It’s clear that Final Fantasy 14’s producer and director, Naoki Yoshida, is in it for the love of the game. As reported by Automaton and GamesRadar, in a recent joint interview at the Final Fantasy 14 Fan Festival in Tokyo, Yoshida went so far as to contemplate what would happen to the game in the event of his firing from Square Enix, or even his death.
On the lighter side of those potential futures, Yoshida quipped that if he were ever fired from Square Enix, he’d try to start over from the bottom all over again as a contract developer on Final Fantasy 14. Failing that, Yoshida would be content with a dignified retirement as one of those players who’s always complaining about the game to its developers—you know the type. I don’t know if I’ve ever loved a videogame as much as Naoki Yoshida loves Final Fantasy 14.
Yoshida’s musing about his own death, meanwhile, was surprising and strangely moving. Though the 50 year-old developer hopes to live for another “20 or 30 years,” he stated that “Even if I were to collapse right here and now, my team would be just fine.
“There may not be another person who can talk about the expansion for two hours in front of a huge audience at the Tokyo Dome like me, but I have no doubt that my team can deliver the same information and same amount of excitement.”
Final Fantasy 14 just seems to have this effect on veteran Japanese RPG developers. The series’ original creator, Hironobu Sakaguchi, recently admitted that, for his first few months playing the game, Final Fantasy 14 “took up about 80%” of his waking hours. I just hope these guys remember to stand up and take breaks every now and then—maybe FF14 needs those cheeky Nintendo Wii loading screens that tell you to go outside for a bit.
