Gamasutra Interview with Yoshi-P and Sage Sundi

[Chrees]

Very often you'll hear developers in the West say that you can't recover from a bad launch. Obviously, that's not your philosophy, but I was wondering what your thoughts on that belief are?

NY: One of the reasons I believe that it's very hard to recover from a bad launch is that with many Western MMOs, because the teams are so large and they require such a large budget -- because of all the assets and all the things they have to make -- a lot of those projects rely on investment, and it can't be done by a single company alone. So, that's why if you fail, then you fail.

And then when a game, like a large Western MMO, has a large launch and it fails, then the investors start to pull back. Then the money stops flowing. And when the money stops flowing, the development teams have to make their development team sizes smaller, which means they can't get enough content for the fixes, or they have to go to a different payment model like free-to-play.

Basically the control of the development is crushed. They want to change it, they want to start over, but it's prevented by that lack of the budget.

On the other hand, with FFXIV, operations and development are all funded 100 percent by Square Enix, so as long as we decide to continue backing the project and we don't give up, we can continue to provide things to the players, see what they want, then go back and retry things, redo things. Basically, it comes up to us. We're not at the strings of the investors.

Well this part was certainly interesting.

[Malakhim]

Well this part was certainly interesting.

Very interesting indeed.

Were this actually true, I think we can toss out that reason as to why the game was released when it was.

I find that I'm aligned with the Japanese playerbase he's describing. I just want info on what's happening and when for the most part.

[Cairdeas]

Very interesting indeed.

Were this actually true, I think we can toss out that reason as to why the game was released when it was.

I find that I'm aligned with the Japanese playerbase he's describing. I just want info on what's happening and when for the most part.

Which leaves only one answer.....

WADAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Alhanelem]

Very interesting indeed.

Were this actually true, I think we can toss out that reason as to why the game was released when it was.

I find that I'm aligned with the Japanese playerbase he's describing. I just want info on what's happening and when for the most part.

Well in essence, what he's saying is that this specific project was executed with SE's own capital- meaning investors didn't come up to SE and say "You guys should be developing a new MMO, so here's the money for that. They're using money they already had, rather than getting funding through investments.

[Abriael]

You think this is fun... You should check out Uldah in Besaid sometime.

temptations temptations...

Very often you'll hear developers in the West say that you can't recover from a bad launch. Obviously, that's not your philosophy, but I was wondering what your thoughts on that belief are?

NY: One of the reasons I believe that it's very hard to recover from a bad launch is that with many Western MMOs, because the teams are so large and they require such a large budget -- because of all the assets and all the things they have to make -- a lot of those projects rely on investment, and it can't be done by a single company alone. So, that's why if you fail, then you fail.

And then when a game, like a large Western MMO, has a large launch and it fails, then the investors start to pull back. Then the money stops flowing. And when the money stops flowing, the development teams have to make their development team sizes smaller, which means they can't get enough content for the fixes, or they have to go to a different payment model like free-to-play.

Basically the control of the development is crushed. They want to change it, they want to start over, but it's prevented by that lack of the budget.

On the other hand, with FFXIV, operations and development are all funded 100 percent by Square Enix, so as long as we decide to continue backing the project and we don't give up, we can continue to provide things to the players, see what they want, then go back and retry things, redo things. Basically, it comes up to us. We're not at the strings of the investors.

Well this part was certainly interesting.

back on topic, after someone tried to derail it with his ego-trips. I'd say this is indeed quite an interesting statement. While it's a tad smug to state that "Only Square Enix can do it" (there are others completely self-funded games out there, while they're quite few), it's rather true.

being the publisher AND the developer is a rather big advantage, and the fact that SE is continuing to invest in the game while putting revenue on a long-run course, is quite the proof that he's not just being smug.
Of course there have to be results, or even Square Enix will pull the plug, but he seems to be rather confident of being able to achieve those results.

When Tanaka and Komoto were the fulcrum of development and being interviewed, it was rather visible that they didn't have that much confidence, especially during the final stretch between GC and the release. While Yoshida shows quite a lot of enthusiasm (unless I completely misread him, he seems to actually be looking forward to seeing the reactions to his work), they had the typical dead expression of someone walking towards a death sentence.
I initially chalked it to (mostly Tanaka's) attitude of being always pretty flemmatic and "cool" during PR contacts, but things were further than that.
If you pay attention to some filmed interviews you can actually see them wince at some of the more pressing questions.


Yoshida knows that he's not in a perfect situation, but he knows that (for now) he has the financial backing and the team to get something good accomplished.
Also, it's pretty clear that he's betting his career on this task. It can easily receive a massive boost if he's successful, but it can also paint a quite definitive stain on his resume. And honestly, when he accepted the job, the chances of the second option turning into truth were quite a lot higher.

Accepting the role of captain of a ship with several holes on the hull sailing in the middle of the ocean isn't something everyone would do.

I can only respect someone with the guts to actually accept such a challenge. Japanese people almost never put their career on the line this recklessly (and not even westerners actually, but for a Japanese it's even more extreme).