- Final Fantasy 14 director Yoshi-P (Naoki Yoshida) is still enjoying working on the game
- He admits he’d rather be working more on the creative side of the game, but says he’s not bored after more than a decade working on the MMORPG
- He’s recently been working on other projects within Square Enix
Final Fantasy 14’s legendary director and producer Naoki Yoshida has discussed his role on the game in a new interview.
Perhaps best known as Yoshi-P, Yoshida acknowledges that while he’s working on other projects within Square Enix, he’s still planning to keep working on the long-running MMORPG “for at least a good while”.
Speaking to Noisy Pixel at PAX West, Yoshida had the following to say about his time working on the game:
“People tend to say we’re creators or creative, but I am an employee at Square Enix and I receive money to make games, and I think my primary purpose is to make games so that we are delivering it to gamers out there, fans, players that want to consume our product.”
“I think that is fundamental or a minimum requirement that I have because I belong to this company,” he added, describing himself as “more of a businessman” than one of the creatives behind Final Fantasy 14.
Yoshida explained that he can’t get bored with working on the project because there’s still more he wants to add to the game, which launched in 2010 but was relaunched under his guidance in 2013.
“I don’t think so, because there are a lot of things that I have yet to actualise in 14, things that I want to do, things that I must do, things that require to be taken care of,” he said.
“And so I think for at least a good while, I should be ok,” he added, while also joking he wants to do less in the way of “management or operational things” and help more with game development design.
Yoshida has recently worked on Fantasian: Neo Dimension, but was a producer on Final Fantasy XVI, which launched in 2023. Final Fantasy 14’s most recent expansion, Dawntrail, launched in August last year.
