yuuji horii w slime

Related posts:

Yuuji Horii Gives His Thoughts on Dragon Quest and Smartphone Development

Posted 17:33 EST on 23DEC2013 by: indie navi news staff in features » , , ,

An interview with Dragon Quest mastermind Yuuji Horii recently appeared on Famitsu.com’s mobile / smartphone games blogSumage Revolution. The interview was conducted by Takehiro Andou, games producer and general manager of one of Square Enix’s mobile development departments. Also in attendance was Noriyoshi Fujimoto, producer of Dragon Quest VIII for smartphones. Below are some of the highlights.

noriyoshi fujimoto w caption
yuuji horii w caption
takehiro andou w caption

Andou: [...] As someone involved in the smartphone games industry, and as a fan of games, I was thrilled to be able to play Dragon Quest on a smartphone. According to reports, all of the Dragon Quest main titles, from 1 to 8, will be playable on smartphones, and there’s even Dragon Quest Monsters Light, an entirely new title coming out for mobile platforms. On top of that, Dragon Quest X will soon be playable on tablets. [...] Could you shed a little light on the meaning and thinking behind all of these Dragon Quest titles being made available for smartphones? In your opinion, Mr. Horii, is it that smartphones have come to be the “games device” most people are familiar with?

Horii: It’s not that smartphones are a “games device”, it’s just that they’re a device that nearly everyone has. That said, it is becoming the norm among the younger generation to play games on smartphones. That being the case, the idea behind this project was to make it so that these games could also be played on the smartphones everybody has. In actuality, it was a good while ago that we began developing Dragon Quest titles for smartphones.

Fujimoto: We actually began developing the prototype of Dragon Quest VIII for smartphones about three years ago. It was when we showed the prototype to Mr. Horii that development of the Dragon Quest series officially got underway.

Fujimoto (discussing making Dragon Quest VIII available for smartphones): Since at first it was in the spirit of research, we thought we’d see if we could port Dragon Quest VIII, the highest-spec of the older titles, to smartphones. At that point, we were able to make a graphically faithful port. However, since there’s no controller on a smartphone, we tried various user interfaces, including the idea of a physical, plug-in controller. We also tried both horizontal and vertical screen presentation. In the course of a year of trial-and-error testing, we realized it would really surprise users to discover the game was easy to control and enjoy in vertical mode, and with Mr. Horii’s input arrived at the UI you see in the final product.

Andou: I also used to make console games, so I had my doubts that games could be fun to play with just a touch interface. I know it’s still a matter of debate for a lot of people, but I’ve come to be of the mind that full touch interface titles can be played and enjoyed just as well as titles that use a physical controller. How do you feel about this issue, Mr. Horii?

Horii: I think people who use smartphones on a daily basis are used to touch interfaces. Those people probably have a preference for touch interfaces. Without actually seeing how people are reacting to Dragon Quest VIII‘s touch interface, I can’t say if they’re enjoying it for certain, but we put a lot of focus into making the title easy to play with a touch interface.

Andou: [...] Mr. Horii, what do you feel smartphones do a good job of making easy to understand? And what do you feel they can make difficult?

Horii: Well, with Dragon Quest VIII, I don’t really feel there was anything that was made difficult to understand, but there were things that were difficult to communicate to players. We put a lot of effort into making the game so that once you play it you’ll understand how the controls work, but it was still a title made to be played with physical buttons, so there can be some frustration for players adjusting to the lack of buttons. Bearing in mind how we can keep this frustration for players to a minimum is really important. [...] When we made the first Dragon Quest, the Famicom library was almost entirely action games. We really wanted to show people that the Famicom could be home to enjoyable RPGs, too. Times have changed and these days there are a lot of people who don’t own any game consoles, and do all of their gaming on smartphones. Like with the Famicom, we want to show those people that smartphones can be home to fun, real-deal RPGs.

Andou: Mr. Horii, you’ve been on the front lines witnessing the evolution of hardware since the era when PC games ruled the roost; do you feel that smartphones are having the same impact that, say, the Famicom had? Or do you feel they represent something different?

Horii: I can’t really put it into words, but I feel that the impact smartphones are having is in some way different from the impact the Famicom had. Smartphones are telephones that can also be used to surf the Web and check email. They’re a window to the world; true all-in-one devices.

Andou: This is kind of a simple question, but Mr. Horii, do you use a smartphone?

Horii: Mainly for surfing the internet and checking my email. I play Mushroom Garden and Battle Cats, sometimes though. (Laughs.)

Andou: What was it about those two titles that got your attention?

Horii: Probably how you can play for little bits at a time. Also, since they were made to be smartphone games, the controls are really good.

Andou: [...] Recently, a read an interview with you, Mr. Horii, conducted by [the author and manga writer] Kazuo Koike, and I was surprised to see you say, “In the past, games weren’t free, so it was really important they be enjoyable. Recently, there’s a movement toward games that are free to play and are just intended to be distractions. It’s really changing the way games are made.”

Horii: I said something like that? (Everyone laughs.) [...] Pricing games has gotten to be difficult. With all of the games that are free to play, or that cost around 100 yen, games that cost a few thousand yen seem expensive. Even so, if we were to make a game like Dragon Quest VIII really cheap up front and to charge for items… just doesn’t sit well with me. I don’t want to do that. [...] Now smartphone games stores only have “free to play” and “not free to play” as categories. I think it would be better if the games that aren’t free to play were broken down into two categories: games that cost a bit more up front, but that don’t hit users with additional charges for things like items, and games that are around 100 yen or so, but ask users to pay for additional items and the like later on. This would be easier for users to understand, and it would be easier to convince users to make a purchase. If 100 yen games and 2,000 yen games are lined up in the same place, it’s the natural human response to feel like the latter are really expensive.

Fujimoto: Games that charge for items are often made so that you basically can’t get to the ending and it becomes extremely difficult to progress if you don’t purchase items, and end up costing a pretty penny. With something like Dragon Quest VIII, users know what it is, and they know how much enjoyment they can expect to get out of the title. With an original title, it would be pretty tough to set up a profitable business model.

Horii: Users are going to balk if they see some unknown title asking for 2,000 yen, in the smartphone games world.

Andou: I started out making games for home consoles that cost several thousand yen up front, and now I’ve moved into making games that are free to play. My feeling has been that “pay now, play as much as you want, forever” -type titles aren’t going to go away.

Horii: Games that are free to play, but that make it impossible to reach the end without making purchases are going to instead cause players stress. I’m concerned that, for that reason, these games will make a lot of people just not want to play games at all. [...] You can spend 1,800 yen to see a two-hour film, or you can spend 1,800 yen to buy a smartphone game from which you can get many days’ worth of time of enjoyment. Yet the 1,800 yen game feels “expensive”. It’s mysterious, that feeling.

Andou: [...] I’m changing the subject a bit, but as a fan of yours, Mr. Horii, I’d love to play a title that you created for smartphones from the ground up. It’s probably a bit sudden to be asking about new titles, but if you’ve had any ideas for games that use smartphones’ phone capabilities or internet functions, I’d love to hear about them. For example, maybe a game like The Portopia Serial Murder Case, but you would have to use your smartphone’s telephone capabilities to solve a case. Do you have any ideas like that?

Horii: Nothing comes immediately to mind. (Laughs.) However, I do think there are modes of play unique to smartphones that would be a lot of fun. Right now, we’re porting Dragon Quest titles 1 through 8 to smartphones, and since these games were originally for home consoles, there are parts that feel a bit forced. However,if we made a game designed specifically for smart phones, it would be a game with a very different approach, to be sure. [...] Smartphones are operated by touch, which leads pretty neatly to investigation, I think. For that reason, I think you could probably make a pretty interesting adventure game. Rather than moving a cursor over the area you’d like to investigate, you just tap where you’d like to investigate, or where you’d like your avatar to move. Thinking about the interface, I bet you could make a pretty deep adventure game.

Horii, discussing game systems: From a worldwide perspective, there are a lot of light gamers in Japan, whereas in other countries you see more of a hardcore fan base. [...]

Andou: [...] Is that the reasoning behind the “super light” in Dragon Quest Monsters Super Light? I was thinking it was a pretty unique name.

Horii: In the home console versions of Dragon Quest Monsters, you put a lot of time into raising your monsters, but in Super Light that element has been largely cut, so we figured we’d add “super light” to the title. (Laughs.) [...] Right now the staff and I are doing a lot of trial-and-error development and making good progress, so we hope everyone is looking forward to playing Super Light.

Horii, discussing the upcoming release of Dragon Quest X for tablets: There’s a strong element of taking on a new challenge, with Dragon Quest X. With Dragon Quest VIII, the challenge was in seeing how to implement a UI suited to smartphones. With Dragon Quest X, the challenge is in seeing how it will work out using cloud-based implementation. [...]

Andou: [...] Now that numbered titles in the main series have appeared on smartphones, does this mean we can expect to see future, numbered titles appear on smartphones?

Horii: Well, it’s not really as simple as that. At present we’re leaning toward no smartphone release for Dragon Quest XI. There are still a large number of hurdles to overcome to make a smartphone release practical.

Horii, wrapping up the interview: With the smartphone-related announcements we’ve made, the thing I most want to stress is we’d like for people who aren’t gamers to be able to enjoy games. The Dragon Quest series’ titles are the full, robust games. We’d like for longtime fans of the series to enjoy these ports, as well as people who are new to the series or who have never played these titles before. I still can’t say for certain that smartphone users are interested in playing large, console-like titles, so we’re going to have to see how smartphone users react to Dragon Quest on their devices. This is one more challenge we’re taking on.

News and image source: Famitsu.com

Image of Yuuji Horii from Tiny Cartridge