Kenichiro Yuji My Life as a King Interview (3)

Kenichiro Yuji, director of My Life as a King (FINAL FANTASY Crystal Chronicles), talks to SQUARE ENIX MEMBERS about his fascination with bread, curry houses and penguin’s.

This interview can be found on Square Enix Members website, but for those of you whom don’t have an account heres the full questions and answers to the final part; part 3 of the interview. The first part of the interview can be read by clicking here. The second part can be read here.

- How did you become involved in this project?

Kenichiro Yuji: I think that I was given the offer since I had previously worked on FRONT MISSION ONLINE with [Fumiaki] Shiraishi, the creator of the original My Life as a King design documents, and [senior producer Toshirou] Tsuchida. I also personally wanted to work on a game like this, so I accepted.

- How do you come up with stories or gameplay ideas? Is there anything in particular that you do to keep your mind creative?

Kenichiro Yuji: The story was not my doing, as that was handled by the scenario writers. As for gameplay ideas, I usually ask myself two questions: “what do I want the player to do” and “how do I want the player to enjoy the game.” Then I try my best to define the answers to these questions. This is definitely the hardest part. Once I’m satisfied with the answers, I try to devise a game system that fit within the applicable parameters, using my past game design experience. All that’s left to do is create the actual game. Experience and good research are your two assets in this phase for creating a high-quality final product, as time is a factor.

When it comes to keeping my mind creative… I play a lot of games. Just playing them, though, isn’t enough. I try to keep an eye out for elements within those games that answer the two questions I’ve mentioned above. The greater the variety of ideas you have, the more you can reference when you are in game production.

- Who do you look up to, or do you have anyone who has influenced your life?

Kenichiro Yuji: My greatest influence is the people I’ve worked with. I believe that I am who I am now because I’ve emulated the work ethics and techniques of my colleagues. Of course, Tsuchida has also been a great influence to me.

I don’t think I could quote any famous words of or words of wisdom spoken by historical figures that truly influenced me.

- What do you like to do when you are not working? What’s your hidden talent and/or hobby?

Kenichiro Yuji: Board games are my hobby. Not electronic games, but ones that use wooden pieces and cardboard play mats. I have nearly 400 games and I can’t fit them all in my house so I keep a lot of them at the office.

In my free time I like to prepare new board/card games for play by cutting out or assembling play pieces, reading instruction manuals, putting cards in sleeves, etc. This takes around 50 percent of my free time.

If I’m not doing those things I’ll usually watch anime, dramas, or movies that I’ve recorded during the week. I also like reading science fiction novels and books about science or history.

- If you hadn’t become involved in the gaming industry, what other profession do you think you would have pursued?

Kenichiro Yuji: I have a Japanese history teaching permit, so I may have been a teacher. I majored in feudal Japan history in university.

- If you could be an adventurer in the game, what race and job would you choose to be?

Kenichiro Yuji: In all honesty, I like summoners most of all. I like the idea of letting my minions fight while I take a rest. If a game has summoner as one of the options for the main character, I would choose it without question.

However, since this game doesn’t have summoners, I would pick black mage out of the four jobs. If magic were to exist, it’d be an exciting job for me to be. White mage would be fine as well, but I don’t think that a job that requires you to care for and rely on others would suit me too well.

To be frank, I would rather play a bad guy. If I didn’t have to be a hero, I would pick the Dark Lord instead.

- Do you think penguins are really stubborn and short-tempered?

Kenichiro Yuji: Do you mean real penguins? I think that they’re cute. I don’t think that they’re stubborn at all. They do seem to trip and fall down a lot, so they may be grumpy.

- Do you have an acute fascination with bread?

Kenichiro Yuji: I personally love curry and wanted to make curry shops instead of bakeries, but… I may have a biased opinion since I’ve never left Japan, but I believe and often hear that Japanese curry is a delicacy, and I wanted to spread my love for it. However, curry shops didn’t really fit the FFCC world, so they didn’t make it into the game. We were going to replace it them with sundries or general goods shops, but we chose to make bakeries instead, since in the end, eating food truly does make you happy and satisfied.

Source: http://member.square-enix.com/na/

Final Fantasy’s WiiWare Debut Postmortem

In the latest issue of Game Developer magazine, Fumiaki Shiraishi conducted a creator-written postmortem on the making of Square Enix’s Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life As a King, the company’s first WiiWare effort.

“Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life As a King was a WiiWare launch title in Japan, and sits somewhere between a strategy game and a god game. In this technically-oriented postmortem, lead programmer Fumiaki Shiraishi shares the ups and downs of implementing scripting for designers, the benefits of small file sizes, and the trouble with overblown AI.” - Game Developer magazine

Below you can find the extracts written by team lead programmer Fumiaki Shiraishi published by Game Developer magazine:

Squirrel Language?
“At Square Enix, we usually allow planners (which are similar to game designers in North America) to use lightweight languages or scripts to implement cutscenes, which we usually refer to as events. Programmers at Square Enix only use assembly, or C, or maybe C++.”

“We knew that My Life as a King was going to be a different kind of game compared to our usual titles. So for our development process, we wanted to have flexibility above all else, and we hoped to gain that by relying on a script language. After a little bit of testing, we decided to use Squirrel.”

“In My Life as a King, all the engine aspects are implemented in C++. This includes graphics, sound, collision detection, camera, and data IO. Everything else, such as AI, user interface, game play, and cutscenes are implemented in Squirrel. The actual main loop and all the transition control is also written in Squirrel.”

“In bytes of code, approximately 89 percent of the code is in Squirrel and 11 percent in C++. In terms of CPU time, our C++ took about 85 to 95 percent. This is reasonable, considering this included matrix calculations, sound, and collision detection.”

“All of our programmers agree that this game would have been completely different if it were not for Squirrel. The programming of My Life as a King required a lot of rewrites and a lot of throwing away. One of the benefits of scripts is that rewriting them is faster and easier. There is also less of a psychological barrier in throwing away code.”

“This actually makes a big difference. I know from experience that Squirrel code feels a lot easier to throw away than C++ code. The result is that I am a lot more open to game design changes when they are needed, and for this game, the small design changes made all the difference.”

Focusing one specific design
“One of the buzz words in the industry is ‘iteration,’ and we definitely tried to iterate parts of our game. However, we spent too much time iterating small parts of the game before we knew exactly what the whole should look like.”

“Very early in the development cycle, for example, we invested a lot of time iterating our battle system and the battle report design. We thought at the time that the game would be fun if the battle reports were interesting. We focused on trying to make the battle reports as short as possible while also fun to read.”

“Two or three months after we thought we were done with the battle system, we finally had the rest of the game in place. That was when we realized that anyone playing this game was not going to read the battle reports.”

“From our play testing, we saw that players read the reports only when they really had to, and even then only very briefly. Rather than needing to be fun, we realized that the reports needed to be easy to read at a glance. We ended up having to redo the battle system from scratch.”

“What we learned the hard way was the importance of being aware of the ‘big picture.’ We wrongly assumed that if the battle reports were fun, then the whole game would be fun. We learned only afterwards that the battle system was only a small part of the player’s experience, and much of the iterating that we did turned out to be wasted.”

“We were fortunate enough to have ample time to iterate some more once we did see the big picture, so iteration did prove to be important. The lesson learned was to not iterate a small piece of the game too early and just for the sake of iterating.”

Experience:
“WiiWare, like many other download platforms, offers a market for medium-sized games—not as large as boxed games, but not as small as cell phone games or some of the simpler casual games. As the industry moves forward, the lines separating all these types of games will blur.”

“As game developers, our challenge is to create the right game for the right platform for the right market, but in order to do that we need the skills, the infrastructure, and a development process flexible enough to adapt quickly. I am hoping that our project was a small step in the right direction.”

Source: Game Developer magazine

Kenichiro Yuji My Life as a King Interview (2)

***NOTE: There may exist some My Life as a King-related spoilers in this section of Q&A***

Kenichiro Yuji, director of My Life as a King (FINAL FANTASY Crystal Chronicles), talks to SQUARE ENIX MEMBERS about the world of My Life as a King and the FINAL FANTASY Crystal Chronicles franchise. This interview can be found on Square Enix Members website, but for those of you whom don’t have an account heres the full questions and answers to part 2 of the interview. The first part of the interview can be read by clicking here. The Final Part, Part 3 is yet to published.

Q. What did you look to for inspiration during development? What was your influence while directing this game?

Kenichiro Yuji: At first we looked at several sandbox games, but I was never a fan of the genre. In the end, no element from those games made it into this title.

In latter stages of development I started to draw inspiration from strategy and empire-building games, both genres that I like very much. You can see their influence in the ability to create diverse buildings once you clear dungeons, which can be compared to the realm expansion and economy building common in strategy games. However, one thing that we made sure to do was to try and smoothen the high learning curve and complex schemes that the strategy genre is notorious for, which tends to turn off a lot of gamers, including myself. I think we’ve succeeded in that regard and our title should look and feel much different from those games.

Q. Are there any elements, story or character-wise, that overlap from the other CRYSTAL CHRONICLES titles?

Kenichiro Yuji: The architek skill that lets you build structures in your kingdom is derived from the manifestation of thought into reality, which is the main theme of FFCC.

As for characters, Stiltzkin the moogle is the only one from other CRYSTAL CHRONICLES title to appear in this title.

Other than that, if you look at the information displayed for travelers who stay at your inns, you’ll find that they hail from locations introduced in the GameCube version of FFCC.

Q. There are frog footprints on some of the walls. Is there really a frog somewhere in the kingdom?

Kenichiro Yuji: A certain important character has a liking for frogs in the story, and that is the reason it became the motif of the kingdom’s emblem. No actual frogs appear in the game, but the bulletin board in the center of your kingdom is frog-themed.

Q. What is elementite composed of? Is it the same material as the crystals or is it something else?

Kenichiro Yuji: Elementite is actually different from crystals. Elementite recovered from dungeons have a connection to one of the major characters in the story. Their connection is revealed as you progress through the game’s story.

Q. Tell us about your favorite characters and scenes and why you like them.

Kenichiro Yuji: My favorite character is Pavlov. I think the way he trips and falls down is very cute. I probably also like him because he’s the only one out of the many characters I suggested that actually made it into the game.

Q. Are there any plans to continue the story of the “little king”?

Kenichiro Yuji: We haven’t decided if we would yet, but I can tell you is that this isn’t the last title of the FFCC series. It would be nice if we could make a sequel, though.

Source: http://member.square-enix.com/na/