Luminous Productions is one of the studios at Square Enix aiming to create new Triple-A IPs. The studio, in the past, was helmed by Hajime Tabata, working onFinal Fantasy XVand its Luminous Engine. You know the story,Tabata left Square Enix in November 2018and Luminous Productions got anew leader in December 2018.This new head, Takeshi Aramaki, announced with a message back then that the studio is currently working on a brand new title.
Famitsu just publishedan interviewwith two developers of Luminous Productions: Saya Nakahara, a Project Manager, and Yuuki Matsuzawa, a Lead Concept Artist. The interview mostly focuses on the studio as a whole and their working conditions.
Luminous Productions has a 09:30-18:00 work schedule all employees need to stick too, in order to avoid crunching and sacrificing their private lives. Judging from the interview, this seems to function well. Saya Nakahara mentioned she joined Luminous Productions a year ago and the studio has great communication. She most notably mentioned everyone’s opinion is taken into account, regardless of hierarchy or how long they’ve been working in the studio. Personally speaking, while I’d like to avoid generalizations, seniority being prized above anything else seems like a pretty big issue in Japan overall, so I’m glad to hear otherwise for once.
Moreover, Nakahara and Matsuzawa were asked by Famitsu about the development status of this “Triple-A title created with a worldwide perspective”. It seems like the game won’t be ready anytime soon, but Luminous Productions is hard at work on it:
Yuuki Matsuzawa:“There’s not much we can tell you for now (laughs). We decided on certain elements of the game, but others elements are still under consideration. People like me who are at the top of the development process are very busy. It’s a brand new IP, so some things about it are different compared to what we’ve done until now. Meaning it’s a project difficult to work on and takes a lot of time.”
Luminous Productions is regularlypushing out interviewswith its staff about graphics engines and stuff in games. They’re all in English so I highly recommend reading them if you hold an interest in these parts of game development.
We’ll tell you more about Luminous Productions' Triple-A game as soon as we learn more. 2019 might be ending but DualShockers is still going forward, and I’ll be here to bring you more Japanese games news. Of course, with Unneeded Opinions.
