TIL how a game developer's obsession with karaoke paid off
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TAGS: gamedesign devstory
Game Informer did a interview about Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio, and Ryosuke Horii's history interest me.
Ryosuke Horii directed Yakuza: Like A Dragon, and now he’s directing its sequel. There's actually a LOT of Yakuza games out there. But Like a Dragon was the first that made the series wildly popular to the West.
I like this story because we have a lot of 'absolute rules' when it comes to game design. It seems like such a ironic twist, because we have rules about simply playing.
Essentially, Horii obsessed over a mini-game. And that obsession paid off.
Horii’s life’s work is not the Yakuza series. It’s karaoke. And he has the stats to prove it.
Horii keeps a spreadsheet of all the songs he can sing at karaoke. Once a year, he prints out the most up-to-date version and carries it around with him. Figuring he might need it today, he printed out a new one just in case. When he hands it over, I look over the meticulous details, spread across a staggering 7,964 songs.
“[During my job interview] they asked me about myself. I said, ‘My hobby is karaoke,’” Horii told Denfaminicogamer in 2018 (translation via Carrie Williams). “When I had the final interview with Nagoshi, he said, ‘A lot of guys have karaoke as a hobby,’ which is, of course, true. So I had to find some way of showing him, ‘I’m not like those other guys.’
“So I showed him my karaoke list I showed you before, saying, ‘Other guys don’t do this,’ with a bit of a smile, and I was offered the job.”
... Initially, he says coworkers criticized him for going too far with the minigame – at the time, it was uncharacteristic to have the generally-stoic protagonist, Kiryu, doing something so goofy. But his instincts proved correct; it became one of the most popular features in the Yakuza series and went a long way in humanizing Kiryu.
via The Future Of Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio
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Tagged: gamedesign