Rebuilding the game and relaunching it would probably be the only way we could do that. And it's very crazy, and very Final Fantasy-like.Īnd the priority, I felt, was that it shouldn't be about the business, but to regain the fans. So with rebuilding this title as a completely new Final Fantasy game, you could actually take that and depict it within the story - and destroy the world, and rebuild it into a new game.
One of the best slides of GDC 2014: Yoshida's "three easy steps to failure" With those two options raised, I also mentioned that if we did close the original Final Fantasy XIV after three years of updating, the trust of the fans would be completely lost.
We couldn't be lukewarm it didn't allow for us to be half-baked. We would either have to, one, completely rebuild this game and build from the ground up or, two, we would continue to update for maybe three more years and shut down the project altogether." I had to interview the development staff and other members of the company about the title, as well as check out the forums and see what the community was saying.Īfter the evaluation process was finished, I went to the upper management of the company in our headquarters, and what I told them is, "We are in a critical condition right now. A Realm Reborn still didn't take shape at that time, in the beginning.Ī month after I took on the responsibilities, I had to evaluate whether this is something I can just go in and make revisions to make better, or if I need to start from scratch. In terms of the original Final Fantasy XIV, I was actually not on the development staff of the original Final Fantasy XIV, and I took over that project after its original, initial launch. Can you explain how you had the confidence to do that? They often say there's no way to recover from a bad launch with an MMO, but not only did you recover from a bad launch - you made a new game. He also addresses the challenges of running a subscription MMO in an increasingly free-to-play world. Now, after a successful relaunch, Gamasutra speaks to Yoshida - who also gave a well-received talk at this year's GDC that dealt with the project head-on - about how far he, his team, and his company have come since those days. He was not on the original team that developed the title, but he took charge of its revitalization efforts thanks to his expertise with the MMORPG genre. Gamasutra first spoke to Naoki Yoshida, the producer and director of Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn in 2011, at the outset of his journey to fix the game. It has done even better than its publisher anticipated.
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