Interview: Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii’s developers maintain the mindset of “plain ol’ guys,” and that’s what makes the series so genuine 

SEGA will release Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii, the latest entry in the Yakuza series, on February 21 for the PC (Steam), PS4/PS5 and Xbox One/Xbox Series X|S. 

The upcoming title was showcased at Tokyo Game Show 2024, where AUTOMATON interviewed the Like a Dragon series’ executive producer Masayoshi Yokoyama, chief producer Hiroyuki Sakamoto and producer Ryosuke Horii. We talked to them about the success of Infinite Wealth, what’s new in Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii, as well as their down-to-earth approach to making games. 

We put our all into Infinite Wealth, and we have no regrets 

─Before we dive into your upcoming title, I’d like to hear your impressions of Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth. I believe reviews and sales were strong, but looking back, what would you say you did well? Or, on the contrary, do you have any regrets? 

Masayoshi Yokoyama (hereafter Yokoyama): 
Let’s see, the things we did well and the things we regret… Is there even anything I regret? I don’t think so. 

─Oh? 

Everyone: 
(laughs) 

Hiroyuki Sakamoto (hereafter Sakamoto): 
Same here. I really feel like we were able to give our all in making Infinite Wealth. We packed in everything we wanted the RPG to have, both in terms of volume and gameplay, and I think the final product came out really close to the team’s vision. As a creator, it feels really rewarding to have not only made the game as it was envisioned, but to have also received recognition for that effort. 

Ryosuke Horii (hereafter Horii): 
Looking back, I’m sure there are some small things in there that would bother me now, but I put my all into the game and have no regrets. I still feel a sense of accomplishment about it as a creator, and with all the praise Infinite Wealth has received, I think it’s a good game and I’m glad to have made it. 

Yokoyama: 
If we’re talking about small details to reflect on, there’s bound to be a bunch of them. However, behind those details lie various factors such as our budget, development schedule, and the condition of our staff members, right? But looking at the project as a whole, including the quality of the game itself and other aspects like marketing – we have no regrets, and nothing to reflect on. 

However, I’d like to mention that each time we hold a demo event, livestream, game showcase or fan meeting, we have in-depth evaluation meetings where we analyze things in so much detail you’d be surprised (laughs). 

─How do you feel about the feedback, as creators? 

Yokoyama: 
I don’t really read feedback from users. Why? Because at the end of the day, I think it’s the numbers that indicate how a game has been received. 

If there are ten people giving you feedback, you can hear them all out, but if there are millions, it’s impossible to go through each and every opinion. I think it all boils down to whether you yourself find what you’re making entertaining or not. That said, if my sense of what’s entertaining were to be completely out of sync with the majority of the audience, I would probably find out about it from the people around me before I even got to release anything, given that we’re working with such a big team. 

Sakamoto: 
At RGG Studio, you definitely receive criticism where it’s due. 

Yokoyama: 
I’d say that my ideas are more marketing-based than creativity-based. I rarely do things without rationale, and that’s why I don’t concern myself with opinions that are based on feelings, without any logic behind them. On the other hand, I thoroughly evaluate areas that have outcomes that can be objectively measured. 

I’m always concentrating on what’s next. I mean, after you’ve released a game, there’s no turning back, is there? Even if the company comes and tells us “Make it sell more!” – there’s nothing we can do. It’s out of our hands. 

─I think that’s especially true of such large-scale projects. 

Yokoyama:  
Once the game is already out, I think it’s much more important to think about yourself and how well you did, rather than chase after feedback. It’s surprisingly difficult to evaluate yourself without bias, but it’s an important thing to do before you start thinking about what you’re going to make next. 

─Does that apply only to you, or the whole team? 

Yokoyama: 
It depends on the person. I think that there are plenty of team members who look through feedback. I used to as well – I was especially curious about it when I was younger. 

When I used to look at the comments people left on message boards and the like, I realized that the people who criticize creators by name are the ones who are the most passionate. I mean, you can’t know us by name if you don’t really like the Like a Dragon series. People like that are actually playing the games, so I don’t mind hearing them complain at all. 

What really scares me are the impartial reviews that don’t care about the creators or their circumstances. But I realized that scrolling through forums and social media won’t get me there, so I stopped actively seeking out feedback about 10 years ago. 

Hawaii’s vastness was the “key” to Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii 

─Let’s move on to Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii. Is there any know-how from Infinite Wealth that you’re making use of in the upcoming game? 

Yokoyama: 
One of our biggest struggles in making Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii is how spacious Hawaii is. The streets are wide, which doesn’t mesh well with an action game. Infinite Wealth was an RPG, so it was easier to frame things. After all, with RPGs, you have a lot of characters on-screen at the same time. Your party’s there, there’s a bunch of enemies, you have different jobs, and the effects are flashy. This allows you to make use of the large space and make good compositions for the battles. But in Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii, Majima is the lone protagonist, and he faces only a few enemies at a time, so depicting action scenes in these spacious streets makes things look empty. 

Sakamoto: 
Honestly, it looked pretty empty at the beginning. 

─There aren’t many objects on the streets of Hawaii in Infinite Wealth either now that I think of it. 

Yokoyama: 
In Kamurocho and similar locations, the scenes hold up well because the streets are narrow and there’s plenty of depth. But in Hawaii, everything’s so wide, which makes it difficult to set up action battle scenes. (To chief producer Sakamoto) How’s that coming along? Did you find a solution? 

Sakamoto:  
We’ve thought up various solutions, such as adding a new style, expanding the range of attacks and adjusting how they’re shown to the player. We’ve put a lot of effort into making scenes look “denser.” 

─Has the size of the map remained unchanged? 

Sakamoto: 
Yes, we basically haven’t touched it. 

─So, without adapting the map itself, you came up with ways to make the battles even more entertaining. 

Horii: 
Also, since Hawaii is so spacious, we tried to lean towards the type of action that takes advantage of the extra space. For example, some of Majima’s combos are designed to make him travel a significant distance as he attacks. So, even with simple controls like repeatedly pressing a button, you get to freely zoom across the field in all directions, which would not have been possible on the narrow streets of Japan. We’ve introduced many other such features that take advantage of the Hawaii map, so in a sense, I think we might have ended up making battles that feel even more exhilarating than the ones from previous games. 

Sakamoto: 
We made big changes to the Sway* distance too. 

Horii: 
Yeah, we’ve extended Sway distance considerably. Kiryu was designed to fight in narrow spaces like the streets of Like a Dragon Gaiden’s Sotenbori, so we hope players will be able to feel and enjoy the difference. 

*Narrowly dodging an attack by quickly moving back, forward, left or right before it lands. Allows you to flank or get behind your opponent and gain the upper hand. 

─So, Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii will bring a different playing experience compared to past titles. 

Horii: 
That’s right. The Hawaii setting is also what made it possible to introduce jumping, since the paths aren’t narrow like in Japan, and the buildings have high ceilings. 

Yokoyama: 
Yeah, it’s not multi-level either. The Hawaii map is mostly flat, which makes it easier to control your landing. 

Like a Dragon: Pirates in Hawaii unintentionally has more content  

─Many players thought that Like a Dragon Gaiden had just the right volume of content, and Yokoyama-san has previously expressed similar views (it takes around 50 to 70 hours to complete mainline entries, whereas Gaiden takes 10-20 hours). On the other hand, you’ve mentioned that Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii will have more volume than Gaiden, but is there a reason behind the increase? 

Yokoyama: 
It’s more like the volume “ended up” increasing due to the story. The volume of a game is determined by the length of the main storyline, and when we created the main story for Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii, it ended up being 1.3 times longer than that of Gaiden’s. 

If you try hard enough, you can expand a game’s volume as much as you want. For example, you can add errand-type substories in which the player needs to set up flags to progress, and the more prerequisites you put in, the more you can extend playing time. However, Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii came out longer than Gaiden without us doing such things. The map is huge, there’s a bunch of places to visit, and there are still features we haven’t announced yet. The volume increased by itself. I think the difference in price is the best indicator, as it costs 10 dollars more than Gaiden. (Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii is $59.99 USD, while Like a Dragon: Gaiden is $49.99 USD) 

─Oh I see, you’re reflecting the difference in volume with your pricing. 

Sakamoto: 
We’re straightforward like that (laughs). 

Yokoyama:  
If you look at the price, you can get a good idea as to the trouble we went through to make it (laughs). 

Everyone: 
(laughs) 

We’re just being our normal selves 

─In a past interview with us, Horii-san said that the Like a Dragon series is going to continue being about “ordinary middle-aged guys doing ordinary middle-aged-guy-things,” which really gained attention from overseas fans. 

Horii: 
Since Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii is dubbed as a game to commemorate Goro Majima’s 60^th birthday, all of the main cast are pretty old. A typical RPG is usually centered around young protagonists in their twenties or so, but this isn’t the case in our games. I believe this is one distinct characteristic that gives us individuality. 

You won’t hear young people saying things like “I recently got gout” to each other, and you definitely won’t hear anyone talk about getting gout in a fantasy world of swords and magic. But in reality, we humans are constantly faced with the risk of gout. That’s why hearing characters talk about getting gout gives an instant dose of realism. Most games do not have the kind of worldbuilding or atmosphere that would allow its characters to talk about gout, but the Yakuza games are among the few that can pull it off without any resistance. I think that’s the biggest reason why our games are called relatable and one of our biggest strengths. That’s why we consider it very important to incorporate our everyday conversations and true-to-life “ordinariness” in our games.  

─Yokoyama-san, you told us before that you read the kind of generic news and sports news that average people your age read, rather than industry news. Is this your way of keeping yourself informed about what’s “ordinary?” 

Yokoyama: 
That’s just me living a normal life (laughs). I read sports news because I like to. 

─So, it’s not like you’re making a conscious effort to be relatable? 

Yokoyama: 
Not at all (laughs). Just living how I want to. For example, I can be a bit self-indulgent, and I don’t like to study. If I project these traits onto a character, Adachi is born. It’s all normal for me. 

─I assumed that, as famous game creators at a major company who earn a lot and get media exposure, you’d have more of a celebrity-like mindset. 

Yokoyama: 
No way, not in the slightest! (laughs) 

Everyone: 
(laughs) 

Yokoyama: 
I’m speaking only for myself now, but I’m super ordinary. I mean, I keep track of which days to do my shopping to get the most discount points. 

Horii: 
I think that not putting on airs is an important part of coming across as real and relatable. Instead of holding a brainstorming session to come up with “realistic topics,” it’s a lot more effective to just use the topics we usually talk about in real life as they are. The results are far more realistic. 

Yokoyama: 
I mean, what do we usually talk about? Our apartment loans, interest rates – it’s all things like that. 

Sakamoto: 
About stocks and the like (laughs). 

Yokoyama: 
What I’m saying is, we’re just small-scale salarymen. We’re not entrepreneurs. But that’s the way we like it. Our series and our company have grown somewhat, and we’ve become a little bit famous in the video game industry, but in the eyes of the world as a whole – we’re nobodies. If we were in the world of Like a Dragon, we’d be nothing more than passers-by on the street. 

Sakamoto: 
The scale of our problems is small, and the things we want and the things we lose are small too. We’re just living plain old lives (laughs). 

Horii: 
My life’s dilemmas boil down to whether I should stop adding clams to my miso soup (laughs). 

Yokoyama: 
Our games reflect us in a true-to-life way, so if you ever see high-society-type characters start to pop up, you can assume that our standard of living has changed. 

Sakamoto: 
Yeah, you’ll be able to tell, like, “Wait, Like a Dragon’s characters feel kind of different?” (laughs) 

Horii: 
“The series has gone off track!” (laughs) 

Everyone:  
(laughs) 

─Well that’s true, you can’t exactly learn how to be “ordinary.” 

Yokoyama: 
I know players like it more when you say you put in research and effort to make a game, but in the end, we’re all about output. What we put out is everything. 

Sakamoto: 
Our priority is to be entertaining. 

Yokoyama: 
That’s why we don’t put in more effort than necessary. Also, people are stingy creatures, so once they go through the bother of doing research, they don’t want to let go of any piece of knowledge or experience they’ve gained. The mindset becomes, “Now that I know this, I have to put it to use somewhere!” 

─So, for Yokoyama-san, not insisting on “effort” has actually become your strength. 

Yokoyama: 
Yes, after all, if you didn’t put too much hard work into something, you’ll find it a lot easier to say “Hmm, okay, let’s not do that after all” or “Sorry guys, I was wrong.” (laughs) 

Horii: 
I think that it comes down to the fact that we recognize where our “turf” is and choose to fight there. We don’t go out of our way to take on themes that we know nothing about or aren’t really interested in. We fight using topics we’ve subconsciously absorbed knowledge about, and this makes victory easier. It also makes the final product something that’s true to us. Rather than pushing ourselves to research what we don’t know much about, we try to put to use the things we learn about naturally through our everyday lives. 

Yokoyama: 
The same goes for our clothes. We’re always just wearing what we usually would, even when doing interviews like today. People often comment about how RGG Studio’s always wearing black or has stylists, but aside from special events like RGG Summits, we don’t do anything out of the ordinary. 

Sakamoto: 
Yeah, we just wear what we feel like wearing at the time. 

Yokoyama:  
Everyone wears their own favorite brands. By the way, I’m dressed head-to-toe in Columbia Sportswear today. It’s good. Does the job. 

We make changes based on our own judgement 

─While ‘game creator’ is gaining increasing recognition as a profession, Yokoyama-san seems to be going against the current. How conscious are you of trends in the game industry? 

Yokoyama:  
I’m not even sure what about me is against the current, so I’d say I’m not conscious of any trends at all (laughs). I don’t really talk to fellow game creators about video games, and I seldom participate in dinner parties and the like. I’d much rather talk to the grannies and grandpas in the resident association of my apartment building. By the way, I was the president of the resident association for two years. 

Everyone: 
(laughs) 

Yokoyama: 
We did some large-scale renovations in my apartment building. As I was the president of the renovation committee, I got to meet and interact with people from various trades daily. For example, there was this scaffolding worker who really liked the Like a Dragon series. After about half a year of working at our building, he realized who I was, and went “Excuse me, would you take a picture with me?” and I was like “How’d you find out?” 

So, while thinking, “Damn, my personal information’s all over the place,” I shared a few meals with him, and he told me all about his love for Like a Dragon and the role it plays in his daily life. I do things like this quite often. 

This is also how I came to realize that our marketing wasn’t reaching every layer we wanted it to. That’s the reason why our marketing is kind of weird. In order to reach all kinds of people, we go for types of promotion that normal game creators probably wouldn’t. But that’s the result of real-life experiences like the one I just mentioned, so I consider it very important. 

─Indeed, you go your own way both with your products and your PR. 

Sakamoto: 
We don’t keep doing the same thing over and over. We keep making updates – when something’s not working out, we change course. 

Yokoyama: 
We don’t get too hung up on our concept. It’s kind of like what I said about effort earlier – people tend to not want to change their concept once it’s decided. Game planners often say that “the concept is the most important part of a project.” All three of us used to be planners ourselves, and we were taught by our seniors that the concept is crucial and must not be compromised. However, I’ve seen a bunch of games out there that tried too hard to preserve their concept and didn’t do well. That’s why we’re trying to do things flexibly, without adhering to beliefs or concepts too much. 

─I guess that changing your concept can feel like you’re backpedaling. Perhaps there’s some shame attached to it. 

Yokoyama: 
You think so? I think that if your goal is to look cool in front of others, you’re better off buying a new pair of sneakers. I mean, if we felt any kind of shame about backpedaling, we wouldn’t be making spin-off games in the first place. Because then the question would be “Why didn’t you just do everything you wanted to do in the mainline game?” 

─(Laughs) By the way, what was the overseas response to the new trailer like? Given that the Like a Dragon series is more global now than ever. 

Yokoyama:  
The trailer’s views have broken all past records. I can really feel the response, both from the numbers and from the comments. It’s the most explosive reception out of everything we’ve released in the past few years. 

─Has it contributed to a boost in sales of past titles? 

Sakamoto: 
It has, especially with past titles being discounted now. 

Yokoyama: 
The Like a Dragon: Yakuza series is out on Prime Video now, and there’s a considerable number of games from the past 20 years, so the “entrance” to the series has become quite large. We kept this in mind for our recent RGG Summit 2024, aiming not only to present our upcoming game, but to also increase RGG Studio’s public presence. I’m sure there’s a bunch of people out there wearing T-shirts of the series without knowing the original, but I consider any entrance to the IP to be good. I hope people will be attracted to the overall atmosphere and world of Like a Dragon. 

─Lastly, is there a title you’d recommend playing before getting started on Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii? 

Yokoyama: 
Compared to past titles, Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii is very accessible even without prior knowledge of the series, but if I had to pick one, I’d say Infinite Wealth. 

─So, rather than past titles that feature Majima a lot, you’d recommend the more recent Infinite Wealth? 

Yokoyama: 
Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii won’t really feature many characters from past games. What’s more, Majima doesn’t even have any memories. As such, knowing the story of Infinite Wealth is the only thing that can change how you’ll feel about the new story. And this doesn’t mean that it will deepen your understanding – it will affect how you feel about it. I encourage players to pick up Infinite Wealth by all means. You can even buy it on sale…although I’d like you to buy it even if it’s not on sale (laughs). Whichever it may be, please try it out! 

─Thank you for your time! 

Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii is scheduled to release on February 21, 2025 for the PC (Steam), PS4/PS5 and Xbox One/Xbox Series X|S.