With the dust settled from PAX Aus 2024, it’s time to tell you about a little chat we had with Final Fantasy XIV Director and Producer Naoki Yoshida. Yoshida was in town for Melbourne International Games Week, the most significant annual event for Melbourne’s video game development scene. The night prior to meeting us, he had given a talk at the Melbourne Convention Centre about his experience in the games industry, from his inspirations playing Super Mario Brothers and Tactics Ogre, to directing and producing for Final Fantasy and his approach to player feedback.
He spent much of the talk discussing Final Fantasy XIV, the MMO that he helped re-launch after its disastrous original release. With Yoshida at the helm, Final Fantasy XIV has claimed more and more registered users each year, up to a massive 30 million worldwide users as of January 2024, making it one of the biggest MMOs in the world. It’s now on its 5th major story expansion, Dawntrail, which has received generally favourable reviews. While it hasn’t stolen Shadowbringers’ place in my heart, it came with some of the best dungeon and trial designs the game’s seen to date.
Yoshida didn’t come to Australia alone. Also attending MIGW was senior story designer Natsuko Ishikawa, who has written main scenario storylines for the most recent story expansions, and quest designer Saki Takayanagi, who has brought us many main scenario quests as well as the Anima Weapon quests and Tataru’s Grand Adventure. The two of them would go on to host a successful panel during PAX Aus 2024.
Two Checkpoint contributors were offered the opportunity to sit down with all three of them to ask them some of the burning questions on our minds. At the time of our interview, Yoshida looked every bit the cool celebrity game dev, pulling off his denim-on-denim combo with ease and sporting his signature silver rings that give him a slight “rock star” look. In case you’re wondering, yes, we were starstruck. His rapport with Ishikawa and Takayanagi seemed easy and genuine, which hopefully is as indication that he’s a great boss.
Yoshida is a really interesting guy, and his passion for his games shines in the way he loves to give detailed, thoughtful answers, which is no doubt why he chooses to conduct his English interviews using a translator, despite understanding English quite well. This is why we have chosen to transcribe the full interview below, which has been edited for clarity and brevity.
On directing and producing FFXIV and FFXVI
Checkpoint: First of all, thank you very much for agreeing to do the interview. It’s quite an honour. Both of us play Final Fantasy XIV a lot. I myself have been subscribed for about 1,300 days straight.
Yoshida: [Laughs] Thank you, thank you.
Checkpoint: Yoshida-san, you’re the director and producer of Final Fantasy XIV, and you’ve also produced Final Fantasy XVI. How does producing an MMO compare to producing a single title such as XVI?
Yoshida: Come to think of it, I don’t think I gave it much thought. Producer work is something that I loathe, to be honest. If I could switch places with somebody for the producer work, I would.
My role was a little bit different between XIV, where I’m both director and producer, versus what I did in XVI, which was just producer work. I’ve always been a director when developing games, and I hated it when a producer who didn’t even understand the game would come in and try to insert their opinions.
[Ishikawa and Takayanagi laugh]
So from a producer perspective, I make sure I hold my tongue so that I am allowing the director or the game developers to do what they want, and I won’t butt in until the last minute. I tried to make sure that I was being mindful of what the developer was trying to do, but in XIV’s case, I am the director and producer, so I would have an internal dialogue of like, “As a director, I would do this,” and “As a producer, I would do that.” But of course, with XVI, we had a separate director, so I would have a dialogue with that person. So maybe there was a little bit of a difference between the approach there.
The way we sell the game might also have been a little different. From a producer’s perspective, my goal is to take what the developers want to convey in their work and try to promote it to the consumers. With XIV, I do something similar, but I think it’s a matter of trying to deliver that sort of message. So maybe there are a little bit of differences in some of the more minor parts.
That said, with me being both the director and producer of such a popular game as Final Fantasy XIV, my involvement is hard to ignore. I don’t think there’ll be Final Fantasy XIV players who are unfamiliar with who I am, and even those playing XVI will recognise me, so I think we were we were in a strategically great place to have XIV and XVI related to each other. But I don’t think the approach differed too much between the two games.
Checkpoint: I feel like you’ve already answered this, but do you prefer being a director, or producer?
Yoshida: Director. Yes!
Dawntrail’s development and player reception
Checkpoint: Dawntrail makes a lot of references to Final Fantasy IX. What helps you determine a balance between completely new and original ideas, and paying homage to previous Final Fantasy games?
Yoshida: Sorry if this is not a very glamorous answer, but It’s just gut feeling. We do it by intuition. A lot of our staff are fans of Final Fantasy, so some of them will volunteer ideas, like “I would like to do this,” and I will look at the overall balance and say, “Okay, I think you might be going too far with this.”, or “hold back”. But yeah, I would look at what they want to do, but also honour what they bring to the table as well.
Each team also have their sort of section lead, like Ishikawa. I think they also kind of manage that as well.
Ishikawa: There are two points that I look out for. One is, as a fan, do I want to see that scene, or do I want to fight that boss from a graphical perspective, or from an adventuring perspective?
And the other is that many of the creators that work on the source material we want to pay homage to are either still within Square Enix, or they’re actively continuing their game development outside of the company. So we want to be confident in what we bring to the table, and be able to confidently explain that this is what we want to do, and to pay respect, to make sure we don’t embarrass them with our homage. With those two points in mind, we then look at how it blends into the culture of Final Fantasy XIV and its story.
“… So they present it to me, and I say “Oh, ew!” and reject it.”
Yoshida: With that said, when I go in and check, sometimes it’s just a plain quote out of the source material, or they just want to recreate a famous scene and use the same dialogue to which I would tell them, “No, that’s just ripping off the source material.”
Ishikawa: From a scenario perspective, I try to stop them, but they’re fans too, so they want to see it recreated in their words!
Yoshida: Sometimes they try to challenge that and show it to me to see if I will OK it. So they present it to me, and I say “Oh, ew!” and reject it. It’s always very obvious and noticeable. It’s very easy to tell if a developer wants to deliver something to the player as an experience, versus just wanting to see that scene happen for themselves.
So when we are trying to pay respects or homage to source materials, we want to be very mindful that that’s what we’re doing. we want to avoid doing anything that’s not pure in intent, because we are allowed to handle these different Final Fantasy titles. I think we do need to be very mindful of that.
Checkpoint: How’s the player reception to Dawntrail been? Are you happy with the reception? Were there any player responses that surprised you?
Yoshida: I don’t know if we’ve had any time to reflect on any surprising reactions from the fans because we were so gung-ho about releasing it. We were working at it until the last minute so it was like, “Oh we’ve finally released it, Thank goodness!”
With Dawntrail, we tried to position this as the start of a new arc, because with Endwalker we fought the threat that was threatening our universe. And so we did want to tone down a little bit, and position our Warrior of Light as more of a mentor that watches the growth of another character.
So I knew from the get-go that the opinions may have split — some people might enjoy the fact that we’re taking a different stance, or some people might want to have their Warrior of Light be more in the forefront.
there are two other points that I want to bring up with that question. With Dawntrail, we were embarking on this new land of Tural. With the different new areas, we had so many new sets of people that we wanted to introduce. Their views, their values, the different races that exist, the different mentality, as well as religious beliefs, were all aspects we really wanted to depict.
“The other factor was Wuk Lamat… I feel a little sorry that we weren’t able to properly depict her.”
And we wanted to be very thorough and meticulous about how we bring it to our presentation. And so we received feedback about how people felt the pacing was a bit slow, at least in the beginning part of Dawntrail. That was a key learning for us, something that may have been a misstep of sorts in the direction. I think we could have upped the tempo a little bit more so that it would move along quicker, and maybe take some of the slower elements and spread it out into some of the side quests, perhaps. But that’s a key learning that we wanted to reflect into what we do moving forward.
Thankfully we did receive feedback that [players] did like the detail that went into some of the narratives. But yeah, I think it might have been a good idea to spread it out a little bit.
The other factor was Wuk Lamat. She’s a very complex character, and she even has a bit of a complex about herself. Unfortunately, we didn’t delve very far into the background of why she had those feelings, so it appeared as if she left a negative impression. We accept that feedback. I feel a little sorry that we weren’t able to properly depict her. We may have been able to make her more straightforward, so we’re pushing her in the forefront as this character. But again, we’re going to be reflecting that learning into [content patch 7.1] and onward, we’re hoping that we can show more of what makes Wuk Lamat so great, and I’m hoping that we can regain from there.
One additional thing, there were comments about how we are too accepting of diversity — some people seem to be disapproving of that. I’m afraid one of our staff members received very negative comments and it almost felt like a personal attack, which breaks my heart, because she worked really hard and these criticisms were not constructive at all. [Editor’s note: Yoshida is referring to the transphobic verbal abuse and death threats that Wuk Lamat’s voice actress, who is a trans woman, has reportedly received from some FFXIV users.] It doesn’t do anything except make the staff lose motivation, and in the end that could potentially damage the quality of our game and take away from what makes this game so interesting. So if there are any sort of criticisms, bring it to me, because I’m the one approving this material. I wanted to reiterate that, please refrain from personal attacks against our staff.
Checkpoint: Yeah, we really agree with that sentiment. We were also very disappointed to see disparaging comments against the voice actress who we thought did a very good job. Checkpoint Gaming is an inclusivity-based, LGBTQIA+ outlet, and hearing all of those sorts of comments online was really upsetting for all of us. For me, Wuk Lamat was like my little sister. When I was playing, I was always so proud of her when she did the next big thing, and so it was really upsetting to hear all of those negative comments that had nothing to do with the quality of her performance.
Yoshida: of course, everybody is entitled to their preferences. What you like or don’t like is definitely up to you. But I think it’s just sad to see this attacking of other people if they don’t agree with you. As Final Fantasy XIV attempts to grow even more to the next level, we’re going to have more people, which means more opinions flying about. That’s perfectly fine, but I think it would be great if we could continue to work to reduce the amount of pointless attacks against each other.
The design process of Final Fantasy XIV
Checkpoint: I’d love to hear about Ishikawa-san’s experience working on Final Fantasy XIV’s story. There’s so much story and lore, so how do you keep track of it all and make sure that you don’t accidentally contradict things that happened earlier in the story?
Ishikawa: [laughs] That’s a good question because it gets asked at different seminars that we attend that are intended for Japanese game developers. Sorry, I can’t tell you that we have this fancy, brilliant tool that we utilise. No, whatever is out in the open is out in the open and whatever is not in the open… we can go and change.
[That draws a laugh from everyone.]
So what we do utilise is fairly simple. Basically, whatever material we have released can be searched in our database. We can search for keywords, almost like a Google search, so if we need information on a certain part of dialogue or lore, we can always read up on it.
Checkpoint: Takayanagi-san, can you tell us what goes into creating a quest for Final Fantasy XIV?
Takayanagi: So we have Ishakawa, who does the scenario writing, and then we have staff that does the quest implementation. Together, they’re the group we call the quest team. First, Ishikawa-san would provide us with a plot, sort of like an overview of what the quest is going to be. Based on that information, the quest team will think of the different items and elements of gameplay that might go into that quest. Once we have those ideas, we get back together with the scenario writers to determine, “Okay, this is how we’re going to package it.” Then we think about the different resources that need to go into it. So for example, which characters will appear, what kind of map we want to have, if there is any music we want to implement — so the implementation team will think of the design for those elements.
Then the scenario side will continue the building of the quest line, while for example, I would work on character outfits. Any characters that appear in a particular quest line, I usually would figure out what they would look like and dress them. So yeah, it’s pretty much a two-legged race. We’re working very closely with each other.
“Takayanagi has dressed 80%-90% of those that live on planet Hydaelyn.”
Yoshida: it is quite a close team. The scenario team would come up with the overall storyline, whereas the quest designer will provide the experience that goes into that particular quest line. And I do want to note that Takayanagi has dressed 80%-90% of those that live on planet Hydaelyn. I hope you can join us on Saturday when they do their panel. We’re going to go into even further detail on what she does.
Checkpoint: Creating a brand new playable race like the female Hrothgar must take a lot of work. [Yoshida, Ishikawa, and Takayanagi all grimace] What are some of the challenges that arise when trying to add a brand new playable race to the game?
Yoshida: Because we are going out of our way to implement a brand new race, the development team would love for it to have an entirely new shape and form, and unique animations that are applied to it. So of course, there are so many ideas that come up. So, say, somebody wanted a very small and cute race, cuter than the Lallafel race. But then we come back to reality, thinking to ourselves, wait, we have hundreds of gear that now we have to adjust so that it will fit that new playable race.
On top of that, we will still continue to introduce new equipment for these characters to wear. All races should look equally cool in those different outfits and it should make sense with each different form, and it makes us realize that considering how much work goes into designing a race plus all of the equipment that it has to wear, our work will grow exponentially.
So, yeah, I think that’s our biggest challenge whenever we’re looking at trying to add new playable race with an expansion pack. Takayanagi was shaking. [All laugh]
Checkpoint: Do you ever feel like asking players to please stop requesting new roles and races?
Yoshida: [laughs] I mean, of course, it gets kind of hard when people continue to ask, but at the same time, there are so many different requests that are all character-related. For example, I know the butt slider has been a big, big, one. [Laughs] Some people want more varieties of faces or to change the shape of the face itself, so, I mean, it’s fine. I think we will always get that kind of feedback. And while it might take some time, our development team are really eager to please our fans, so we want to accommodate as many of those requests as possible. So I don’t want to stop people from making requests.
However, the question of when is something we can’t really answer, so I think that might be something we might want to lay off on a little bit.
Checkpoint: We don’t mind if it takes you a while, but will you consider a region inspired by Australia?
Yoshida: [Laughs] You know, there was another media that asked for that too about two interviews ago. Unfortunately, I have to travel to South Korea for our fan festival tomorrow, but Ishikawa and Takayanagi will be remaining for a few more days. They’re going to experience Australia as much as they can, so I’m hoping that they’ll be inspired by the time they come home.
Checkpoint: Yoshida-san, Thank you so much for agreeing to speak with us. Thank you, Ishikawa-san and Takayanagi-san.
Yoshida: Thank you again for sharing your anecdote about how you experienced Wuk Lamat. We will try to convey that to [Sena Bryer] as well, who voiced her.
Final Fantasy XIV is available on PC as well as PlayStation and Xbox consoles. A free trial is available up to level 70, and includes all content up to its second expansion Stormblood.
About the Author
Edie W-K
she/her
If it isn't video games, Edie doesn't care about it. She's been playing games since the N64 era, and only spent enough time away from her 3DS to earn a Bachelor in Games Design from RMIT.
