Collected Works: Naoki Yoshida
How a career as a known fixer led to the biggest rescue job of all
How the director’s past asa as a known fixer led to the biggeest biggest reescue rescue job of all
FAR EAST OF EDEN III
Developer Red Company Publisher Hudson Soft Format PC-FX Release Unreleased
BOMBERMAN 64: THE SECOND ATTACK
Developer Hudson Soft Publisher Vatical Entertainment Format N64 Release 1997
DRAGON QUEST: MONSTER BATTLE ROAD
Developer Rocket Studio, Eighting Publisher Square Enix Format Taito Type X2 Release 2007
FINAL FANTASY XIV: A REALM REBORN
Developer/publisher Square Enix Format PC, PS3, PS4 Release 2013
FINAL FANTASY XIV: HEAVENSWARD
Developer/publisher Square Enix Format PC, PS3, PS4 Release 2015
Naoki Yoshida is the architect of the Japanese game industry’s greatest comeback story since the original Final Fantasy game. Having cut his teeth at Square Enix on the Dragon Quest series, he led efforts to rescue the catastrophic Final Fantasy XIV, eventually transforming it into an MMO on par with the mighty World Of Warcraft. A scenario writer at heart, Yoshida crafted a reputation for adaptability and tenacity in the 1990s, though he has seen his fair share of disappointments. Here, he reflects on the many frustrations and surprises of a career spent steering or salvaging troubled projects.
FAR EAST OF EDEN III Developer Red Company Publisher Hudson Soft Format PC-FX Release Unreleased
The first game I worked on was never released. I started my career at Hudson Soft in 1996. The company is famous for the Far East Of Eden series – when I joined, they were in the middle of development for the third one. The scenario had been completed, and the first thing I was asked to do was to take a massive amount of documents, all the text for the scenario, read everything through, then come back the next day to give everyone feedback. I think I was tasked to read through the main scenario because when I joined the company, I said that I wanted to be a scenario writer – it was a test to see what ideas I could come up with.
The text was massive, but I read it through overnight and made a report combining how I interpreted the theme of the scenario and the way it could be improved. I submitted the next day, and the director was astonished by it. So they asked me to handle all the NPC text from that day onwards, and that was really the inception of my career. I worked on this for just shy of a year. The game was 70 per cent complete. But suddenly there was an announcement that we had to shut down the project. There were several reasons – the first was that development had taken a lot of time. Even though the team was working really hard on the title, and it was close to complete, it took too long to get to that point. Another problem was that Far East Of Eden was for the PC-FX from NEC, and NEC suddenly made the announcement that they would stop selling
PC-FX. So there was no way for us to create this game – Far East Of Eden was actually regarded as the key title for PC-FX.
NEC had helped with the cost of development, so Hudson Soft didn’t really need to spend their money, but when they heard this news from NEC they could no longer continue. While the PC-FX market was small, if they had completed the game
they could have put it on other consoles – the Sega Saturn was out, and there was other hardware on the way as well. Completing the title and releasing on another console was actually possible. But for the management of Hudson Soft, this was NEC breaking their promise and they made us give up. The management were so angry about NEC’s decision. The game itself was really well made, actually, and it would have been a success. It was a wasted opportunity. In 2005, Far East Of Eden III was released on the PS2, but this was a completely different version of the game. The storyline was completely different. It’s kind of complicated and intricate.
BOMBERMAN 64: THE SECOND ATTACK Developer Hudson Soft Publisher Vatical Entertainment Format N64 Release 1997
There was actually another Bomberman title before The Second Attack. I worked on this for a little bit, and then I was about to work on a completely new title. However, Hudson Soft had lots of other projects happening at the same time, and they were not in a good position. The team tried to restructure to make sure that the project moved forward, but the game wasn’t released in the end. And then the other team was working on Bomberman 64: The Second Attack, and they were also struggling. So my superior approached me to help out.
Of course my wish was to be a scenario writer, and that hadn’t changed – I still wanted to be a scenario writer. But at the time ‘scenario writer’ didn’t really exist as a distinct job. Everybody was a jack-of-alltrades, basically. So what I did was learn from other developers, get all the knowledge and improve myself. The first thing I thought was really important was to gain trust, especially from senior people, then step up and cement my position. So a senior staff member might say, ‘Okay, this project is not in a good position, but you can work on it because you’re so trustworthy, your intuition is really great’. So I decided to take any jobs that I thought would be beneficial, including those tasks that people didn’t really like and would try to avoid doing. I thought that all the experience would shape me, so I was kind of picking up chores. That helped a lot in getting me to where I am right now. Also I was able to write and program – I had a different skillset, very versatile and very convenient for everyone. So I was asked by so many people to do so many different things. I wasn’t a scenario writer per se, but I became a director for different projects, overseeing everything for a number of titles.
To go back to Bomberman 64: The Second Attack – this was another disaster during development. The chief programmer approached me to help out, because the project wasn’t going well. I never actually worked with any of the people in the team. But the programmer approached me because he’d heard lots of complimentary things about me – ‘Yoshida is a very trustworthy person, you can probably ask him if he wants to help get the project back on track’. So that’s how I joined the Second Attack team as a director. There was a bunch of people in the team already and I was the youngest member, everybody else had much more experience. It was fun to work in that team.
“I WAS ABLE TO WRITE AND PROGRAM – I HAD A DIFFERENT SKILLSET, VERY VERSATILE”
DRAGON QUEST: MONSTER BATTLE ROAD Developer Rocket Studio, Eighting Publisher Square Enix Format Taito Type X2 Release 2007
Just after Bomberman 64: The Second Attack was released, I was working on a game called Dungeon Explorer. This was planned for PS2 as an online title, and I was prototyping the game at the time. And one day, the general manager for Hudson Soft approached the team and said, ‘ You have to stop development.’ Again! I wanted to know the reason for the discontinuation of the project. And the general manager mentioned some of the reasons, but they were so immature they didn’t make sense to me. The reason this general manager gave – I remember clearly what he said, was that, ‘If you keep making this game, it will be a great game of course. But what I want is not a great game. What I want is something foolish that deceives people.’ And the general manager told me to keep working on Bomberman the next day.
I didn’t like that! That’s not to say that I didn’t want to work on Bomberman –I loved the title. What I didn’t like was the general manager’s reasoning: we needed to just create toys, like playthings for a child. I thought that was kind of arrogant, and not genuine. I felt that we should create games for gamers, not just to make money. I felt that I couldn’t keep working for this company, because this company had this person with that kind of mindset – it kind of went against my principles. So I decided on the spot to leave.
It’s kind of a side story, but at the time I decided to leave, it was the custom at Hudson Soft to ask the board members for money to throw a party or something like that for leavers. One of my seniors approached management to ask for money for a party, and what management said was: ‘ You should have generated more money for us, because we don’t have enough to pay for your partying and drinking.’ And what they gave them instead was a ticket for the casinos in Las Vegas. It’s worth maybe one or two dollars. We had the party anyway, because this senior was so angry about how indecent, how irresponsible, the management’s attitude was. If they had said ‘We don’t want to support your leaving do’, that would have been okay, but to just offer this piece of paper, which didn’t really have any meaning – it was so arrogant, so hurtful. The senior was so angry that the management had gone to Las Vegas just to go to the casino and have fun – it wasn’t a business trip, of course. And then to bring this back here without even exchanging it to real money. It was insane.
I was so angry. But I said, ‘Can I take the ticket? Because one day I will be big, one day I will establish myself as a game developer.’ I’ve kept it in my wallet ever since, and looking at it kind of refreshes my memory – it was so hurtful at the time, but that’s given me the motivation to build up my name and my career.
After I left Hudson Soft I was approached by a company called Rocket Studio, which was based in northern Japan. The president noticed I’d left Hudson Soft and they needed someone to help them out, so I moved to Rocket Studio and worked there for four years. At Rocket I worked on the concept for a game, a collaboration with Enix before it became Square Enix. I worked on that for a little bit, but there was a time where the project needed to be kind of reorganised. And again, the company decided to discontinue the project. I had lots of good relationships with other developers in other companies, like Yosuke Saito – he was the producer for Dragon Quest XI and Nier: Automata. I
“WE SHOULD
CREATE GAMES
FOR GAMERS,
NOT JUST TO
MAKE MONEY… I
DECIDED ON THE
SPOT TO LEAVE”
was asked to meet Mr Saito at Square Enix in 2004, and we met in a meeting room with a whiteboard. And it had ‘Dragon Quest Online’ written on it with two boxes. One had ‘Saito’ written in it, and I was asked to write ‘Yoshida’ in the other one.
I wanted to create an online game, and I was also a big fan of Dragon Quest. I was willing to take on this challenge and I thought it was a rare opportunity as well. I didn’t have any anxiety or concerns [about working on such a huge franchise]. But at the same time, it was fun working for Rocket Studio – the people there and the president were really nice. So it was hard to make a decision, but the Rocket Studio president said, ‘You’re really talented, you should think about your career. Go to Tokyo and work with Saito.’ But he also told me there were two conditions. One was that if I went to Square Enix, one day I had to become a board member at the company. The second was that, ‘If the right project comes up, please ask us to work with you!’ So, after that I joined Square Enix to work on Dragon Quest: Monster Battle Road. I handled the game design and direction, but I outsourced the development to Rocket Studio. It was really successful, quite lucrative for both companies.
FINAL FANTASY XIV: A REALM REBORN Developer/publisher Square Enix Format PC, PS3, PS4 Release 2013
I worked on a number of Dragon Quest games – three iterations of Monster Battle Road. I helped a little bit with Dragon Quest IX, and then Dragon Quest X, the online version. It may not be documented anywhere, but I actually worked on quite a lot of Dragon Quest projects – I had fun on different games. On the Monster Battle Road series and Dragon Quest X, I was working on scenario writing and direction, so I was one of the main team members – for the others I had an advisory role. After the release of Dragon Quest X, the company assigned me to a completely new IP within Square Enix.
I worked on the project for just shy of a year and a half. And it was at that time that we began to see that the original version of Final Fantasy XIV was in a disastrous place.
I was working on this new IP, and my team included some very talented staff who had worked on Final Fantasy, for example, lead artist Hiroshi Minagawa. When the problems with Final Fantasy XIV happened, the request for help was kind of directed to those staff. I didn’t receive a request to work on Final Fantasy XIV, but so many staff approached me, saying ‘ XIV is a disaster – it’s not going to work. We need to do something, it’s so frustrating – what can we do?’ So I wasn’t asked by anyone, but I started putting together some people to review the game’s direction. I started to interact more directly with the team members who thought Final Fantasy XIV was in a bad
position. That led to meetings and talks which lasted about a month.
So by researching the situation of the original Final Fantasy XIV, everyone, including me, started to see that this was really bad – we really needed to do something right away, otherwise it was going to topple completely over. So I pulled together a proposal about how to resuscitate and improve the game, because if we had left it alone it would have damaged the Final Fantasy IP. We had to work together as one. So I approached to the president at the time. But the president’s feedback was, ‘No, you don’t need to worry about that – the current development team say it’s okay, they can do all that’. I wasn’t really convinced, but I said ‘Okay, if that’s your decision please don’t ask anyone to come to me for help on Final Fantasy XIV.’ That was in October 2010. The reason the president said it was okay to leave it with the current team was probably that he didn’t want me to get dragged into this kind of project. However, another month passed, and even the president had to concede that the situation wasn’t improving. So the president asked me if I could help on the project. I didn’t hold a grudge against him for saying no at first, however. Instead I approached this opportunity as a challenge, but there was a lot of pressure. There was a lot of negative feeling.
Of course I was a big fan of Dragon Quest, but I was a big fan of Final Fantasy as well. The chance to handle a numbered entry in the franchise was a big career achievement. And the situation with the game was so bad that I thought, ‘It can’t get any worse than now!’ The new team members who came on to improve Final Fantasy XIV were so great, so talented – I had faith that they could do something about this, but if they tried and we didn’t see any improvement, it probably would have been that way for anyone.
With regard to the team’s structure, it wasn’t like the original game had one team and the new one had a different team. What happened was that 90 per cent of the original members stayed but they changed the top layer of the team, the leads. There was a difference in knowledge levels about the MMO and online titles in general. There were people in the original development team who had played World Of Warcraft, but some hadn’t, and those with experience playing World Of Warcraft and other MMOs felt that Final Fantasy XIV was in a really bad condition.
So in terms of the key decisions we made, first we thought it was really important to define the kind of game we had to make. We took about a month and a half, with a project lead listing all the reasons Final Fantasy XIV wasn’t working well, while I worked on the game design changes we’d need. There were two things happening at the same time: I was working on the basic design, trying to picture how it had to be, while the other developer was listing all the issues with the original version of the game. Then I drafted the ideal Final Fantasy XIV. I also asked anybody who hadn’t already to play World Of Warcraft and see what they do there, then take references and make comparisons. Once those tasks were done I put the two things together: the current one with all the issues, and the ultimate shape of Final Fantasy XIV, the future we had to achieve. Then they could see the differences we needed to target.
In order to make the ideal Final Fantasy XIV we had to change everything: the graphics engine, the level editors – nothing was up to scratch. Just patching the game wouldn’t have been enough; we probably could have improved it little by little, but probably, we only could have offered that service for three years before we needed to shut down, because the game was in such a bad position. So I pulled together two plans: recreating everything from scratch, or resuscitating the current game. I approached the president and made a presentation. My thought was that while it was a great challenge, hard to think about, if we could make a new game the damage to the IP could be mitigated. I wanted to take this beyond just keeping going with the current game – as long as the company had my back. The 1.0 service was running, the community was there. So the company gave me their approval.
The original game was out and the players were there, so we had to keep updating that version, but at the same
time, we started to work on the new version. We also came up with the idea of destroying the world of Final Fantasy XIV with a meteor and continuing with a new world. We wanted to use this as a tool to tell the story. The main team for the original Final Fantasy XIV kept working on updates, while at the same time, a small team created the new engine and features that would be needed for Realm Reborn. Depending on the workload, some people started to move from the original team to the new team. It was a gradual shift from the old team to the new team.
FINAL FANTASY XIV: HEAVENSWARD Developer/publisher Square Enix Format PC, PS3, PS4 Release 2015
It’s hard to pick which Final Fantasy XIV expansion was most important, because they’re all equally important when they’re released. Heavensward was the first expansion that the development team were able to work on free from any restrictions from the previous version of the game. Realm Reborn needed to carry over elements from 1.0, but Heavensward was completely free of that need. We were able to bring in lots of ideas. As the first expa expansion, Heavensward also involved new challenges chal – the development was quite hard, har but we really appreciated the sense of freedom. With Stormblood, we’d learned lots lo of things during development of Heavensward Heave about where we could improve and a mitigate issues, so we built a new system syst for making expansions and updates. With Shadowbringers, our goal was to m make the game feel more unique, make it s stand out as an RPG title, so we created s systems only available in Final Fantasy XIV. X To support the community and soci social side, we implemented the World Vi Visit system. This was important, because the game needed to go up another s step. We needed to aim higher.