Post by Nester the Lark on Sept 23, 2020 9:29:29 GMT -5
I wanted to put this here to archive it, because it's actually a bit hard to find resources on the history of Falcom... And now I know why.
Falcom's music is credited to "Sound Team jdk." But who exactly are they? Here is a project that aims to identify exactly who these individuals are, as well as exactly what music tracks they composed.
Why the secrecy? Well, if you look at the History tab, it includes some history of Falcom, itself, including an infamous mass staff exodus from 1989. This was the result of Falcom's founder and former president, Masayuki Kato, insisting that an in-development side-scrolling action-RPG be re-branded as an Ys game (Ys III: Wanderers from Ys) strictly for brand recognition purposes. This upset much of the staff so much that all but a few of them quit the company. It was a very public fiasco that led to Kato instating a company policy that staff would no longer be individually credited so as to prevent talented members from being recognized over the company name, itself. That practice continues at Falcom, to this day.
Obviously, this was not unusual among Japanese game developers in the '80s and '90s, with staff at companies like Capcom, Konami, SNK, Sega, etc. (even Nintendo) often being credited with pseudonyms. In fact, even Atari had a similar policy in its early days that programmers were not to take credit for the games they created. (This is what led to members of its own staff leaving and founding Activision.)
Still, I find it off-putting. This isn't something that should be happening in modern game development.
Falcom's music is credited to "Sound Team jdk." But who exactly are they? Here is a project that aims to identify exactly who these individuals are, as well as exactly what music tracks they composed.
Why the secrecy? Well, if you look at the History tab, it includes some history of Falcom, itself, including an infamous mass staff exodus from 1989. This was the result of Falcom's founder and former president, Masayuki Kato, insisting that an in-development side-scrolling action-RPG be re-branded as an Ys game (Ys III: Wanderers from Ys) strictly for brand recognition purposes. This upset much of the staff so much that all but a few of them quit the company. It was a very public fiasco that led to Kato instating a company policy that staff would no longer be individually credited so as to prevent talented members from being recognized over the company name, itself. That practice continues at Falcom, to this day.
Obviously, this was not unusual among Japanese game developers in the '80s and '90s, with staff at companies like Capcom, Konami, SNK, Sega, etc. (even Nintendo) often being credited with pseudonyms. In fact, even Atari had a similar policy in its early days that programmers were not to take credit for the games they created. (This is what led to members of its own staff leaving and founding Activision.)
Still, I find it off-putting. This isn't something that should be happening in modern game development.
