Kupo Chronicle #2 - Squaring The Tone
Throwing spaghetti at the walls, and moments of title screen clarity
Welcome to the Kupo Chronicle, the premium edition of the Wark Digest newsletter, where we explore the Final Fantasy universe in long-form and drill down into unique moments from the series’ history. I’m Chris, aka Hoogathy, and in this installment we’ll be looking at Square’s past to reassess its future in the industry’s uncertain landscape, and getting to know one another a little better.
This week’s newsletter is 3034 words, a 14-minute read.
Choppy Waters
It’s a weird time in the game industry. On one hand, we’ve been seeing some truly amazing products launched over the last few years, while at the same time, it seems we get news almost daily about a studio laying off scores of employees. By the end of January, 5600 jobs had been lost across the gaming industry—over the halfway point to the total number of layoffs in all of 2023 (about 10500)—and that number has only continued to climb since. Those who remain are likely to be facing overlong hours, crunch, and other unpleasantries as they toil on the latest AAA-game.
There are laws in place that prevent similar widespread terminations in Japanese workplaces, and thus Japanese developers like Square Enix have largely avoided making these sorts of drastic cuts. (Instead they gave away their North American subsidiaries like Crystal Dynamics and Eidos, and they got axed by Embracer Group executives instead…but I digress.)
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