{"id":97462,"date":"2026-11-04T08:44:27","date_gmt":"2026-11-04T00:44:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=97462"},"modified":"2026-11-04T08:44:27","modified_gmt":"2026-11-04T00:44:27","slug":"the-wendys-jrpg-is-a-searing-anti-capitalist-screed-about-humans-making-real-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=97462","title":{"rendered":"The Wendy\u2019s JRPG Is a Searing Anti-Capitalist Screed About Humans Making Real Art"},"content":{"rendered":"


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The resistance against the AI art apocalypse is being televised in a marketing campaign about burgers.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/section>\n

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Over the past year, Wendy\u2019s \u2014 yes, the same Wendy\u2019s known for its square burgers, thick milkshakes, and unlikely stewardship of a mid-tier donut chain \u2014 has made waves through a series of unconventional creative partnerships. Amid slumps in sales and attention, Wendy\u2019s has turned to popular artistic mediums, like music and video games, to try and reverse course.<\/p>\n

The buzziest Wendy\u2019s-affiliated project was the post-hardcore EP Songs to Listen to in a Wendy\u2019s Parking Lot<\/em>, which featured six tracks written by musicians from bands with legit emo cred, like Anberlin, Blessthefall, Silverstein, and Winona Fighter. Look, I am as sorry as you are to hand anything to Big Corporate, but all six tracks are straight bangers. (Just listen to \u201cShe Said She Didn\u2019t Want Fries\u201d and try to tell me you didn\u2019t have that on repeat in a Wendy\u2019s parking lot in 2008.) On the heels of that album release is the classic JRPG riff WendyQuest: Legend of the Four Corner Stones<\/em>. Like Songs to Listen to<\/em>, it boasts a similar unmistakable authenticity.<\/p>\n

\u201cWendy\u2019s should not have a game that\u2019s this<\/em> good,\u201d Stephane Cotichini, founder and game director at 81Monkeys, the studio behind WendyQuest<\/em>, told Polygon in a video call. (For the record, 81Monkeys was not named after the viral 2025 news story about meth dealers attempting to smuggle 81 monkeys across the Thailand-Cambodia border. Pure coincidence. \u201cSomebody forwarded me the article the day it broke and I was, like, \u2018Seriously? How?!\u2019\u201d Cotichini said. \u201cOf all the numbers of monkeys, it had to be our number?\u201d)<\/p>\n

WendyQuest<\/em> started as many projects in the indie gaming world do: funding. Or, rather, a lack thereof.<\/p>\n

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\"Wendy\n <\/picture>Image: 81Monkeys<\/small><\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

For the past several years, 81Monkeys has been working on an ambitious, systems-heavy pixel art RPG called World of Anterra<\/em>. Though World of Anterra<\/em> was successfully funded through Kickstarter in 2022, the scope and ambition of the game continued to swell, and the team found itself rapidly running out of runway. But as any indie or even mid-sized game developer will tell you, funding in the games industry has all but evaporated since the early 2020s gold rush. Things were looking \u201cdire,\u201d according to Cotichini, who said he had post-Kickstarter funding conversations with 60 prospects that went nowhere. Then an email landed in his inbox through the studio\u2019s website form.<\/p>\n

\u201cNormally, I would have ignored the email, but because he said they’re fans of the game, I was like, \u2018Oh, I’ll hear them out.\u2019 So I get on a call and I find out it was Wendy’s. And when I found out what the game was, I instantly knew we were the right team,\u201d Cotichini said.<\/p>\n

Within a week, 81Monkeys signed the deal for WendyQuest<\/em>, allowing the studio to continue working on World of Anterra<\/em>. 81Monkeys split its team 50\/50 to work on both games.<\/p>\n

The Wendy\u2019s people apparently had the general picture and the overarching creative vision for WendyQuest<\/em>, but the team at 81Monkeys still had its work cut out for it in turning it into a viable video game. They revised the battle system away from purely turn-based combat to a more active one. This echoes one of the studio\u2019s core principles: Nostalgia has to feel contemporary, otherwise it\u2019s just going to feel dated. Cotichini also acknowledged that while the original script had strong ideas (the Wendy\u2019s marketing team is known for its witty social media posts), it didn\u2019t quite click for a video game, where the writing isn\u2019t just about telling a narrative but also about making a world feel real and lived-in.<\/p>\n

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\"MechBerg\n <\/picture>Image: 81Monkeys<\/small><\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

Ultimately, writers at 81Monkeys rewrote \u201c99%\u201d of the script, according to Cotichini. Everything still had to fly by corporate for brand-safety reasons, but there are some unmistakable nods to the competition: The logo for WendyQuest<\/em>\u2019s villain, Dr. Mechborg, is a giant golden \u201cM.\u201d \u201cSure, sure, serving billions is great,\u201d MechBorg says in his introductory villain proselytizing that\u2019s mandatory for most every JRPG. \u201cBut it\u2019s time I<\/em> make billions.\u201d He then directs his army to \u201ccut corners.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve played a little bit of WendyQuest<\/em>, and to quote the kids, it slaps. Beyond its immediate 16-bit-era vibes, the combat system is the main draw. The system is built around a gauge that rapidly fills up at the bottom of the screen. You have to press the attack button as close to full as possible; tap too early and you\u2019ll deal less damage or miss your attack, but if you get it right, you\u2019ll deal maximum damage. It\u2019s a nice touch that keeps WendyQuest<\/em> from feeling like yet another Final Fantasy clone. The game is pretty funny, too; its jokes-per-minute ratio is on par with TV shows like Veep<\/em> or 30 Rock<\/em>. Cotichini is right: Wendy\u2019s should not<\/em> have a game that\u2019s this good.<\/p>\n

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\"Wendy\n <\/picture>Image: 81Monkeys<\/small><\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cInitially, they weren’t gonna credit us,\u201d Cotichini said. \u201cI mean, that’s the nature of this type of agreement, right? We’re just a silent partner, we’ll make this game, and then they launch it.\u201d<\/p>\n

But he pushed back. In late 2023, when the project initially began development, AI was out in the wild, though not yet the industry-demolishing force it is today. AI grows more unpopular every year, but gaming audiences in particular react with visceral repudiation; even a trailer that features AI-generated assets can prompt a major company to reverse on a dime and issue a public apology.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou want people to know that it was 100% human-made by an actual indie studio,\u201d Cotichini said.<\/p>\n

That ethos is reflected in a line of bolded text front and center on the Steam pages for both WendyQuest<\/em> and World of Anterra<\/em>: \u201c100% human made.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"Wendy\n <\/picture>Image: 81Monkeys<\/small><\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cPart of why World of Anterra<\/em> is as good as it is, and I know the world hasn’t played it yet, neither have you, but it’s because of the time it took to bring it to life. It’s because of the struggle it took. All of that comes across in the product that ends up being created, and I think that’s essential. So the more AI is used to make a game, the worse the game becomes,\u201d Cotichini said. \u201cBecause the more you speed up that process, the less opportunity you have to improve it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Earlier in World of Anterra<\/em>\u2019s development, 81Monkeys dabbled with AI for project management and efficiency, but found that despite promises peddled by the likes of Sam Altman and Dario Amodei, the tools actually increased costs and decreased productivity. They also found that generative AI offered solutions for problems that already had solutions. Cotichini floated the idea of using AI to help speed up the creation of NPCs, for instance. \u201cThey were, like, \u2018Why don\u2019t we just make a script to do that?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

For WendyQuest<\/em>, according to Cotichini, the marketing team at Wendy\u2019s actively pushed 81Monkeys to steer clear of AI tools and workflows.<\/p>\n

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\"Wendy\n <\/picture>Image: 81Monkeys<\/small><\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

No one could claim that WendyQuest<\/em> is as in-depth as, say, Final Fantasy Resonance<\/em> or other big-budget RPGs capitalizing on the nostalgia trend du jour. But there\u2019s a real richness \u2014 and more importantly, a real authenticity \u2014 to its design. This is why Songs to Listen to in a Wendy\u2019s Parking Lot<\/em> ended up resonating so much with retired scene kids. These were real songs written by legit artists who we actually listened to in Wendy\u2019s parking lots 20 years ago. In an era where McDonald\u2019s is using AI to create nightmare fever dream ads and implement dynamic pricing algorithms, Wendy\u2019s investing instead in the arts stands out.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that creative work in general has gotten watered down over the last couple decades,\u201d Cotichini said. \u201cAnd the reason is because it became more influenced and controlled by business interest and less by the creative. Now, I actually see a swing the other way.\u201d<\/p>\n

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That might sound like an oxymoron coming from the mouth of the guy who\u2019s making a game for a company with a $2.2 billion market cap. But really, why should it? Is the Wendy\u2019s logo being on this thing any different than Sony\u2019s or Microsoft\u2019s or, hell, even Nintendo\u2019s? (None of gaming\u2019s three biggest companies started out as video game publishers.) Yes, it\u2019s marketing, and yes, it is transparently transactional. But the games industry is facing down its fifth year of a dry spell for traditional funding models. That\u2019s not changing any time soon. If a Fortune 500 company was debating how to allocate 0.5% of its 2027 marketing budget, would you rather it be spent on a month of YouTube preroll or on a year of overhead for a budding independent studio?<\/p>\n

\u201cThe industry’s really suffering right now. Things have never looked more dire,\u201d Cotichini said. \u201cThis is the thing that I hope will come of WendyQuest<\/em>. Wendy\u2019s spends some millions of dollars in marketing every year. WendyQuest<\/em> costs a fraction of that. So many brands out there do the same thing. My hope is that when people see WendyQuest<\/em> \u2014 and that, actually, if a studio cares about a branded game, it can be a really good game \u2014 that more brands seek partnerships like we made with Wendy’s. I think that could become an alternate funding source for so many really talented indies in the industry.\u201d<\/p>\n