Interesting Interview with Yoshinoro Ono

Read here. Saw it on Neogaf and thought us Capcom fans would especially be interested.

Capcom are some real jerks. Jeez.

edited 11th Jun '12 2:39:33 PM by Vertigo_High

Oh, Capcom.......

The upper management really needs to have new blood, I swear.

This right here, just...

"Whoever told you that is lying," he retorts, his smile shifting down gears to a rare frown. "The situation is the complete opposite. Nobody told me to take a rest. When I returned to work, Capcom didn't even acknowledge that I had been in hospital. There was no change in my schedule. I was at home for an entire week before the doctors allowed me to return to work. When I returned to my desk there was a ticket to Rome waiting for me. There's no mercy. Everyone in the company says: 'Ono-san we've been so worried about you.' Then they hand me a timetable and it's completely filled with things to do."

That's Crapcom for you.

edited 11th Jun '12 2:50:01 PM by Vertigo_High

I say that some corporate bloodletting is in order.

Seems like the number of genuinely good decisions Capcom has made in the last five years or so could be counted on one hand...(for the record I'm thinking of SF 4 and Mega Man 9 & 10)

Wow that sure was interesting!

Poor Ono.

Isn't that sort of thing commonplace in Japanese corporate culture? I believe they are still the top nation for suicides, aren't they?

No, it's not. Japanese companies and their upper executives can be harsh at times, but even then they try to keep their employees and show them empathy when it's needed. The reason why is because most Japanese folks tend to stick to one company or particular job field for life once they enter it.

But this? No, Capcom is just being flat-out unreasonable.

Bad, negatively portraying residents of a fictional African town in Resident Evil 5. Good, negatively portraying residents of a fictional US mall in Dead Rising.

Bad, More Street Fighter II and III. Good, Finally a Street Fighter sequel, no more Sequel Stagnation...bad, more stagnation from that sequel, but hey, at least its not III again, or worse, II.

Good, Mega Man Virtual console. Bad? Something about a canceled something involving Megaman. Downgrading Star Force on a more powerful console also seems strange, people seemed to like ZX though.

Continuing a Clover series in Okamiden. Bad, rebooting Devil May Cry with Ninja Theory.

Bad: letting Platinum games give Mad World and Bayonetta to Sega and Project P 100 to Nintendo. Good:getting Asuras Wrath?

Good, getting to Marvel vs Capcom 3. Bad, releasing Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 five months later.

Bad: Releasing Street Fighter IV, again! Some Down loadable content issue with Street Fighter and Tekken. Crossing over with Tekken instead of the much more demanded Mortal Kombat. Good:Crossing Ace Attorney over with Professor Layton.

Bad, bullying employees instead of releasing/transferring them professionally(really not our business), overworking a key staff member(also not our business). Good: announcing new I Ps internet fans always gush over rather than treat with careful optimism(new title doesn't mean new gameplay, nor does new mean good but who am I to judge?)

They seem to be going par the course to me. If they've been demystified in the eyes of fans then that's good, because creator worship isn't healthy. At least not when that creator is tangible, fallible and based in a nation in a state of crisis as half of it drifts across the pacific ocean. But I think people could be on them a little too hard, they don't have the foundations of Nintendo or the Revenue of Sony after all.

It's like Capcom is doing everything in its power to make us hate it

Human Rights is everybody's business, man, and if a company is mistreating its employees then by all means we have the right to know. So nay to those two you claim aren't our business.

He has a point. Although Capcom's business standards would be considered reprehensible to the layperson, you have to realize that Ono is a general manager of sorts. And general managers are often on-call 24/7, expected to have complete devotion to their project, and go along with whatever task is given, even here in the states. It's not a pretty fact of big businesses, but it's the truth.

And to be honest, do you really have any control over whether or not they will stop? Boycotting them will only cause them to hide their dirt better as well as fire the complainers, whilist replacing them with their eager underlings. The only way they'll feel the damage is if their products begin to suffer due to a lack of talent.

EDIT: Come to think of it, perhaps that's what Capcom is really trying to do. A lot of companies these days don't want to give out huge salaries/benefits to their "Star" performers due to the incurred costs and the sometimes expensive projects they want to create. Therefore they try to make life uncomfortable for them or devalue the importance of their position to the point where they're powerless or annoying, thus causing them to quit. So maybe their ultimate strategy is to create cheaper projects and small-scale games while using big-name titles like Resident Evil or Megaman as a cash safety net, whilist avoiding more ambitious stuff like Shadows of the Damned.

edited 12th Jun '12 10:24:27 AM by SgtRicko

As long as people are buying, they won't care one lick about talent. Seriously, upper management is usually all about cash. Nothing else. The only way we could control these things would be to completely kill the industry, and reboot it once people get back into it. KEEP doing it every time this kind of things becomes rampant. I don't ever see that happening, nor should it. We should still be made aware of the price for our entertainment, don't you think? Makes it much more meaningful and significant to us if we know what kind of effort/sacrifice went into it.

True. But like you said: a new videogame crash would only do more damage to the industry than help it.

Mmhmm, but as I said, the reason to know about the problems in the industry is so we can better appreciate the effort put into making games. Boycot and civil disobedience rarely work the way people want them, and can only speed up things that are already on the way.