Stardew Valley’s success had more to do with smart marketing than anything. The game has the exact same formula as Story of Seasons and Rune Factory, which are very corporate-run series, just not at AAA scale. The difference was Eric Barone cultivating word-of-mouth marketing via influencers and online communities to reintroduce the genre to the Western market (along with lucking into capitalizing on what was then a more nascent pixel art indie gaming trend).

Undertale’s a good example, though (I’ll still note this particular example is a huge spoiler). I did the thing and it was a very fresh idea, and one of the best hooks I’ve seen in a video game. Thing is though, I doubt even 10% took that route to see it. That’s something the game has in common with Baldur’s Gate 3, which is full of those low-percentage moments. AAA devs don’t like investing a lot of resources into things most people aren’t going to see.

Or buying a lot of MTX in few games.

I know gaming enthusiasts don’t want to hear it, but a huge chunk of the market is people attached to one or two live service games.

I don’t think he’s particularly strident here or anything in Japanese, but the headline here would have been better off sticking with the machine translated “nothing has changed” in the article.

There isn’t any optimism in Matsuno’s words here. I would have added “as always” to “economic disparity remains the same” and “again” to his comments about armed conflicts. He sounds tired of the cycle.