Kind of funny how last decade's superstars are now washed up jokes: CliffyB, Randy Pitchford, Jonathan Blow, Phil Fish, etc.
In a more normal timeline, we'd be seeing their best work now. I guess that's what happens when you try to be a social media personality.
This often happens.
- Sakaguchi -> hero during PS1 days, fell from grace in PS2 era by nearly bankrupting Square
- Rareware (Seavor, Doak, Batteridge and all) -> 'Pixar of games' in N64 era, tripped and fell in GameCube/Xbox era
- Itagaki -> super hero in late Xbox / early Xbox 360 days, fucked up never got back on his feet
- Yuji Naka -> weeee ferrari's and sonic, oops gotta go fast to unemployment
- Spangenberg -> visionary in N64 days, founded Retro Studios to enjoy hot tub parties on Nintendo's dime
- Mark Pacini -> director of Metroid Prime trilogy, escorted out by security, never lead on anything big again
- Mikami -> creative force of Capcom throughout GameCube days, studio shuttered and replaced by Inafune
- Inafune -> famously declared Japan game development dead and outsourced everything overseas, aborted Mega Man, pushed out
- Amy Hennig -> leading big productions at Naughty Dog, overruled and fired, went to build a Star Wars game for EA, game cancelled
- Patrice Désilets -> created Assassin's Creed, pushed out by Ubi, went to work for THQ, Ubi bought his studio to shut him down, hasn't released shit in 10 years
It seems that the only girls and dudes that bounce back are usually the Nintendo directors/producers because they stick working there even if they release nothing for years or have a shit game under their belt.
The guy that made Super Mario Sunshine went on to create Super Mario Galaxy and ended up leading Super Mario Oddessey and all other Switch software development.
That sort of thing only seems to happen at Nintendo. Konno is still making Mario Kart, despite being responsible for the bungling of the 3DS launch.
Aonuma endlessly delayed all big Zelda productions and still oversees the series.
Cliffy is a dumb motherfucker. He should've never left Epic. He could've been the public face of Fortnite even if he had nothing to do with its development and had just grind on to make Gears 4 - 8.
Had Nintendo not tapped Sakurai on the shoulder to build their Smash games every 5 years he'd be going towards irrelevance as well.
How Kojima will do post MGS and Konami remains to be seen when Death Stranding launches.
