Ryutaro Ichimura, former Dragon Quest series producer at Square Enix, talked about his decision to leave the company in a recent episode of ReHacQ. Ichimura was part of the Dragon Quest development team ever since he first joined Enix in 2000, and he went on to become the series’ chief producer, handling titles like Dragon Quest 8 and 9, Dragon Quest of the Stars and Dragon Quest Heroes. In March 2023, he announced his departure from Square Enix and became the CEO of PinCool, a new NetEase Games-funded development studio.
According to Ichimura, while he already had plans to go independent at some point (in the footsteps of his mentor Yuji Horii), the internal situation at Square Enix at the time was a big part of why he ultimately decided to leave. His dissatisfaction lay in the company’s shift to pursuing “safe” projects that imitated the formats of other hit games in the industry. He found this attitude to be fundamentally at odds with the Dragon Quest series, which is why he ended up quitting several years earlier than planned.
Ichimura believes that a core value of Dragon Quest is evolution. “In DQ 2, you had a three-person party, in DQ 3 you could change jobs, in DQ 4, party members could fight using AI. Each entry pushed the series forward, both through the evolution of game mechanics and by leveraging the latest hardware of the time.” Ichimura wanted Dragon Quest to continue being a “leader” in this sense, and considering he feels most at home when “building something from zero,” he aspired to work on projects that would surprise players with something new.
However, as development costs skyrocketed across the industry, new releases had to sell in huge numbers just to break even. Ichimura notes that while Dragon Quest is still very popular in Japan, its weaker performance in the West (compared to franchises like Final Fantasy) made it harder to recoup development costs. This, according to Ichimura, led Square Enix to shift to projects based on already-proven hits, much like other companies in the industry. “To put it bluntly, it was copying others.”
As examples, he cites Dragon Quest Builders, which was developed as a Dragon Quest-take on Minecraft, and Dragon Quest Walk, inspired by Pokémon Go. He also mentions proposals for projects modeled after hits like PUBG and LINE: Disney Tsum Tsum. Ichimura grew dissatisfied when these kinds of projects (he calls them “pakuri kikaku” or “copycat projects”) multiplied, as he believed the role of the Dragon Quest IP was to lead innovation, not follow in the steps of others. Meanwhile, several of his own proposals were allegedly shot down, including an idea for a “Dragon Quest Marker” game in which players could learn about worldbuilding and story structure through gameplay, and then build their own Dragon Quest-style games.
With new games taking 4-5 years to develop per title, Ichimura was afraid of the possibility of spending the rest of his career on “safe” projects aligned with Square Enix’s policy, which contributed to his decision to leave the company.
Ichimura’s new studio PinCool is currently developing Pritto Prisoner, an asymmetrical prison break party game in which you use “PeePee and Poopie” powers to outwit robot prison guards.
