Yakuza Creator Says The Era Where Game Size Is the Selling Point Is About to Pass (But His Next Game Is Also Large)

Yakuza creator Toshihiro Nagoshi left SEGA three years ago to join NetEase, where he founded his own Tokyo-based studio to make global console games.

The game designer was featured in a lengthy interview with Japanese magazine Famitsu published yesterday. Nagoshi talked about various topics, but the most interesting tidbit is arguably that he believes the era where game size is the selling point will soon pass.

What I’m making now is an action adventure. After the experimental phase and the phase where the experiments are exhausted, we will move on to the phase of mass-producing assets, but I think it would be good if you thought of it as being on the eve of the mass-production phase. In that sense, it’s going well, but in many ways, it’s a bit large in scale. In addition, at first glance, the game system is complicated. But I don’t want to make it a troublesome game… Well, it’s difficult to talk about what I can’t say at this point.

Anyway, I want to make it a game that is satisfying to play, but I don’t want it to be a hassle. Even though there aren’t many completely new games out there, there are so many titles out there that you can’t play them all, including overseas. Looking at the situation, I think the volume of console games in the lives of average game fans may be a bit excessive. There are still many titles out there, but I feel that the era of games where volume is the selling point is about to pass.

The interesting thing is that he admits his next game is also going to be large in scale, which isn’t surprising given that his last game, Yakuza: Like a Dragon, required 45.5 hours just for the main quest, while a completionist playthrough can take an average of 103 hours, according to How Long To Beat.

Anyway, Nagoshi said his team is currently assessing the proper size for this game, though the map they’ve created is already large – maybe too much.

One characteristic that is particularly relevant in overseas markets is that a certain amount of volume is necessary, and although there is a sense that “it has to be at least this much,” I think that this is also a kind of fixed idea. So we continue to discuss, “What is the appropriate volume at the time of releasing the game?” I’m currently thinking hard about how to predict or measure that volume and how to arrange the game’s density to suit the appropriate volume and size. 

We will soon have to enter the mass production phase of assets, so it will soon be time to decide on the final volume estimate, but we are currently thinking about whether this is really good enough. Of course, we have a map, but the one at the current stage is too large. I started by studying existing games and creating a fairly large map. I had already created roads and highways. Now, I’m shrinking it little by little and looking for a good balance for the game.

The Yakuza creator also revealed that the team size is around 80. He’d like to share more about the project in the near future, too. Until then, stay tuned.