Ask anyone who even dabbles in Final Fantasy 14's most laid-back fights to explain a mechanic, and you'll quickly understand how the MMO's encounters can go from exercises in teamwork to all-out PvP brawls. After listening to FF14 director and producer Naoki Yoshida explain where his love for videogames started, that all makes more sense.
Speaking to Jesse Cox during PAX West's Storytime panel, Cox asked Yoshida where his love for games began on the path from fan to professional. The FF14 producer cut his teeth early in the 1980s with Nintendo's original Mario Brothers, explaining how he grew tired of playing games by himself at arcades and visited a friend who lived nearby.
That friend owned a Famicom, and the home system surprised little Yoshida.
"I was about ten years old at the time, and I thought the TV was something you would watch," said Yoshida. "It's a screen where a picture would play. And that machine [the Famicom]...connected to this TV, moved the things that were on this TV and that had such an impact."
When they tried the multiplayer, Yoshida's friend suggested they take on specific responsibilities—the FF14 producer would punch the enemies to flip them over, while the other kid kicked the shell off-screen. Yoshida seemed a little miffed he couldn't be trusted with kicking duty, and after a while his friend suggested they swap roles. The friend flips the enemy, and Yoshida gets to kick the shell off-screen.
"Of course you would hear that and think, 'Okay, we're switching turns, what a nice guy, he's giving me a chance to do that now.' So he would punch from underneath and flip the enemies over, and I would get ready to approach the enemy to kick it off the screen. And then he would punch the thing again to reverse it, so they revived.
"That was my first experience with PVP," said Yoshida.
His expression was the same one I make every time I fall for the most obvious bait in FF14's PvP mode, or even while raiding with friends. Just complete, utter disappointment. I can't believe I saw that, trusted that, and stepped forward into danger anyway.
"What's really incredible is that the gameplay rules are the same, whether you play it by yourself or with another person. So with the basic rules in place, you can enjoy the game by yourself, and then you can play it with another person. You can do co-op, like earlier, but then you can turn it into PvP if you want to. It really amazed me how such game design could be conceived. It made such an impact on me."
Those fleeting interactions sat with the producer on his walk home and sparked his interest in game design. Since he was just a kid, he didn't know how or what he needed to do to become an expert in the field, but he knew he wanted to make games from then on.
And now I understand why anything in FF14 can be PvP if you try hard enough. Sure, the tank isn't supposed to take the giant warning sign signaling tank buster and stand on me, the healer, but what if they did? Wouldn't that be fun? Anyway, I appreciate Yoshida passing down the same design philosophy that terrorized him as a child. It's brought me plenty of laughs (and a permanently clenched jaw).
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