Final Fantasy 14’s director has found clever ways to help keep Final Fantasy 11 alive

“When it comes to MMORPGs, spending money on advertising and PR has the effect of retaining more players, but this is a difficult concept for someone who has not been exposed to the online gaming industry,” says Yoshida. It is often said that money should not be spent without an explicit profit plan, but the opposite is true when managing a monthly MMORPG subscription, where retaining players is the “profit.” On the other hand, the hard part about MMORPG is the business that doing nothing leads to a decrease in player retention, which means reduced revenue. “

In fact, one of Yoshida’s biggest suggestions for improving Final Fantasy 11 experience involved the importance of making returning fans feel like they never traveled.

“Another discussion we had was what we could do for returning players who would like to rejoin the community after a long absence,” Yoshida says. “FFXI was released during the golden age of the MMORPGs, and many are considering it FFXI as a place where they can ‘come home to’. However, I guessed that the players would return to FFXI all alone and end up logging off without being reunited with anyone, so I requested a system to help players reconnect with others. “

Yet even such efforts can only achieve so much. It may be loved by many, but Final Fantasy 11 is still a line item in the Square Enix budget report. It often requires creative solutions to keep the game’s cost / profit ratio where it needs to be. Fortunately, Yoshida has found some really clever ways to hide and minimize the cost of the game.

“In terms of profitable operation, hiring server engineers and other staff to work solely on FFXI around the clock all year round would increase his expenses, ”says Yoshida. “So in Creative Business Unit III, engineering fees are expensed under FFXIVwhile FFXI team can submit proposals for tasks that require engineers. Once a proposal has been reviewed and approved, we get the programmers to estimate the cost and then have a discussion with them. If we asked them to focus on FFXI for three months, for example, so FFXI would only incur costs for those three months. This allows us to keep costs down and is one of the benefits of monitoring two MMORPGs in our division. “

It’s rare to hear about the director of an incredibly successful MMO using the game’s profits to help keep another MMO going, but it’s honestly just the kind of person Yoshida seems to be. He’s a big MMO fan who respects the history of the genre, the Final Fantasy franchises and games in general. Although he may admit to retaining his creative input Final Fantasy 11 to a minimum, it is not surprising that he is still trying to find ways to ensure that the game lives on as long as possible.