“We’re always rushing” to “capture the moment”
It sounds like the developers at Ryu ga Gotoku Studio have a hard time keeping track themselves, especially given the rate at which Sega publish Like A Dragon games. According to studio director Masayoshi Yokoyama, Like A Dragon’s creators feel a lot of pressure to get the games done quickly, not just with a view to making money but because as projects that riff so copiously on pop culture, Like A Dragon stories go out of date fast.
“We’re always rushing to get titles out in the Like a Dragon Series, and this is not because of loss of opportunity or profit, but because these are games that capture the moment,” Yokoyama toldAutomatonin a nicely chunky interview. “You can tell from the trailer this time around, but the game captures current trends, such as VTubers.
“If this were to be delayed for half a year, it could all end up being old news. And when you take into account that we have to anticipate all of this two or three years in advance, it’s even more frightening. We want our games to be out there at the moment they are relevant. This is all part of why we’re pursuing simultaneous global releases now, while searching for the best methods to realize them.”
Elsewhere in the interview, discussing why Ryu ga Gotoku Studio don’t take inspiration from overseas despite releasing Like A Dragon games for an international audience, Yokoyama added that “entertainment is all about how you’re feeling at the moment, so either you’re up for it or you’re not. When you eat food, you don’t analyze it logically, you’re just feeling it spontaneously.”
Like A Dragon has released at a frantic rate since the days of the original Yakuza, Yokoyama noted, with “one installment per year being the norm” - nowadays, the developers settle for releasing regular spin-off titles instead. This rapidfire schedule is possible, Yokoyama explained, because Ryu ga Gotoku Studio works on several projects in parallel, with staff, game mechanics and systems shared between productions. One developer handles the same physics-driven minigame for several games at once, for instance.
With regard to Infinite Wealth (aka Like A Dragon 8) and Like A Dragon Gaiden specifically, “there isn’t a huge difference” between them, Yokoyama added. “By this I mean that, in a sense, Like a Dragon Gaiden was derived from Like a Dragon 8. We could have just told of Kiryu’s past through a thirty-minute interlude as part of Like a Dragon 8, but we decided it would be a lot more interesting as a game of its own, which is how the project came to be. Though this meant having a whole extra game to make, it still uses the same engine, so we thought ‘It’s not like we have to make it from scratch’.”
One of the bigger challenges is localising each game on time for release - Like A Dragon titles are text-heavy, after all. Apparently, the localisation teams generally manage it in 10 months.
Good organisation aside, it’s hard to imagine all this not involving absolutely humongous amounts of overwork. Earlier this month, PlatinumGames veteran and recent Epic Games recruit JP KellamsXeetedat length aboutcrunch cultureat Japanese studios, and how journalists outside Japan report on it. “After every Tokyo Game Show, all these western journalists run around fetishizing Japanese studios/developers like tourists with blinders on and it is absolutely infuriating,” he wrote. “Here’s some real talk: many Japanese devs make shockingly low wages and crunch for literally years.”
Duly noted, JP. Personally, I’m a bit terrified by the developers' desire to keep pace with ephemeral online phenomena like Vtubers. Isn’t there something to be said for building to last? It makes me think that sticking to period-set games, such as Yakuza Zero, would be a kinder way to treat the development team.
