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Yuji Naka is very unhappy with how things went concerning Balan Wonderworld. As we’ve covered in the past, Naka ended up taking Square Enix to court over the matter, stating that he was removed as the game’s director 6 months before launch. Naka says that developer Arzest submitted a ‘final’ build of the game that wasn’t final at all, and was riddled with known bugs. Naka also claimed that one of the game’s songs was going to be reworked for promotional purposes, rather than using the track straight from the game.

It’s clear Naka is still miffed about the situation, as he caused a bit of a stir on Twitter with a recent series of tweets. To celebrate the 26th anniversary of NiGHTS, Naka shared a picture on Twitter from the event where NiGHTS was first announced. The thing is, Naka censored Naoto Ohshima in the picture. Ohshima worked with Naka on Sonic the Hedgehog, and the two reunited for Balan Wonderworld.

After fans noticed the removal of Ohshima and questioned Naka about it, he shared the following message on Twitter.

“How would you feel if you were suddenly removed from a game that you had worked hard on for over two years, and when you went to court, you found out that they had been talking about me behind my back in court documents and that is why I was removed from the game?

Game creators create games with care for the people who play them. Don’t you think that people and companies that cannot take care of games are no good? Instead of talking behind my back, don’t you think you should tell them directly before removing them?

What would you do if you were to be ill for a long time and unable to do anything because of it? And how would you feel if you were the director of an unfinished game and it was heavily criticized?”

[Yuji Naka]

The only thing that’s 100% clear here is that this is a very messy situation that has Naka incredibly upset. I don’t know that taking to Twitter to vent was the best way of handling things, but I’m guessing Naka wasn’t in the best state of mind when he did it. Hopefully this whole matter can be solved amicably at some point, but I’d imagine Naka will need a lot more time before he gets to that point.

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Comments (3)

sligeach_eire

1+ y ago

I can see why Yuji Naka would be annoyed. It was his project, and he was removed from it. Balan Wonderworld was clearly not ready for release. He probably had a vision of the game in his head, which didn't materialize. And yet he's the person that gets the blame in public for it, even though he was removed 6 months prior.


I dunno. It's also been brought to light that he's an unpleasant, petty, egotistical control freak who excels at creating hostile working environments. Frankly, I wouldn't want him on my team either. And scribbling one of your co-workers out of a picture, regardless of what they did to you, is extremely childish.

I'm sure he doesn't deserve all the blame, but I'd wager he deserves a good chunk of it. I mean, dude's pretty much churned out nothing but mediocrity since Shadow the Hedgehog.

Edited 1 time

hawk

1+ y ago

Unloading like this on Twitter doesn't make anybody look good.