31 Facts About Naoki Yoshida

1.

Naoki Yoshida, known by the nickname Yoshi-P, is a Japanese video game producer, director and designer working for Square Enix.

2.

Naoki Yoshida is best known for his work on massively multiplayer online role-playing games, mainly as director and producer of Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn and its expansions.

3.

Naoki Yoshida became an Executive Officer at Square Enix in 2015, the Head of Square Enix's Creative Business Unit III and part of the Final Fantasy Committee that is tasked with keeping the franchise's releases and content consistent in 2014.

4.

Naoki Yoshida decided to work on video games in elementary school.

5.

The Yoshida family had little money; Naoki had to work for play, which led him towards beating as many games as he could and getting the most out of coins spent on arcades.

6.

Naoki Yoshida has been deeply involved in games since childhood, where he would spend hundreds of hours playing just one title.

7.

Naoki Yoshida studied at a school run by Hudson Soft, where teaching came from many senior developers, concurrently with an internship at the studio.

8.

Naoki Yoshida applied to Chunsoft, his preferred choice, but the internship meant he could start earlier at Hudson: since Yoshida was going through difficulties at the time, he opted for the latter to give his mother peace of mind faster.

9.

Naoki Yoshida loved the company's games as a child, and wanted to do something for it to find back that energy, as its power faded.

10.

Naoki Yoshida was assigned to the creation of PC Engine games at first.

11.

Naoki Yoshida's role kept expanding, eventually working under Oji Hiroi's supervision on the original Far East of Eden III: Namida, which was ultimately moved to the PC-FX.

12.

Naoki Yoshida was happy through the production with his position writing all the villager dialogue, but the game was cancelled when he was almost done.

13.

An avid fighting game fan, Naoki Yoshida indirectly influenced the balance of Street Fighter EX.

14.

Naoki Yoshida got sixty consecutive victories there, the last three against members of the Arika team developing it.

15.

Naoki Yoshida faced a harsh environment: programmers held control over productions, saw designers as useless, would not realize documents if they found them boring and had no patience for people that did not understand or tried to broach their field.

16.

Naoki Yoshida had to develop his persuasion skills to handle that dynamic; communication in his case was easier than with other designers because he studied coding beforehand.

17.

Naoki Yoshida submitted three proposals to Hudson's internal new project contests: a multiplayer first-person shooter, a PlayStation 2 multiplayer Dungeon Explorer revival and a PC space exploration MMORPG.

18.

Naoki Yoshida joined Square Enix in 2004 as the fourth member of the Dragon Quest X team; as chief designer, besides handling the writing alongside Yuji Horii, with Jin Fujisawa as director.

19.

Frustrated at how MMORPGs had not become popular in Japan, Naoki Yoshida felt that if Dragon Quest could not do it, nothing else would, which drove him to join the project.

20.

Naoki Yoshida's involvement lasted from its early stages up to the internal alpha test; under his tenure, the core systems were completed, a number of systems went from existing only in the document to implemented in working order, and time-consuming parts like character and map graphics were made.

21.

Naoki Yoshida wanted to work on Dragon Quest X until it went gold, but Square Enix company policy was against multiple directors working on the same project; once Fujisawa could return as full-time director on the game, Naoki Yoshida's superiors removed him from the team while he was away on a business trip.

22.

Naoki Yoshida steered the project as a learning experience for the younger team members, as he wanted to train future directions.

23.

Elsewhere, a desire to make a card game that parents and children could play together led Naoki Yoshida to conceive the car-centric Chosoku Henkei Gyrozetter for arcades.

24.

Naoki Yoshida was not acquainted with any of the Final Fantasy XIV team's members and thus had to demonstrate his dedication to the project first to gain their trust as director.

25.

Naoki Yoshida then talked with the individual developers to find out their ideas for improvements to the revised version known as Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn.

26.

Naoki Yoshida proceeded with describing to the team the precise goals to achieve.

27.

Naoki Yoshida drew some inspiration from his long-lasting enthusiasm for MMORPGs, having played such titles as Ultima Online, EverQuest, Dark Age of Camelot, World of Warcraft, Warhammer Online, Rift, Star Wars: The Old Republic and Guild Wars 2.

28.

Naoki Yoshida went on to work with Matsuno in creating the Return to Ivalice raid for Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood, saying he "was able to fulfill [his] dream to work with Matsuno-san".

29.

Between December 2013 and December 2019, Naoki Yoshida wrote a regular column for Famitsu titled "Naoki Yoshida Uncensored", discussing his thoughts on Final Fantasy XIV, video games, the game industry, and game development in general.

30.

Naoki Yoshida ended the column in December 2019 due to lack of time to write it.

31.

In September 2020, Final Fantasy XVI was revealed to be in development for PlayStation 5 with Naoki Yoshida serving as producer.