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An Interview with Yuji Naka (Phantasy Star Online) [message #285617] Wed, 11 March 2015 18:40
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Year: 2001 

Yuji Naka

Managing Director at Prope Ltd.

(At time of interview: Managing Director at Sonic Team Ltd.)

Profile

Joined Sega Enterprises, Ltd. in 1984. Moved to the USA after creating worldwide-hit Sonic the Hedgehog in 1991 before returning to Japan to launch to Sega Saturn. Became Managing Director of Sonic Team in 2000. After several development studios merged with Sega in 2004, Naka took on various other roles including creative officer. Leaves Sega in 2006 to found Prope Ltd. Awarded the title of “Sega Creative Fellow” in 2006.

Phantasy Star Online (PSO): the world’s first home-console-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). There was plenty of pre-release concern as to whether or not it would make its scheduled release date in the year 2000. But this was all forgotten once things got going and the game’s servers were frequently bursting at the seams with players. We interviewed the driving force behind the game: Mr. Yuji Naka.

 

Who on earth would play a game for 50 hours?!

 

PSO seems to be having quite the successful launch, are you happy with how things are going?

Honestly, I was expecting slightly better sales. I just feel like it could’ve done a little better, but at the same time I’ve been astounded by the number of players who are online. 20,000 people every single night!

20,000!

I know, it’s unreal. There aren’t many titles that even sell 20,000 copies these days, never mind have 70% of the consumers who bought the game online at once. Having 30% of consumers active is on the favourable side of things, with 10% or 20% being standard. This means even if you sell 100,000 units, you only have around 10 or 20,000 active users. Then if you have all of them trying to log on at the same time, that number falls by 2-3,000. I believe PSO has sold around 180,000 copies and we’ve currently got 100,000 people online! I would’ve thought people would be tempted to play other games or, you know, maybe have a day off once in a while.

I can imagine there must be plenty of people struggling to keep their lives together thanks to PSO.

It’s a little odd to say this as the developer, but we were really expecting people to get tired of the game 2 months in. (laughs) Recently, Yuji Horii said that Dragon Quest VII has 50 hours of game play in it. When I heard that my first thought was “Who on earth would play a game for 50 hours?!” and yet amongst PSO players 100 hours of playtime is fairly common with many having played for 2-300 hours in total. It’s really something. Up until now we had no idea how long people were playing our games for.

So to put it mildly, you’re pretty surprised then?

Very! Not so much with the sales, but the playtime and the way they’re playing the game is crazy. We made various assumptions about playtime during development and used those as a basis when setting various parameters and deciding how leveling up would work. If one were to play for 2 or 3 hours each day then you’d have racked up 100 hours in 30 days… that’s 100 hours! We figured partway through development that there was no way anyone would play that much so we decided to tweak the game’s balance a little. When we were testing the game there were admittedly a few players that played the game non-stop, but we didn’t think that would ever be the norm. Our expectations were that we’d maybe see the first level-100 players after a month or so but we already had people playing on “Very Hard” 1-2 weeks in!

The Trials and Tribulations of Sonic Team

I imagine you had plenty to think about when setting up the servers.

We were constantly wondering how many we would need for the game’s launch. Initially we planned to prepare enough for 40,000 players, which we were then told was too many, but how are you meant to know? No one had ever embarked on a project like this before and sure it would be embarrassing if the servers were totally empty, but we had no such problems when the game launched. No one anticipated it would resonate so strongly with consumers. I was certain that after the free-trial period finished, the players would drop off straight away. I mean, if you’ve already gotten 100 hours out of the game, why wouldn’t you? But the first day for payment of subscription fees came and went and instead of falling, the number of users grew. I had Mr. ISAO increase the number of servers, but they were still full to the brim. None of us were quite sure what to do next.

What was the situation on release day?

We had so many people trying to log on that it caused the server hardware to crash. We got them back up and running by 8am that morning, just as Sonic Team were scheduled to do a fan appreciation event in Akihabara. The staff were all pretty concerned as to whether or not they would be able to demo the game on stage as planned. Afterwards, everyone headed back to the company, for the best really since it wasn’t exactly the best time to be gauging fan reaction! (laughs) We’d had a trial version up and running previously so we already had a general grasp of player opinion anyway.

Did you get a lot of feedback from the trial version?

Yes, it was really helpful actually. We did our best to reflect the in-depth reports we received in the final product. I can’t imagine what kind of issues we would’ve encountered if we hadn’t done the trial version. There are plenty of online games where the retail product is exactly the same as the trial version, with none of the bugs fixed and it ultimately takes 3-6 months for them to then patch it and turn it into something playable. However, we managed to accomplish all of that with the just the trial version. Without question the worst period for us was the beginning of January as two pretty serious bugs were discovered. What’s more, not ever user was experiencing the bugs and there were a whole host of factors that affected them, such as the player’s internet provider.

What were your thoughts on the issue of players randomly losing items?

People were pretty annoyed about that. There was actually an ongoing debate within Sega about items vanishing when the game crashed. Ultimately we figured that even if you lost an item it would be a funny story so we left it as it was. We all agreed that this was the kind of game PSO was and just ran with it. After all, we estimated it would only affect 1 in 10,000 players and it’s not as if your level is affected, so theoretically one should have no problems recovering. Of course, it might come as a blow on normal difficulty, but I was certain that hard and very hard players would have little trouble bouncing back. There was also the possibility of getting weapons from other players that were even better than your lost one.

I suppose that also caused an increase in communication between players.

Admittedly I did ask the team if things would really be ok like this right up until the game launched.

One would think that you might need to put a little more consideration into player care?

It’s a difficult issue. As long as the game isn’t maintenance-free then it’s a little hard to do. Players are paying a subscription fee to play and obviously there are plenty of people who are angry about items they’ve lost, but I’m certain there are just as many players who enjoy the game in spite of losing items. Even if they were dissatisfied with an online game, Japanese players haven’t been able to voice their opinions until recently due to the language barrier. PSO of course eliminates this problem which has completely opened the floodgates. Sure there are players who appreciate it whenever we do anything to improve the game, but we get a lot more complaints than praise. It’s a little tough to know how to react.

We did notice all the feedback on the Sonic Team website.

It might be a result of the varying ages of PSO’s players. We imagined that it would only be university students and working adults playing, but there are a substantial number of primary and middle school students online as well. If one person posts on a message board then a good 100,000 people end up reading their complaint and everyone starts to feel like they have the same issues. It’s no use deleting said comments because then people will have something to say about that too. I’ve definitely never been this stressed out by a game post-release. But it’s not all bad, there are reasons to be happy. We get so many e-mails that if I don’t check my inbox for a week or so I end up with 2-3,000 unread messages.

Do you read each and every one?

Yes. Although I didn’t read any last week so I now have backlog of 2000 e-mails or so. Can you believe those numbers? We’ve received an exceedingly large number of e-mails addressed to Sonic Team post-launch, many of them complaints. (laughs) Once you respond to a few e-mails you just keep getting more and more. New posts appear on the forum at an alarming rate too. Of course, we do have someone checking all of this.

Have you heard what other developers think of PSO? Do you imagine that people will use it a reference point when making new online games?

I’ve been told “You were brave to release it during the holiday period.” a lot. As for it being used as a reference point, my hope is that as long as online games continue to exist that people will keep it in mind. I personally love making the inaugural entry in series, but I strongly dislike having the make the follow up. I feel like that sums up Sega as a company—the first game is incredible, but the sequel fails to illicit the same feelings. The company is structured in such a way that the games end up like that. Of course it would be nice if I myself were able to make top-quality sequels.

The Online World of Phantasy Star

Could you explain how Phantasy Star’s world was chosen as the setting for this game?

There’s a real lack of sci-fi RPGs and I just felt that Phantasy Star was the standout leader in that genre. I also have an emotional attachment to the series as I programmed the original and its sequel on my own. Back then I really wanted to make that kind of game, I even made 3D maps of the dungeons. There was also the fact that, overseas, Phantasy Star is even more popular than Dragon Quest. For the past 10 years, whenever we were interviewed by overseas magazines or talked with non-Japanese players, they always asked the same question: “Aren’t you going to make anymore Phantasy Star titles?” This planted the idea in my head that if we were going to make an online game, we should go with Phantasy Star. When Sega decided to attach a modem to the Dreamcast, we started discussing idea of creating an online game and once I was certain that Phantasy Star had sales potential, I started the development of PSO. This was only a temporary name for the game at the time, but we were fairly certain it would stick.

Were there no other settings you considered?

Not really. I essentially steam rolled the project through with no resistance. I made the first game with a lady at Sega named Rieko Kodama[1] and dropped her a note to say I’d be making this new entry in the series.

 [1] Creator of Phantasy Star, Magic Knight Rayearth and Skies of Arcadia.

There are still plenty of fans of Phantasy Star, especially the character Nei[2]

Indeed. I suppose they were primary school students who played the original and have stuck with the series ever since. What is it now, 13 years ago? Really makes me feel my age. I must have worked on nearly ever genre by now, although people still constantly tell me that I only do action.

[2] One of Phantasy Star II’s heroines. Many re-creations of her have been spotted in PSO.

When you say Yuji Naka the first thing that pops into people’s mind is Sonic after all.

Even though I’ve made a whole host of different games… I must’ve made around 25 titles by now. Sonic probably sold the most but I really hope that PSO does well. Then again, the state of the game as it is now is somewhat scary so I might just settle for what I’ve got.

The game has been released in both Europe and America, what has the response been like so far?

Not that different to Japan really. There are hardcore fans over there too. I was actually in the US when it launched and one shop had already sold all their stock the day before release. The reaction in Asia has been really positive too. Online games also tend to become more and more popular due to word of mouth so there’s every chance things will only continue improving from here on out.

Were there any parts of the game that didn’t make the final cut?

We originally planned to have a few more characters in the game. Originally we had male and female characters for all the game’s races, but it just wasn’t possible in the end due to the development schedule. We might’ve been able to fit them in if the game’s release date had been March.

Even more characters than now!

Yeah, I hoped if we provided the player with plenty of options that we’d see all kinds of characters in the game. There were a few vocal fans that complained to me “It’s impossible to make Alis[3]!” At which point I realised “You know what, they’re right.” (laughs) We also planned to include an auction-like system and a player ID search engine, which had to be cut much to my disappointment. Originally we had actually designed the game so that it would only have one dungeon. Sonic Team figured that there would be a lot of MMORPG newcomers who could get lost easily if the game’s scale was too ambitious. What’s more, the bigger your game world is, the less chance one has of bumping into other players. That being said, the game wound up being pretty packed regardless. Honestly I wish we could have had another 6 months for development, things were just starting to get interesting.

 [3] The female protagonist of Phantasy Star.

That’s somewhat of a shame for the players.

The sad truth is that there would have been no end to it. I’d just started to think that the game was getting pretty interesting, but that’s a pattern developers tend to fall into quite often. It doesn’t matter how good it actually is, after you’ve been staring at the same game for a long time even a masterpiece will seem average. In my case I’d been working on the project for a solid year, but I still feel like we were able to pay attention to even the finest of details. Having nine playable characters feels a perfect fit for the game. There are plenty of developers who are unable to draw boundaries, continuing to make the same game for years and yet still fail to put out an enjoyable product. I guess it just shows that there’s no limit to human greed.

It’s become a trademark of Sega’s to do special events during holidays. I thought the Valentine’s Day one was especially steamy.

All the team names changed to “Valentine”. (laughs) I think those events are when it feels the most like an online game. Back when we made Christmas NiGHTS, we set the game to change based on the Saturn’s timer, but it feels more special with online games as everyone’s able to experience that moment at the same time.

There were plenty of parties that only contained two people.

It really makes you sick to your stomach doesn’t it? (laughs) I actually wanted to do a New Year’s countdown too, but it wouldn’t have made it in time.

Moving On: Uncharted Territory

Was there anything that was particularly troubling during PSO’s development?

The sheer number of internet providers on this planet. You’d expect people would use a few big companies but, much to my surprise, there were plenty of players signed up with fairly small providers. The more minor companies aren’t able to deal with as much traffic so it can’t be easy for people signed up with them. We had to personally call all the providers in order to get them to help us fix any issues. Not just in Japan, but worldwide. We’ve been doing this since ChuChu Rocket! and there’s been around 180 companies, mostly cable companies, whose customers can’t play online. If it’s a PC game then the manufacturer can put out new drivers and Microsoft a patch which solves everything, but obviously that’s not possible with the Dreamcast. This leaves the ball firmly in our court on issues like this. It took a lot to get some providers to improve their service to the point where it was satisfactory.

It can’t be easy having to deal with the online side of things as well.

People kept complaining that Windows is slow, but I personally think Microsoft is a top-quality company. It’s them who made online features possible in the first place. Although for a Dreamcast title we have to make everything from the ground up. Sure, Windows CE is pre-installed on the Dreamcast and things might’ve been easier had we used that, but speed would have been a big issue. The game would’ve run far too slowly which is why there’s no way we’ll ever release a PC version. Even a high-spec PC would struggle to run it. If you had a high-end graphics card, a Pentium 4 processor with 1.5GHz and all you needed to render was a simple polygon with a nice-looking texture on it then it might run I guess.

So is there no chance of us one day seeing a PC release?

Honestly, I feel the game should stay on home consoles. Not to say there hasn’t been talk of a PC port, after all it’s done so well in Japan it’s only natural that people would start wondering if it could be ported. And with the recent announcement that production of the Dreamcast has come to an end, lots of people have begun to debate what platform it should be released on next.

What about the PlayStation 2?

From a purely technical standpoint, it would be impossible to reproduce the same graphics. Having it run smoothly while being connected online would be pretty tough. I mean, for a game to run well you’d expect high-spec hardware to be a given, right? In that respect, the Dreamcast was a really well-balanced machine. Of course there are certain things we’ve only been able to accomplish because we’ve been working with the hardware for 2 years. The Dreamcast was made with online in mind which is why everything went so smoothly, but I don’t think that would be the same on other consoles. Especially with the PS2, consumers would need to go out and buy a modem separately which is going to greatly limit the number of players who actually pick up your game. Even with the Dreamcast, which has a modem attached, we only had 10-20% of players playing online. If you suddenly raise the barrier to entry by asking people to buy a modem separately then things aren’t going to go well. The debate at Sega on whether or not to put a modem in the Dreamcast started a good 5 years ago. The overwhelming opinion was that you already have enough obstacles in the way of playing an online game: telephone bills, provider fees and game subscription fees. If you then ask the customer to buy a modem on top of all of that, there’s no way they’re going to buy your game. Equally, you’d probably be shouted at by your parents if you pulled an Ethernet cable all the way to your room. To make things a little easier we decided to include the modem and also run an internet service where phone calls where free. I know is this an issue that isn’t just limited to Sega. The Xbox for example has 100BASE[4] as standard. There aren’t a great deal of people who actually have access to that kind of speed. I’ve bought plenty of different PCs over the years but I don’t have any hubs or routers. No ISDN either, I just use the phone line. And if I don’t have this stuff then I find it hard to imagine your average consumer having it. Really PSO was only possible thanks to the Dreamcast.

 [4] A 100mb/s LAN standard known as “FastEthernet”.

I’m sure Dreamcast owners will be happy to hear that.

We obviously have development kits for consoles other than the Dreamcast, but I’ve always found the other consoles to be a little lacking in horsepower. Of course it does depend on your technique to some extent. Regarding the PS2, I actually thought it had some great potential when it first launched but my interest had already faded the day after its release. Admittedly I did turn it back on 2 or 3 days later…

What do you think the future of online games will look like?

I imagine they might disappear altogether for a while after PSO. Lots of people say “They’ll catch on once FF comes out.” “Future games will come bundled with a modem.” but I’m inclined to think it’s still early days for the genre. I doubt there’ll be any new titles this year and who knows what state the Dreamcast will be in the year after that. It’s a real shame considering how up to date with current technology the Dreamcast is.

Any thoughts regarding a sequel?

Plenty! I don’t think there’s ever been a game where people were asking for a sequel as fast as PSO.

Would it be possible to add more characters to the game?

You mean like an expansion? It would be possible with PSO but we wouldn’t be able to add any new features. The console isn’t capable of downloading files and so we’re unable to add any new data to the game. We might be better off just making PSO2 with new lobbies and dungeons but that would require a lot of time and effort. The final decision would be mine, but I’m honestly not sure what to do. I know full well the players want more content. But it would take around 3-4 months to make one new dungeon so we may be better off just making 2.

The players’ greed knows no bounds!

A little worrying isn’t it. (laughs) Whether to put at 2 or an expansion by the end of the year—that’s the question. The Dreamcast is no longer in production, but we’re still making plenty of content so there’s a chance we could show some of that off somewhere. There’s also part of me which thinks making expansions would be better than putting out a sequel too. That’s what EverQuest does after all. Endlessly updating the game and yet the players stick with it. That could be a good way to go but then we’d be stuck making the same thing for eternity. I personally don’t ever want to stop making new titles.

The Future

The game industry is infamously prone to rapid change, what are Sonic Team’s plans from here on out?

Back in the day, everyone thought there’d be some kind of sea change when we hit the 21st century but everything’s the same as it was. I thought we’d be driving hover cars or running through tubes. I’m pretty sure it was Osamu Tezuka who was known for drawing hover cars and I want to take inspiration from him by creating the next big futuristic thing. Hover cars are of course originally based on automobiles, but cars weren’t made for practical reasons. People invented them to have fun because driving is so enjoyable. Likewise, aero planes and their siblings were all born because man wanted to take flight, not to get around easier, but to have fun. I don’t want to get into a debate about whether or not hover cars will ever be invented, all I know is I’m positive that the future will be born from fun. Sega at its core is a company that thrives on fun and making the next big amusements of the future. Something similar to a hover car. The Dreamcast recently halted production, but this could well be the chance we’ve been waiting for to making something really compelling. The Sega Saturn and Megadrive all had fairly low-key endings to their lifecycles, but I’m expecting the Dreamcast to go out with a bang. Although I’m fully aware that Dreamcast owners aren’t exactly in the best of spirits, I know I’ve definitely been down lately. Sega first entered the console market in 1983 with the SG1000 and I joined the company in April 1984—less than a year after the system’s launch. This means, in total, I’ve been involved in the console business for 17 years non-stop. Needless to say, I shed a few tears when I heard the news. But ultimately we have to change with the times; it’s entirely possible that the 21st century will mark the end of home consoles. Games have been lacking in creativity recently after all and the industry really needs to move on or risk stagnation. Sega could move onto something even more interesting, it’s not as though losing the Dreamcast means we’ll become boring overnight after all. I hope we keep making the absurd games we’re known for and fingers crossed I’ll be at the heart of that.

Yuji Naka: Creative Powerhouse

I have fond memories of Naka saying at Sonic Team’s fan appreciation event held in Akihabara in 2000, “I’ve been obsessed with a game where you roll around a certain blob.” The game he was referencing was Kirby Tilt ‘n’ Tumble—one of the first games he’d played from start to finish in a long time. When we brought this up during our interview, he mentioned that “We were actually planning on putting a tilt sensor in the Dreamcast controller and making a NiGHTS sequel that utilised that function. However, after struggling to get the sensor to an adequate level, the project was eventually scrapped. Naka seemed much more passionate when talking about the hardware/development side of things than he did during our interview. While he may have a different position within Sega compared to the past, it’s clear that his creative spirit still burns strong.

He had a hectic schedule of interviews after ours, but took the time to add one last word: “I have my own character, by the way.” Who knows, you might bump into a hunter named “NAKA” in game some day.

(Published in Nice Games Vol. 6 2001)


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