Return of the Game Development Ninjas!
Posted by
Zonk
on Friday April 20, @11:19AM
from the ninja-vanish dept.
from the ninja-vanish dept.
simoniker writes "After being exposed in 2006 as 'the biggest game developer you've never heard of', with over 1,100 employees at the time, Executives from Tose have been speaking to Gamasutra about their recently 'blown cover'. The interview explores how this has affected their business working on 'stealth' game development for hundreds of titles (recently including Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime), in which the publisher takes the credit for the end product. They seem a little conflicted about it, to say the least, as Tose's Masa Agarida notes: 'Actually, I have tried to expose us more in the US than in Japan, but right now, everybody's getting to know us more than before. Right now I'm thinking of going back behind the scenes again.'"
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The Biggest Game Dev You've Never Heard Of 85 comments
simoniker writes "Japan-based game developer Tose has 1,000 employees, and has created 1,100 game SKUs since 1979 (including Final Fantasy GBA versions, though they can't mention it in this interview!), but they're basically unknown, because they're 'game development ninjas', and 'refuse to put [their] names on the game'. Odd stuff."
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Tose - Gaming's Little Secret 12 comments
1up has a piece up looking at the fine folks at Tose, the secret development ninjas behind a number of popular games. This group takes contracts from other developers, and purposefully keeps its name off of the final product. They're the developers of many high profile games, and very few gamers have ever heard of them. If they do sound familiar, it may be because we had a discussion about these folks back in May of last year. 1up's article covers some of the same ground as Gamasutra's, dealing with Tose's unique relationship with developers and their unusually secretive nature. They do, however, dig up the names of some of the shops Tose has worked with, including outfits like Nintendo, Capcom, Namco, Sony, Square Enix, Electronic Arts and THQ. They also point out a few games they know to be Tose's handiwork; the GBA ports of the Final Fantasy titles, Super Princess Peach, and Metal Gear Solid Ghost Babel all bear the company's mark. The veil is cracking, then, but for the most part this group stands as a unique company in the games industry: a development house with little interest in press attention.
Return of the Game Development Ninjas!
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To clarify...
(Score:3, Insightful)(http://1-4-4.home.comcast.net/ | Last Journal: Wednesday March 01, @04:16PM)
To be clear - Tose, not Gamasutra, is the subject of this sentence, the game developer with 1100 employees.
Re:To clarify...
(Score:5, Funny)simoniker
(Score:1, Redundant)Ninjas huh?
(Score:2)(http://badenoughdudes.com/)
Real ultimate power
(Score:5, Funny)(http://www.christopherculver.com/)
My name is Robert and I can't stop thinking about game development ninjas. These guys are cool; and by cool, I mean totally sweet.
Facts:
Kinda makes you wonder...
(Score:5, Funny)A secret?
(Score:1, Interesting)Enough of outsourcing is done at levels that we have no control over in large corporations, but with entertainment products we do have full control over whether we buy US-made products or buy outsources products from US companies. I encourage everyone to investigate the games you buy and be aware of where the money is going. There is NO shortage of extremely capable US companies looking for software publishing deals. We have extremely capable companies lining up for deals and being turned away. When I read that publishers in the US are making secret deals for outsourcing, I call foul.