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Picture credit: 4Gamer

I think I should probably start with a brief explanation of the latest developments in RyuOn dev team world … I swear, the development of this game has more twists than the actual games! 

 

So, remember back at the start of this year when Horii Akio was promoted from director to producer, and said he wanted to listen to the players, and change the game to give them what they want? … Well, I guess he didn’t manage to pull it off. On July 19, the RyuOn team did a live stream, and the heads of the team are now Sato Daisuke (Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio general producer), who described his role as “RyuOn guardian”, and the anonymous “Dragon Mask #1”, who is in charge of the “Reborn Project”, which is the new attempt to listen to the players and change the game to give them what they want. Horii is now known as “publicity manager”.

Yokoyama (Ryu Ga Gotoku Series chief producer) doesn’t seem to be actively involved any more, and I don’t think that’s surprising, since I’m sure he’s plenty busy with the console version right now. Sato and Yokoyama, as far as I can tell, had both been in a kind of executive producer role on this game, with Sato being involved since at least the start of this year. I think he was also overseeing the remasters of the PS3 games though, so I guess once he finished on that project he’s been taking a more active role at RyuOn while Yokoyama’s moved over to concentrate on the console game. 

Reading between the lines a bit, it seems that the Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio people trusted the online game people they teamed up with to adapt Ryu ga Gotoku into a game that would not only attract series fans, but also pull in mobile game players that they could then hopefully get to buy their console games too. But it didn’t work – the results of the player survey found that 85% of the players were series fans, and those who weren’t didn’t feel motivated to play Ryu ga Gotoku after playing RyuOn. So now Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio seems to have taken full control of RyuOn, and decided to focus it entirely on being fan service for series fans. I suppose they had two options: give it over entirely to the mobile game people and let them do what they want, or take it back in-house and refocus it. I think I’m glad they took the second option. 

4Gamer interviewed Sato and Dragon Mask on July 29 2019, 10 days after that live stream. The interview was published on August 16.

Source: https://www.4gamer.net/games/392/G039270/20190814023/

It ended up just being a smartphone game, not a Ryu ga Gotoku game

—— So, what led to you developing this Reborn Project?

Sato: The biggest impetus was the results of the player survey we did. In the beginning, this project was a collaboration between us at Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio and the team that managed ongoing titles for smartphone and PC like the Yakkyutsuku Online series and the PSO series. Since we’ve always been focused on consoles, we didn’t have the experience in that area, of course. So we brought these two teams together, with experience in both areas.

—— Having people with experience of ongoing titles would definitely be an advantage. And also they’re the team that’s been making Sega’s flagship titles, so they’re super-strong, right?

Sato: We needed them, because we didn’t have any experience of managing a constantly developing title like this … But what we do have is a strong understanding of the Ryu ga Gotoku fans. So working together on this project was really beneficial for us. 

However, when it came to actually managing the game, we started to have doubts. Like, “Are we really making the customers happy?”, “Are they really satisfied?”, and that’s why we did the survey, to find out how our players really felt. We got a lot of negative comments, but the response rate for the survey was fantastically high. 

Dragon Mask: That’s true. Compared to surveys for other online games, the response rate was much higher. 

Sato: And while there were a lot of negative comments in the responses, you could really feel the love for Ryu ga Gotoku too. Seeing comments like, “It’s not what we were promised,” “It misses the mark in so many ways,” really confirmed for us that what we were providing wasn’t what the customers had expected, it really hit home. 

So after doing the survey, we decided to start the Reborn Project with the aim of satisfying our customers’ expectations.

—— So everything started from the survey. Was management going as planned though, before the survey?

Sato: We were able to stay on schedule to an extent, but I can’t deny that our lack of experience led to a lot of trouble, and some things did get delayed. But there were more fundamental problems than the schedule. Despite our lack of experience in making smartphone games, I started to think the problem was actually with the things we did because of it being a smartphone game. 

—— Because of it being a smartphone game?

Sato: For example, there were various vague assumptions floating around like, “female characters are the most popular in smartphone games”, and though we always thought, “Ryu ga Gotoku fans aren’t like that,” because of our lack of smartphone experience we couldn’t disprove the assumption, so we ended up just going with it. And that’s why we ended up with so many people saying, “It’s just not Ryu ga Gotoku.”

—— So your instinct was right, and the players felt it was off too.

Dragon Mask: I think it’s a difficult thing. When you use a huge IP like Ryu ga Gotoku for a free-to-play game, you’re not just going to attract the core fans, you’ll get casual smartphone game players picking it up too. In the beginning, I really couldn’t figure out where we went wrong, I couldn’t make sense of it.

—— You never know whether a game will be a hit in the smartphone market, do you?

Dragon Mask: The thing was, we could feel that we weren’t meeting the players’ expectations right at the start. We added more stuff, but we rushed it, there were bugs, we weren’t able to manage things properly, and the players were getting concerned. But during that first six months, I had a feeling that the ones who would stick with it would be the ones who love the Ryu ga Gotoku series, and when I read their opinions that feeling came back.

—— I see, so the survey confirmed what your instinct had told you.

Dragon Mask: That’s right. When I went through the survey responses, I saw that how I’d imagined the players and how they actually are was exactly the same.

—— I see. And that must make marketing easier too.

Dragon Mask: Definitely, understanding the players makes marketing easier. When you’re marketing a smartphone game though, there’s a tendency to prioritise the numbers, and do just enough to get the results you want. The Ryu ga Gotoku series has always had a completely different focus though. Not on the results, but on “this is what Ryu ga Gotoku is” – the brand awareness is very strong, and that’s why it’s remained so popular of course. And I want to manage RyuOn in the same way.

—— So you’re thinking of it as Ryu ga Gotoku, not as a smartphone game.

Dragon Mask: That’s right. There’s a way to go yet, but I want to make RyuOn a product that can proudly carry the Ryu ga Gotoku name. No spoilers, so I can’t give any specific examples, but I want to give the players the kind of surprises and impact they expect from Ryu ga Gotoku, to bring out that “essence of Ryu ga Gotoku”.

—— That sounds like something the players would like too.

Dragon Mask: In your usual smartphone game, you’d never see an old guy like Sai no Hanaya, would you? (laughing) But in Ryu ga Gotoku, we love fat old guys sat in chairs! Even in the questions sent to our online question box, we get suggestions like “Give us more grumpy old men!”, it’s really brought it home to me that Ryu ga Gotoku fans like us to stick fast to the game’s rules.

—— You really have to think differently from the usual smartphone game mindset, eh? So then let’s move on. Please tell us about your plans for the Reborn Project in future. Are there any milestones you’re working towards?

Dragon Mask: Of course there are. It’s an ongoing thing, we’re working on it, but I can’t give any definite timing for when specific things will be fixed yet.

I think we’ll be able to give much more detailed information in September, and by the time we reach our first anniversary I want things to be completely different, but I want to deal with the things that the players are most concerned about as quickly as possible.

—— So you’re prioritising the things the players are most bothered by.

Dragon Mask: That’s right. The biggest issues that came out of the survey were “It’s not Ryu ga Gotoku enough”, “The diamonds are expensive” and “The gacha is expensive”, and we’re working on fixing those things already.

As for the donpachi system, it’s an incredibly complex thing, which means players’ priorities are very different, so we’re still figuring out the best way to deal with it. I think we should be able to have a plan in place by September, though.

 

Making good use of what we have, and bringing out the essence of Ryu ga Gotoku

—— You addressed those issues of “The diamonds are expensive” and “The gacha is expensive” in the live broadcast on July 19, saying you’ll make it easier to get hold of new characters, but can you tell us anything more specific about how that will work?

Dragon Mask: Well, first of all, the main use for diamonds is the gacha, so I think “The diamonds are expensive” and “The gacha is expensive” are the same problem, really. Honestly, I agree. I think they’re expensive too.

On top of that, though we had the Select Gauge, which means that after a certain number of pulls you were sure of getting a character you wanted, a lot of people thought that the number of pulls needed to reach that level was far too high.

So when we released Sai no Hanaya, we tried out a new form of Step Up gacha, where the first try was only 100 diamonds, and it cost 2,000 in total to be sure of getting the character. That’s one way of dealing with it, and it doesn’t necessarily mean it will always be like that from now on, but we want to make sure that when we release new characters it’s not too hard to get them. And I want to make sure that when we release multiple characters, you can at least be sure of getting one by spending diamonds.

—— And will you continue having diamond discount sales and things like that?

Dragon Mask: We have done that a few times up till now, but yes, I want to make it a regular thing. If they know when the sales are going to be, I think the players will be more willing to buy. Also I plan to introduce some things to make it feel like you’re getting more for your money, so giving extra free bonuses when you buy diamonds, things like that.

—— Of course, even if you’re not dissatisfied with the value, you’ll definitely feel more satisfied if you feel like you’re getting more for your money.

Dragon Mask: And then, there’s another problem in that I think there’s a split between people who play because they like the characters, and people who play because they like donpachi, and it’s hard to please both groups at the same time.

I think we can encourage more people to play donpachi team battles by making them more fun, but there’s also people who just aren’t that into fighting, or who can’t play at the set times required, so I think we have to find something that those people can enjoy too, something more relaxed.

—— Are you already working on something like that?

Dragon Mask: It’s definitely in development.

—— So you said you’d be announcing things in September, what can we expect then?

Dragon Mask: There’s definitely going to be a big announcement. I can give you a hint now, and that’s “Heave!” (laughing) Sounds good, right? Heave!

Sato: I love it. (laughing)

—— Heave …?

Dragon Mask: We’re planning something where everyone will get to “heave”, so I hope you’re excited to find out more.

—— That raises more questions than it answers … (laughing) Moving on, what about the events? Are you planning to change the event cycle or anything?

Dragon Mask: Some people think the events last too long, and some think they’re too short, but I think we need to deal with the problem of “I never know what event’s coming, or when it’s starting” first. I can’t give an exact schedule right now, but I think by around September, October time it will be in a more settled form. And at the same time we can maybe look at how we can improve the event contents too.

—— So the priority right now is to improve the event timing.

Dragon Mask: The first thing I want to achieve is to stop people saying, “The events start too suddenly,” or “I never know if there’s an event on or not.” We’ve added a lot of new content already, so now I want to focus on letting everyone enjoy that content.

Sato: For example, you’ll know that this event will be at the start of the month, and then after that it’ll be this event, and the characters you got through the previous event can be useful in the next one, so it’s a settled monthly play cycle, that’s what we want to do.

—— That definitely sounds like a good way to go for a mobile game. And what about the people in the survey who asked for it to be more Ryu ga Gotoku-like?

Sato: What we think of as the essence of Ryu ga Gotoku is complex characters and  compelling stories, and in the survey people praised the stories highly, so that’s definitely our strong point. But when we were thinking of it as a “mobile game”, we were having the designers create cute girls they thought would be popular, and then trying to shoehorn them into a story.

—— For the visual appeal, right.

Sato: But that’s really not how Ryu ga Gotoku is. Of course I think it’s good to have female characters, but before anything else we have to think about the Ryu ga Gotoku world: what kind of character will be interesting here, what’s her background, how can she enhance the story, and so on. That’s the Ryu ga Gotoku way, and if we stick to that I think we can bring out that essence of Ryu ga Gotoku.

example
Sai no Hanaya vs orphan scammer Chiyori … which is more Ryu ga Gotoku?

—— So rather than creating things outside the title and shoehorning them in, letting the nature of the franchise lead to the visuals will get closer to that essence, I guess.

Dragon Mask: The players still tell us they like the characters in the main story, and some of them have become firm favourites. But because we’ve been adding new characters without considering how they could be involved in the story, the series fans end up being like, “Who’s this now?” It’s not that everything we’ve done up till now is bad, there have been characters that have been well-received, and those are the ones we want to make good use of.

—— And of course, Kasuga Ichiban is a great example of a new character who’s been well-received by the players, isn’t he?

Dragon Mask: Definitely. Kiryu Kazuma is a hard act to follow, so there was a lot of pressure on him as the new Ryu ga Gotoku protagonist, but the Ryu ga Gotoku players have really taken him to their hearts. And when we announced that there’d be a new protagonist when we start Part 2 of the game, we had a lot of people saying, “I’ll miss him!” So we really want to continue creating popular characters like that, in the Ryu ga Gotoku mould.

—— Oh yes, this new protagonist who’s going to appear in Part 2. What made you decide to change the protagonist like that?

Sato: The first thing I want to get across is that it’s not that Kasuga Ichiban’s story is ending here, it’s more like it’s being temporarily paused. We said from the beginning that Ichiban’s story, as told in RyuOn, will be a very different thing from Ichiban’s story in the console version. They start from the same premise, but develop in a completely different way after that.

—— I’m really fascinated by that concept of it having a different story ….

Sato: The console game’s release date hasn’t been announced yet, though I think we’ll be announcing it in the near future. We don’t want people trying to play both at once and getting confused, so we decided to pause it for now, since Ichiban’s story will be half over by that point.

—— So after the new protagonist’s story is finished, you’re going to pick Ichiban’s story up again?

Sato: We might do that, or we might bring in another different protagonist. In the same way as Ichiban, we want to make the new protagonist of Part 2 someone Ryu ga Gotoku fans will like, and we’re definitely not just going to retell an old story. We’ve done that with The Legend of Kiryu Kazuma, which retells the story of the first Ryu ga Gotoku, but we want this one to be an original story which will only be told in RyuOn.

Dragon Mask: One thing the players really enjoy about RyuOn is the aspect of “What are these characters doing right now?”, which is the kind of thing we can’t do in the console games. [Note: They run seasonal events – like we saw Ichiban and his friends celebrating Christmas and going to a summer festival, for example.] I think it’s things like that that distinguish RyuOn from the console Ryu ga Gotoku, and shows they each have their advantages.

—— How big is this Part 2 story going to be, by the way?

Dragon Mask: I think we’re going to make it more compact than Kasuga Ichiban’s story. I’d rather let you just settle down and read it at your own speed than have large gaps between releases and pointless battles that mess up the pace, so I want to make it more about reading the story this time.

—— So you’ll be able to concentrate on the story more.

Sato: That’s right. The aim is to make the quests and the story more enjoyable.

—— I’m curious about the new protagonist, but also about the setting of Part 2. Does it follow on from Part 1?

Sato: I can’t give any details yet, but no, it’s not a continuation of Ichiban’s story. That’s all I can tell you right now, I’m afraid. (laughing)

—— Finally, just one more thing! Are there any links between the console version and RyuOn?

Sato: I think it’s best to keep them separate, otherwise it would dilute the message that “the story is a different thing”. That said, they’re both Ryu ga Gotoku products, so I think that when the console game releases, there might be some events and things going on here too.

 

The tagline of the second part of the Reborn campaign is “1,000 gacha pulls”!?

—— The first part of the Reborn campaign gave everyone their choice of a free SSR card. Which characters were the most popular?

Dragon Mask: A lot of people chose Ryuji or Kiryu this time. Kiryu was released at the end of March, and Ryuji in April, but it seems there’s still a lot of people who hadn’t managed to get hold of them and that’s one reason for their popularity. When players spent lots of money but still couldn’t get the character they wanted that created bad feeling, so I want to put a stop to that.

—— Speaking of popular characters, in the live broadcast you gave us a glimpse of Ryu ga Gotoku Zero’s Majima. Are the Zero characters still as popular as ever?

Dragon Mask: I think by the time this interview is published the event that Majima appeared in will be over, but Zero is highly rated by fans of the series, and I think we should be making use of that power. I think that’s one of the best things about this kind of game, that we can listen to what the players want, bring back characters from past games, and make the players happy.

Sato: Even in the character popularity poll we did, there were several Ryu ga Gotoku Zero characters in the top 10, so that’s what made us think we really need to do a Ryu ga Gotoku Zero event.

Dragon Mask: And we want to continue doing that kind of event that will make everyone happy, so I hope everyone will look forward to that in the future.

—— There’s a Part 2 to the Reborn campaign, and is there going to be a Part 3 “coming soon” too?

Dragon Mask: The tagline for Part 2 is “1,000 gacha pulls”. And just as it says, it’s a campaign where you can pull the gacha 1,000 times. For free, of course. We’re really going all out, because we wanted to make a big impression. I mean, it’s unheard of, isn’t it, 1,000 pulls!? (laughing)

—— I’ve certainly never heard of anything like that before …

Dragon Mask: For whatever reason, pulling the gacha is fun, isn’t it? And I want everyone to really have fun right now, so that’s why I decided on 1,000 pulls. We’re still planning Part 3 of the campaign, because an ongoing game is a living thing and I want to listen to everyone’s opinions and adjust things based on them. I think the information on Part 2 will already be out there when this interview is published, so I want the readers to be thinking “they really did go all out this time”.

—— When you make SSR characters easier to get, even giving them away as presents, that’s going to make people want more upgrade materials, isn’t it? So are you planning on doing anything to help with upgrading characters?

Dragon Mask: We hear players saying there’s not enough Dragon Orbs, but it’s unbalanced, because it’s actually long-term players who are short of Dragon Orbs, while newer players are short of Strengthening Orbs.

So to help with this, given that you can get set characters when you’ve pulled the gacha a certain number of times, we’re looking again at how many Dragon Orbs you should need to upgrade them, and we’ll be putting in a fix for that. Letting you buy more during events, making them available in other ways, I think there’s a few ways of doing it, so we’ll deal with them one at a time.

 

The Reborn Project is unending

—— The first year anniversary actually isn’t that far off now, so I’m sure there’ll be campaigns to celebrate that too?

Dragon Mask: There’s a lot of things we’re working on, and of course like I was saying before, an ongoing game is a living thing. We’ll keep paying attention to what the players think, and do what we think is most suitable when the time comes, so I can’t really give you any details yet as to what we’re working on to celebrate the first anniversary. But of course, in keeping with the Ryu ga Gotoku series, it should be a surprising and entertaining first anniversary, so I hope people will be looking forward to it.

—— The other day on the live broadcast, you announced a collaboration with Yoronotaki. Can you tell us anything about any other forthcoming collaborations?

Dragon Mask: The Ryu ga Gotoku series’ collaborations are part of its appeal, so we thought we’d give it a try in RyuOn too, but there’s no further collaborations being planned because there are other things that we have to prioritise for now. There’s various changes being made as part of the Reborn Project, so while that’s going on I think it’s best to concentrate on getting the essence of Ryu ga Gotoku into RyuOn, rather than introducing other IPs, which could get confusing.

Sato: We are still thinking about collaborations, and discussions are ongoing, but we need to prioritise the characters we have, and there’s a concern that throwing in other characters could cause confusion, so for the time being we’re keeping it as a clean slate.

Dragon Mask: Collaborations take work to prepare, at least for us. If you have a puzzle game without much of a story, it doesn’t really matter what kind of character you use, but that’s not the case for Ryu ga Gotoku, so we have to take a bit more care with things like that.

—— How long do you think it will be until the Reborn Project is complete?

Sato: This project started as a way of fixing what wasn’t working, but I actually don’t think the Reborn Project will ever end. Like Dragon Mask said, an ongoing game is a living thing, so if the customers want something different, we’ll change what we’re offering them. So it will be a constantly changing thing, and the Reborn Project will be endless.

—— And you’re answering questions on Twitter now too. Has that been effective?

Dragon Mask: We’ve had a lot of questions and comments, yes. We’ve always looked over the comments that came in to Support, and we’d check social media and the major message boards, but we were looking for a different, more up to date way of maybe hearing new opinions, and that’s why we made the question box.

—— And do you read every question submitted to the question box?

Dragon Mask: Of course, I look at every one of them. I check every day, feeling grateful, answering those that can be answered properly, though of course there are some things I can’t answer for business reasons, I do have to be careful. But I want to do everything I can to keep people informed.

—— Of course doing interviews like this is part of that too.

Dragon Mask: Right. We’ve had communication on the official site too, the letters from the producer and so on, but I want to change how that goes out too. And we’ve also had players suggesting we should use the “Management” tab in the in-game Chat, so how about that? (laughing)

Sato: I very much agree. (laughing)

Dragon Mask: From now on, I want to make more practical use of everything. With Twitter too, I want to use it to communicate with the players directly, not just to make announcements. And I think we’ll do more surveys too, because we really do want to know what people think. And then while continuing to make improvements, make it a game that people want to recommend to their friends.

—— So finally, then, please give us a message for the players who are enjoying this renewal via the Reborn Project.

Dragon Mask: As we’ve been saying, the Reborn Project is not going to end. We’ll keep taking the players’ opinions on board as a matter of course. Unfortunately, granting everyone’s wishes, giving every single player what they want, would be a hugely difficult thing. But I don’t see that as a reason to give up, and it doesn’t change my aim, which is still to satisfy every single player.

I’m doing everything I can to make it so that everyone who downloads RyuOn will be able to say to Ryu ga Gotoku fans with confidence, “It really is a good game,” so I hope you’ll stick with it. And of course, I read every question in the question box, so don’t stop sending them! Thank you so much.

Sato: As always, I’m really grateful to everyone for playing. Really, thank you so much. Like I said the other day on the live stream, I want to work with Dragon Mask to completely renew this game, satisfy all the players and make everyone happy.

Not just the management team, the whole team want to do everything we can to repay the Ryu ga Gotoku series fans for their love, so don’t give up on us. We should be able to give you a lot more information around Tokyo Game Show 2019, so you can look forward to that too.

—— Thank you very much.