Master workers, all
Based oncredit listingsat videogame documentation site MobyGames,actionRPGDragon’s Dogma 2may have had around a quarter of the headcount compared to other AAA Capcom releases in recent years.
As is the way of Xitter, however, therealcontext was actually somewhat buried in the replies, gifted a paltry amount of likes by the few users who valued the bigger picture over a good story. User PorkPonchoadvised againstusing “the credits as a decent source of how many people actually worked on it. A lot of Japanese studios (by extension of Japanese businesses in general) often do not disclose partnerships with third party contractors.”
They went on todetail their ownexperience working with Japanese divisions within companies, where “we happily advertise the partnership…unless that product is also sold in Japan or by our Japanese entity. [In which case] it’s a massive no no to disclose the third party development work, unless it’s something contractually agreed [edited for clarity.]”
Add on top of this the game industry’s decisively shitty practise of not crediting everyone that worked on a game through its lifecycle, alongside DD2’s five year development time, and a clearer picture of just why this number could be so comparatively small starts to emerge.
It’s also worth noting that MobyGames' source their figures in a manner similar to Wikipedia, crowdsourcing then verifying information before publishing it. The site itselfwas bought by Ataria few years back. You can view their standardshere. “Credits entails the people and companies listed in the credits section of the game - manual/in-game, beginning of the game andif verified and approved by an adminuncredited people who were left out,” they say.
Still, everything considered, it’s not unreasonable to think that DD2 - a sequel to a popular but relatively cultish game from twelve years ago - may have seen some hesitation from Capcom to throw its full weight behind it, especially compared to the likes of aResident Evil 4.
“The game’s an anecdote generator, where all of its AI and combat and day-night-cycle systems coalesce into bouts of chaos that’ll test your improvisation skills but never your patience,” wrote Edders inour review. I concur, having foundthe space in betweenits sometimes mundane quests the best part of the game. Nice going, then, to however many were involved in its creation.
