It’s easy to see success once it has happened. When it’s already clear what was best, everyone knows what the right decision was. That’s why making decisions is so complex, but also why it’s important to stand up for what you believe is right. Knowing what will work or not is complex, and the struggle between egos and beliefs is important. Something that a great video game author, Toshihiro Nagoshi, has shown us this week.
In an interview with Weekly Ochiai, Toshihiro Nagoshi’s former creative chief has explained the situation he encountered when making the first game in the Yakuza franchise. Because even though it is now a successful series worldwide, there was a time when SEGA didn’t see it that way.
The reason Nagoshi argues is that, at the beginning of the 2000s, Sega was looking to make games that appealed to the masses. Games that could sell worldwide, to everyone. The problem is that, as Nagoshi rightly says, the games proposed at that time were systematically watered down by how the producers approached the development according to what the executives dictated. Making many of those games lack any interest upon release.
That’s why, when they proposed Yakuza, they completely rejected the proposal. The reason is that, being a game focused on the yakuza, they didn’t see what could be the interest for the international audience. Also, since it wouldn’t be a game that children could play, and it wouldn’t be targeted at women either, Sega had no interest in making it.
Finally, after presenting the proposal three times, Sega approved Nagoshi’s project. Something that also managed to demonstrate that the ideas they had at Sega were completely wrong. It is a franchise whose latest installment, Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth, has sold one million copies in its first week. Being a critical and public success that spans 20 years and 23 installments, they also showed that they were wrong at Sega: the Yakuza audience in Japan has historically been mainly female and has had a great impact in the West.
Nagoshi left Sega last October 2021 to create his own company, Nagoshi Studio, with funding from NetEase. Although they are still working on their first video game, it is quite evident that, given the success of Yakuza and the interesting nature of their other games, such as the underrated Binary Domain, Nagoshi Studio will offer us a game that will make executives nervous.
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