unless it was unusually different for FF14, then that means Tanaka was the Author Anderson of Enron.

The stake is pretty big because Tanaka's position is that important.

We can call a lot of stupidity that happened in FF14, but if the head-hancho let it happen, it's how it rolls.

Quite obviously you don't have a clear idea of what a producer does. A producer is not the "head honcho", he's not the "top guy". A producer is simply a link between the development team and the executive level of a company. There are variations from company to company and depending on market, but that's the juice of the issue.
It's for sure a position of responsibility, because a producer has to try and mediate between the executives and the developers. But a producer has almost zero final decisional power. If he goes to the executives and tells them "the development team isn't ready" and the executives tells him "them make them ready" he responds "sir, yes, sir!" and walks out of the room to bring the bad news to the devs.

A producer does not decide release dates, he does not decide external deals that may influence release dates (branding, distribution, printing, marketing and so forth). He's pretty much a supervisor, and a supervisor is not the boss.

I find it funny that so many people rile on tanaka, when he wasn't even the game director (that was Komoto), and so didn't even take the majority of the gameplay decisions concerning the game.

By the way, tanaka wasn't a producer "his whole life", before he has been a coder, a designer, a battle director and a game director of many games. Including absolute masterpieces like Seiken Densetsu 3 and Xenogears. I would say that "failure" doesn't really describe him.
Mind you, producers that come from that background tend to be the best, as opposed to the ones that come from a marketing/sales background.

Again, you don't really know how things went. So you're basically pointing fingers at random.

[kukurumei]

Quite obviously you don't have a clear idea of what a producer does. A producer is not the "head honcho", he's not the "top guy". A producer is simply a link between the development team and the executive level of a company. There are variations from company to company and depending on market, but that's the juice of the issue.
It's for sure a position of responsibility, but a producer has almost zero final decisional power. If he goes to the executives and tells them "the development team isn't ready" and the executive team tells him "them make them ready" he responds "sir, yes, sir!" and walks out of the room.

A producer does not decide release dates, he does not decide external deals that may influence release dates (branding, distribution, printing, marketing and so forth). He's pretty much a supervisor, and a supervisor is not the boss.

Don't try to fuzz it by saying the "you don't know" line.

Responsibilities

An internal producer is heavily involved in the development of, usually, a single game. Responsibilities for this position vary from company to company, but in general, the person in this position has the following duties:
Negotiating contracts, including licensing deals
Acting as a liaison between the development staff and the upper stakeholders (publisher or executive staff)
Developing and maintaining schedules and budgets
Overseeing creative (art and design) and technical development (game programming) of the game
Ensuring timely delivery of deliverables (such as milestones)
Scheduling timely quality assurance (testing)
Arranging for beta testing and focus groups, if applicable
Arranging for localization
In short, the internal producer is ultimately responsible for timely delivery and final quality of the game.
For small games, the producer may interact directly with the programming and creative staff. For larger games, the producer will seek the assistance of the lead programmer, art lead, game designer and testing lead. While it is customary for the producer to meet with the entire development staff from time to time, for larger games, they will only meet with the leads on a regular basis to keep updated on the development status.
For most games, the producer does not have a large role but does have some influence on the development of the game design. While not a game designer, the producer has to weave the wishes of the publisher or upper management into the design. They usually seek the assistance of the game designer in this effort. So the final game design is a result the effort of the designer and some influence of the producer.
In general, the producer is not the "boss" of the people on the game development team, but the "boss" of the game. So while a programmer may answer to a programming director, where matters of the game are involved, they answer to the producer. Producers may issue reprimands or issue accolades, but usually the fate of the developer's employment is not in the hands of the producer. So while they may suggest termination or promotions of certain employees, the producer normally cannot fire or promote team members single-handedly.

[Chezen]

While not a game designer, the producer has to weave the wishes of the publisher or upper management into the design.

I think this is the key point I was trying to make. I don't believe Tanaka called the shots for the game being released. He had people to answer to.