4Gamer:
Now, it's difficult to decide where we should start, but when MMORPGs first appeared, wasn't there a feeling like "this is the game of my dreams" in the gaming community?
Matsui:
Rather than the game, I remember the monthly phone bills feeling more like a dream...
Yoshida:
And then you wake up when you saw the numbers.
Saito:
It's not an MMORPG, but I remember when I was addicted to Diablo and got a bill for tens of thousands of yen, I thought "holy crap!" so I just played it at work instead.
All:
(Burst of Laughter)
4Gamer:
That's because internet service wasn't on a fixed monthly rate yet back then. Although we did had some stuff like unlimited late night plans.
Yoshida:
I was still working at Hudson back in the Diablo era. Since you could play that game on LAN, I just mostly played on LAN at work instead of connecting to Battle.net, so my phone bill wasn't that much. But it got really bad when Ultima Online came out. I remember getting a bill for about 120,000 yen (about $1,150 USD today) a month. Back then Dial Q2 (a tolled "infoline" service in Japan that quickly became popular for adult/sex-related services) was trending too, and my mom was super worried that maybe I was addicted to something like that (wry laugh).
Saito:
With Ultima Online, I remember taping the keys on my keyboard so it can automatically keep hitting the training dummy (to increase attack skills) for me. This is with my PC at work, of course (laugh).
All:
(Burst of Laughter)
Saito:
I'd tape the attack key down when I was going home, and then when I got back to work the next day I'd quietly peel the tape off. That was the life I lived.
Yoshida:
I did that to my keyboard too with toothpicks!
4Gamer:
This is probably a topic that's hard for people other than 4Gamer readers to comprehend (wry laugh).
Yoshida:
What about you Matsui?
Matsui:
I played Ultima Online, EverQuest, and Asheron's Call back when FFXI was being developed. I think it was around the time when the world in Ultima Online was being split into PK On and PK Off worlds.
Yoshida:
Yes, Felucca and Trammel.
Matsui:
Yes yes. But while I wasn't that into Ultima Online, I got really addicted to EverQuest. Since the world and system of EverQuest was based on the "Advanced D&D" ruleset, it was something I was more familiar with.
4Gamer:
Looking back at it now, EverQuest was a pretty brutal game too, wasn't it?
Yoshida:
You basically just die a lot.
Matsui:
When you first start playing, there were times where you could just die from drowning because you got stuck in a ditch on the side of the road or something.
Saito:
If you started as a Wood Elf, you'd die as soon as you started walking because you just fell off the tree you spawned on (laugh).
4Gamer:
Dying as a Wood Elf was like a tradition back then.
Yoshida:
In the starting town of Wood Elves you'd see tons of dead bodies everwhere, and you'd be like "why are there all these dead bodies?" at first, and then you'd understand why once you became one of them. If it was a Japanese game, people would expect some kind of collision detection on the tree paths so it'd stop you from falling (wry laugh).
4Gamer:
Was EverQuest popular with people in Square Enix back then?
Yoshida:
It was more like people were ordered to play EverQuest when we were just about to start developing Final Fantasy XI.
Matsui:
Yeah. We were told to "just try it" before we started development. So we all played it even while at work in the name of research. But well, let's just say it kind of backfired.....
Saito:
People stopped coming to work, for example.
Yoshida:
You'd have people like Aoki-san, who is the head of the world design team in DQX, almost not showing up at work at all so we'd end up having meetings with him in Norath (the EQ game world) instead.
Matsui:
That's a true story. He wouldn't answer his phone or e-mails but you could catch him if you sent him a tell in-game.
4Gamer:
Were there any parts of your games where you felt you couldn't move ahead with the development until you played the game yourselves and grasped something from it?
Saito:
I don't know about that. I think whether you were developing an online or offline game, your goal is always to make something that is fun.
Yoshida:
But in an MMO, having experience as a player does help you become better at being able to tell where the "landmines" (poor game design) are and avoid them. So if you ask me whether having experience as a player helps with game development, I'd say definitely yes.
Matsui:
For example, you wouldn't really be able to understand "what's the purpose of this thing?" without having experienced it as a player first.
Yoshida:
Exactly. If you look at it from the player's perspective, even though people might sometimes go "why did they make it like this?" In most cases, there is a perfectly good reason why the creators made it that way - to state the obvious.
4Gamer:
So to wrap this up, is it correct to say that all of you here first experienced MMOs through titles like Diablo, Ultima Online, and EverQuest?
Saito:
Yes. Personally Final Fantasy XI has had a lot of impact on me too. It has become one of the references I take into consideration when making decisions.
Yoshida:
Saito-san played quite a bit of it, I think.
Saito:
Yes, I did (laugh). Well, I played a lot of World of Warcraft too, but it was still nothing compared to FFXI. And even before that I played a lot of domestic MMORPGs that most people probably don't even know about.
4Gamer:
Like Life Storm (very first Japanese MMORPG), for example?
Saito:
I played Life Storm, and Dark Eyes (another early Japanese MMORPG) too after that, for example.
Yoshida:
Dark Eyes, that's a nostalgic name.
4Gamer:
Was this for work?
Saito:
No, I was just playing for fun.
4Gamer:
Why was Saito-san so into MMOs right from the start?
Saito:
'cause I was a reclusive loner.
All:
(Laugh)
Saito:
No seriously. Back then I lived in a tiny apartment unit that didn't even have furnitures. All that was there was my water tank and my PC, both just sitting there on the floor. That was how I lived.
4Gamer:
Wow. And what did you have in the water tank?
Saito:
I kept clownfishes in there. Anyway, I had my desktop PC on the floor, the monitor was on the floor too, and I just lied down on that cold wooden floor with no covers whatsoever and played all kind of MMOs like that.
4Gamer:
So Saito-san was one of
those type of people...
Yoshida:
Really, it's pretty amazing you managed to get to where you are today from that kind of lifestyle.
Saito:
I know. It was a close call eh?
4Gamer:
By the way, we hear that Saito-san plays a lot of DQX himself too, but just how much are we talking about here?
Saito:
On a normal day about 3 hours I guess. During off days... probably more than 10 hours (wry laugh).
4Gamer:
T, that's quite a lot....
Yoshida:
I've been thinking about it recently whenever I see you, but you're leaning pretty heavily towards being dysfunctional, you know. Have you tried FFXIV?
Saito:
If I wasn't working, I'd probably be playing FFXIV too. But with a job, it's pretty tricky to juggle 2 MMOs at the same time (laugh).