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Clover Studios Closed
Clover Studios, makers of such titles as Okami, God Hand, and Viewtiful Joe, has been closed by Capcom Japan for financial reasons. Gamespot reports on the exact wording of the sad announcement: "Clover Studio Co., Ltd. has met the goal of developing unique and creative original home video game software, however, in view of promoting a business strategy that concentrates management resources on a selected business to enhance the efficiency of the development power of the entire Capcom group, the dissolution of Clover Studios Co., Ltd. has been raised and passed at a Board of Directors' meeting."
It was "viewtiful" while it lasted.
Thank you, I'm here all week.
New and innovative games might not make money. Quickly back to cheap remakes that we know the hoards will but without a second thought.
You mad
It's the sound of fresh, original games dying. Yeah, they gave us Viewtiful Joe, Okami and Godhand. All critically acclaimed games. Let's shut them down!
...but Clover was overrated. Okami is brilliant, but Viewtiful Joe was overhyped to the point of pain, and its sequels were mediocre to foul. Now God Hand is getting 70%. This is a studio that will be remembered for one game.
I suppose we can commence comparing them to Origin, Square-Enix, Sierra, VALVe, Maxis, iD, and Nintendo now.
This isn't that huge of a deal, all of the employees of Clover were rolled back into Capcom and most of the lead developers still have contracts with Capcom in one way or another.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
WOW, what a great game. Ok, it just takes the Zelda formula and places it in a classic Japanese environment, but there hasn't been another game recently that has captivated me to this extend. Let's hope Capcom takes the talent and invests it into more games as good as that.
But from experience I'd say it is most likely that Inaba-san was fed up with Capcom messing with his projects, and Capcom is not going to make anything worthwhile with the talent and properties - just have a look at the Viewtiful Joe sequels. Sigh.
"New and innovative games might not make money. Quickly back to cheap remakes that we know the hoards will but without a second thought."
So how many here bought "Beyond good and evil","chronicles of riddick: escape from butcher bay","psychonauts", or even "Bad Mojo"? Thought so. You're as much responsable for the demise of clover studios as the "hoards" you criticise.
...in view of promoting a business strategy that concentrates management resources on a selected business to enhance the efficiency of the development power of the entire Capcom group, the dissolution of Clover Studios Co., Ltd. has been raised and passed at a Board of Directors' meeting.
Much more likely they're into the concept of viral TQC. They have a game plan to become virally-distributed and have come to know that it is better to productize intra-cyber-mega-strategically than to orchestrate extensibly. With this acquisition, they'll revolutionize the power of back-end, seamless supply-chains to architect.
Mega Man and Street Fighter sequels.
Don't get me wrong. Capcom makes the occasional brilliant game, but they have been far more miss than hit over the last decade.
Yeah, damn capcom for closing a studio after 3 unprofitable games in a row. I personally would give them another try but it's a business and it's in for profit.
Hmmm... Pie...
In other words: "We're giving ourselves more wiggle room in the budget for our corporate hookers. Thanks for playing."
I keed, I keed...
If you quit Okami at 12 hours in, I'd be willing to bet that you haven't even hit the first major plot twist, gotten more than a couple of the weapons or dojo skills, and you only have a handful of brush techniques.
Don't make the mistake of thinking that Okami is similar to the Zelda games in length. It's a long game -- it takes most people between 45 to 55 hours to finish it. The battle system gets a lot more depth to it as you begin to acquire brush techniques that are actually useful in combat, and while it is overall fairly easy, some of the optional fights are damn hard.
I'm in the middle of Okami right now, and it's the freshed feeling game I've seen in a LONG time. And yes, it is because of the graphics. Okami goes against the grain of this trend toward absolute realism, and actually chooses to take a very artistic direction instead. For that reason, it's not just about the graphics, but the philosophy behind the game, "abstraction not only has a place in video games, it can be downright breathtaking". My problem with the absolute realism movement is that it has no creativity behind it... all it is is pixel pushing, not to say it's a simple deal, but it's a concrete goal that can be objectively evaluated, and not neccarilly artisically driven. This is an oversimplification, of course, but I see it in all aspects of game design these days.
Now, Okami is obviously incredibly Wind Waker inspired, but I don't think that's a bad thing at all. All creative endevours are built on the achievements of others. Okami earns it's legitimacy in doing something few games have done, it has become an interactive work of art. I haven't felt that in a game since I played Myst back in the day, and even then, the graphical style was much less abstracted.
Interestly, it seems that Okami is doing VERY well, the video game press has been raiving about it endlessly, and it seems to be selling well. I was just thinking, the other day, "I wonder what this 'Clover Studios' is going to do next?" In some ways, I had more hope for their future works than any other studio at the moment, so this is a big letdown.
We've done the comic book thing to death, and it's just WAY too obvious a direction to take (since a large percentage of japanese games are done by Anime artists, and many american games are done by comic artists), and I'm sick of it. We've done disney (oh god, have we done disney), and then we've done contemporary blockbuster cinema (TO DEATH), it is high time for games to break free of their "pop art" constraints. I'm not saying that Okami is quite there, but it's a damn good start.
Sure, Okami is working off of pre-existing visual styles (namely Japanese water-color along with a good touch of old-school cartoon styling), but the fact that it's the first to be able to put them into this kind of use, and into an interactive framework, is quite an achievement. Can you imagine a whole game done in the style of cubism? We could explore impressionism a bit... and then maybe, just maybe, venture into uncharted visual territory? These are the questions that have been spinning in my head for the last few weeks.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
And I just played Okami for 4 hours straight! This MUST be Friday the 13th. *cry*
Insert Credit mentions that Clover talent may have been breaking off from Capcom to do their own thing (with the closing down story being an attempt to save face). Just an interesting angle to note when thinking about this topic.