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Update (2024-04-09 11:40 JST): After looking into topic further, we have confirmed that different endings in Dragon’s Dogma 2 display different end credits, and that over 1,000 staff members can be seen credited depending on ending.
This is a lot more than the initially reported figure.
Dragon’s Dogma 2’s credits suggest a shockingly small number of development staff (Updated) - AUTOMATON WEST
Capcom's Dragon's Dogma 2 had a development team dramatically smaller than their other AAA titles, credits suggest.
automaton-media.com
Dragon's Dogma 2 with 392 people:
And some other titles by Capcom: Resident Evil 4 had 1 516 people, SF6 1847 people and even Devil May Cry 5, the latest game by Itsuno, had 1252 employees working on the game. Those numbers really help to make things in perspective and while not perfect, Dragon's Dogma 2 is a great achievement in my opinion.
The dev started in the middle of covid (so only 4 years of development time including 3 while COVID was there, I don't know if we realize the shitshow). On that you had those MTX that killed the hype at the release of the game and it's almost like Capcom wanted this game to fail.
Thanks to this Reddit post for pointing this out. I'm almost 90 hours into it and haven't finished the game yet. I'm taking my time to see everything I can because exploring is really fun and the sandbox elements are working very well. Unfortunately, we feel that this was much more ambitious than the team could achieve. Let's hope Capcom will support the game, I would love an expansion like Dark Arisen.
Later on the Reddit post, someone counted the credit and it's even more telling:
Total 383:
Itsuno: 1
Producers: 3
Directors: 8
Writers: 5
English Voice Cast: 36
Japanese Voice Cast: 37
game designers: 19
Level Designers: 4
Programmers: 71
Network & Server Engineers: 5
Concept Artists: 29
Animators: 15
Environment Artists: 17
UI Designers: 12
VFX Artists: 18
Gimmick & Lighting Artists: 11
Technical Artists: 11
Rigging Artists: 11
Localization: 11
Vendor & Project Managers: 16
Sound Designers: 14
Composers & Sound Programmers/Engineers/Designers: 14
Production Managers: 5
Cinematics and Facial Animators: 11
Motion Capture Actors: 13
73 people just for the voice cast.
So after reading a few comments I feel like this needs to be brought in. If anyone wants more context, here is a great summary taken from this comment:
I've been following Dragon's Dogma's development and financial history pretty avidly from square 1, and this is fairly accurate. Bit of a history rant/textwall, for posterity and the newcomers:
Capcom half-assed DD1's budget, especially on marketing, basically expecting the game to sell itself because they thought it would follow the Skyrim hype-train. It was designed specifically for the western market, with little heed to domestic sales being given. If memory serves, they either spent as little as physically possible on marketing, or literally none at all.
Zero dollars. For the most important part of selling a game. Yeah.
For the record the only way I found out about DD1 was seeing a copy on a GameStop shelf and trying the demo on a complete whim.
What's even more hilarious is that in spite of this, Capcom's projected sales number was 10 million fucking units sold across a few years. "Out of touch" doesn't even begin to describe it.
In spite of this colossal misestimation of how a functional business is run, DD1 does better than expected, after reality set in. Sells better than any game that never got so much as a banner ad has any right to, purely through a cult fanbase and good word-of-mouth.
This allows Dark Arisen to release to much acclaim, and an extremely well-polished PC port sells astoundingly well, paving the way to next-gen releases & proving to Capcom that this game does have a market, and the "gacha-lite" approach they took with Rift Crystals/Bitterblack Gear puts dollar-signs in their eyes. This is the beginning of the end.
A couple years later, Capcom produces Dragon's Dogma Online, exclusively for their domestic market (yeah that market that the series was never designed for, catered to, or able to secure strong sales in) and it's a trainwreck.
Content is spread thin. The game is visually and mechanically dated, using DD1's engine with most of the assets ripped, meaning that graphics, gameplay, animation and such are all vanilla - this does not compete well with better-aged and emerging MMOs on the market. Also, if you thought vocations having their identity narrowed down in DD2 was bad, DDON would have caused a fucking aneurism for how poorly they handled the exact same thing.
Gacha, pay-to-win, a mobile game-esque "energy" mechanic where you have to pay IRL money for health potions, with extreme limitations on getting your own in-game (and you WILL take a shitload of damage). EDIT: I may have been misinformed about this aspect - as u/jiitit mentions below, my personal experiences with this aspect of the game may have been inaccurate. I'd also like to clarify that I was trying to refer to health pot-throttling as fulfilling the same function as "energy" mechanics - that is, gating a vital resource for continuation of the game - but phrased it poorly. As mentioned, however, other users felt that this was not an issue, so I'm happy to assume my experience was not representative of the whole. I'll leave it as strikethrough text as I have no way to verify, but take my statement on this one with a grain of salt.
Worst of all, they completely stonewalled the market where the game had a chance to thrive, region locking it and IP-blocking the game, necessitating a Japanese VPN that makes playing an action game absolute hell due to lag.
I doubt this was just fear of commercial failure, but rather I suspect either:
A) They were afraid they wouldn't be able to sell the gacha/p2w mechanics to a western audience (this was probably true at the time, as the culture was much more hypercritical of money-gouging in video games) or possibly
B) Someone with enough clout at Capcom was dealing with some insecurities and insisted on trying to secure domestic success with the IP as a matter of personal pride. No, I am not joking - you would be shocked just how many cash-cow eastern game releases are shot dead behind the barn, purely because of nationalistic egocentrism and poor business acumen. Pride is the murderer of industry.
Still, the support of the Japanese market and more rabidly devoted western fans manages to garner enough success to get ongoing support and some expansion content for the game, but ultimately not enough to secure its lifeline - and 4 years later, at the close of 2019, DDON shuts down for good.
In all likelihood, the game's failure is likely blamed on developer scapegoats instead of the pants-on-head morons staffing Capcom's publishing sector, because fuck working for Japanese publishers (or game publishers in general, really, if you can help it).
All this history lesson leading up to now with Dragon's Dogma 2.
I fully believe the budgeting and time allotment for DD2 was influenced heavily by Capcom's poor financing, marketing, and publishing decisions made with the IP over the last decade, in conjunction with an inability for executives and upper management to take personal accountability, instead foisting that burden on the developers. Chances are, most of the community's gripes with DD2 stem from choices made by legitimately incompetent publishers, coasting on the successes of talented developers while throttling their budget and devtime, with the devs themselves legally having their mouths duct-taped shut.
Remember - these devs need that budget money to afford groceries, and in all likelihood many of them are probably crunched to fuck while still getting underpaid for the sake of passion and a love for the IPs that can legally only be developed under Capcom, while being promised bonuses to sell the points Capcom wants to be the selling points.
Itsuno had to literally threaten to walk on the company he'd been with for years just to make DMC5 and DD2 happen at all. I don't doubt he's busted his ass off for his team and his passions, and I can't imagine how much shit Capcom's devteams have had to shovel while trying to deal with the company's circus act. I'm not going to simp for the guy because I don't know him, but I do fully believe in the notion of "holding the right people accountable", and Capcom's lack of personal regard or financial acumen have been constant since the beginning.
Frankly, I'm not confident Capcom is going to be any smarter about this considering how chronically they fuck this up, no matter how well a DD game performs. I honestly think they could pull Skyrim sales numbers and still somehow trip on their own shadow.
We used to call em Crapcom for a reason - they were considered as bad as EA, Ubisoft, Activision, etc. in their time, and when they had their little "come to Jesus moment" PR campaign around Monster Hunter World's release, trying to clean up their image, I knew full well they wouldn't be able to keep their hands outta the cookie jar for long. And here we are.
Capcom half-assed DD1's budget, especially on marketing, basically expecting the game to sell itself because they thought it would follow the Skyrim hype-train. It was designed specifically for the western market, with little heed to domestic sales being given. If memory serves, they either spent as little as physically possible on marketing, or literally none at all.
Zero dollars. For the most important part of selling a game. Yeah.
For the record the only way I found out about DD1 was seeing a copy on a GameStop shelf and trying the demo on a complete whim.
What's even more hilarious is that in spite of this, Capcom's projected sales number was 10 million fucking units sold across a few years. "Out of touch" doesn't even begin to describe it.
In spite of this colossal misestimation of how a functional business is run, DD1 does better than expected, after reality set in. Sells better than any game that never got so much as a banner ad has any right to, purely through a cult fanbase and good word-of-mouth.
This allows Dark Arisen to release to much acclaim, and an extremely well-polished PC port sells astoundingly well, paving the way to next-gen releases & proving to Capcom that this game does have a market, and the "gacha-lite" approach they took with Rift Crystals/Bitterblack Gear puts dollar-signs in their eyes. This is the beginning of the end.
A couple years later, Capcom produces Dragon's Dogma Online, exclusively for their domestic market (yeah that market that the series was never designed for, catered to, or able to secure strong sales in) and it's a trainwreck.
Content is spread thin. The game is visually and mechanically dated, using DD1's engine with most of the assets ripped, meaning that graphics, gameplay, animation and such are all vanilla - this does not compete well with better-aged and emerging MMOs on the market. Also, if you thought vocations having their identity narrowed down in DD2 was bad, DDON would have caused a fucking aneurism for how poorly they handled the exact same thing.
Gacha, pay-to-win, a mobile game-esque "energy" mechanic where you have to pay IRL money for health potions, with extreme limitations on getting your own in-game (and you WILL take a shitload of damage). EDIT: I may have been misinformed about this aspect - as u/jiitit mentions below, my personal experiences with this aspect of the game may have been inaccurate. I'd also like to clarify that I was trying to refer to health pot-throttling as fulfilling the same function as "energy" mechanics - that is, gating a vital resource for continuation of the game - but phrased it poorly. As mentioned, however, other users felt that this was not an issue, so I'm happy to assume my experience was not representative of the whole. I'll leave it as strikethrough text as I have no way to verify, but take my statement on this one with a grain of salt.
Worst of all, they completely stonewalled the market where the game had a chance to thrive, region locking it and IP-blocking the game, necessitating a Japanese VPN that makes playing an action game absolute hell due to lag.
I doubt this was just fear of commercial failure, but rather I suspect either:
A) They were afraid they wouldn't be able to sell the gacha/p2w mechanics to a western audience (this was probably true at the time, as the culture was much more hypercritical of money-gouging in video games) or possibly
B) Someone with enough clout at Capcom was dealing with some insecurities and insisted on trying to secure domestic success with the IP as a matter of personal pride. No, I am not joking - you would be shocked just how many cash-cow eastern game releases are shot dead behind the barn, purely because of nationalistic egocentrism and poor business acumen. Pride is the murderer of industry.
Still, the support of the Japanese market and more rabidly devoted western fans manages to garner enough success to get ongoing support and some expansion content for the game, but ultimately not enough to secure its lifeline - and 4 years later, at the close of 2019, DDON shuts down for good.
In all likelihood, the game's failure is likely blamed on developer scapegoats instead of the pants-on-head morons staffing Capcom's publishing sector, because fuck working for Japanese publishers (or game publishers in general, really, if you can help it).
All this history lesson leading up to now with Dragon's Dogma 2.
I fully believe the budgeting and time allotment for DD2 was influenced heavily by Capcom's poor financing, marketing, and publishing decisions made with the IP over the last decade, in conjunction with an inability for executives and upper management to take personal accountability, instead foisting that burden on the developers. Chances are, most of the community's gripes with DD2 stem from choices made by legitimately incompetent publishers, coasting on the successes of talented developers while throttling their budget and devtime, with the devs themselves legally having their mouths duct-taped shut.
Remember - these devs need that budget money to afford groceries, and in all likelihood many of them are probably crunched to fuck while still getting underpaid for the sake of passion and a love for the IPs that can legally only be developed under Capcom, while being promised bonuses to sell the points Capcom wants to be the selling points.
Itsuno had to literally threaten to walk on the company he'd been with for years just to make DMC5 and DD2 happen at all. I don't doubt he's busted his ass off for his team and his passions, and I can't imagine how much shit Capcom's devteams have had to shovel while trying to deal with the company's circus act. I'm not going to simp for the guy because I don't know him, but I do fully believe in the notion of "holding the right people accountable", and Capcom's lack of personal regard or financial acumen have been constant since the beginning.
Frankly, I'm not confident Capcom is going to be any smarter about this considering how chronically they fuck this up, no matter how well a DD game performs. I honestly think they could pull Skyrim sales numbers and still somehow trip on their own shadow.
We used to call em Crapcom for a reason - they were considered as bad as EA, Ubisoft, Activision, etc. in their time, and when they had their little "come to Jesus moment" PR campaign around Monster Hunter World's release, trying to clean up their image, I knew full well they wouldn't be able to keep their hands outta the cookie jar for long. And here we are.
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