22nd Vana'versary Special Interview
Publicity Staff Interview
Arata Hanyuda, Rieko Katayama & Ayako Kawamoto — Part 1 of 2

The WE ARE VANA'DIEL series has interviewed various people involved with FFXI over the years. However, this is the first time we will be talking with members of the publicity department. Could we first discuss how the three of you started working for Square?

After I graduated university, I went to work for a film distributor. My job entailed buying the rights to foreign films for distribution in Japan, but I decided to start looking for a new job after about three years at the company. One day, I found a copy of Famitsu Weekly* laying on my desk that was opened up to a recruitment ad from Square. Just as I was wondering how it got there, one of my coworkers told me, "Hey, Hanyuda. Isn't it about time you start looking for a new job? I found an ad in Famitsu that would be just perfect for you, so I left it on your desk."

Over the course of these interviews, we've actually heard from a number of employees that started working here due to an ad like that. I imagine the publicity department was also hiring large numbers of staff at the time.

Actually, up until that point, Square really hadn't conducted such a large-scale recruitment drive where it placed ads for open positions. Once it started developing more titles due to releasing games on the PlayStation, I think that was probably around the time it started looking to bolster its publicity department. So I ended up responding to that ad in Famitsu and was eventually hired by the company. That was in March 1996.

That was obviously well before you were placed in charge of FFXI. Can you please tell us what you were doing at the time?

When I first joined the company, it was about 10 months before the release of FFVII, so I believe it was when Square announced it'd be making titles for the original PlayStation. Around the same time, the company DigiCube* was created in order to start selling video games in convenience stores.

The announcement of creating titles for the PlayStation, the reveal of FFVII, establishing DigiCube; those were some pretty groundbreaking endeavors.

Within the company, we talked about releasing certain games exclusively through convenience stores, so we hired some outside developers to create some titles and I was put in charge of two of them. I handled not only the promotion for them, but also creating the manuals and packaging, as well as coordinating the schedule with the developers. These days, I guess it'd be considered the role of a project manager, but I essentially received a crash course covering the period from a game's creation to its release. I remember that among the titles I worked on, the mahjong game Pro Logic Mahjong Hai Shin sold especially well.

You worked on a hit title right off the bat.

Well, it came along at just the right time. After that, I was appointed the Promotion Producer for Front Mission 2*. I was then put in charge of its sequel, Front Mission 3, but a person I had working for me on the previous title was transferred to a different project, so I needed to hire a replacement. And that's how I met Ms. Kawamoto. I think she was working in a completely different industry at the time.

I was working for a publisher in the architecture field. Timing-wise, I had recently graduated from university and was looking to change jobs.

I noticed that the handwriting on her resume had a rather strong touch to it. (laughs) The first time I met her, I found her to be quick-witted and easy to talk to, so I figured she'd be a good choice for the role and gave her the job.

So that's how the two of you first met.

Around the time following Front Mission 3's release, Square started developing titles for the PlayStation 2, and I remember it used that as an opportunity to restructure the publicity department. Up until the point, each title was assigned a person in charge, but the system changed to more of a vertical integration. I believe there was an advertising team and a publicity team, but as the type of work was to be divided within the division, I was assigned to the advertising team.

What titles were you put in charge of?

At first, I worked on titles such as The Bouncer and All Star Pro-Wrestling. Afterwards, I started working on FFX and Kingdom Hearts, so I was pretty much working nonstop at the time. However, I got married right during the busiest period for FFX, and it looked like my wedding was going to be on the same day as the FFX commercial shoot, so I remember begging the powers-that-be, "Please, schedule it for any day other than my wedding day!"

(laughs)

In fact, I ended up being so busy that I wasn't able to even go on my honeymoon until the following year. (laughs) I took a somewhat long vacation following FFX's release and upon coming back, Mr. Shinji Hashimoto*, who was the promotions department manager at the time, immediately asked me if I'd work on promoting FFXI.

What were your feelings about FFXI at the time?

Everyone within the company knew that FFXI was going to be released as an online game. However, I don't think any of us really understood what an online game entailed in those days. There were a few people who had played games like Ultima Online* or EverQuest* before. As such, I remember taking on the job while not really knowing what playing a game with other players over the internet even meant.

I think most people were probably the same way at the time.

In the beginning, I had pretty much no prior knowledge of the genre, so I tried to remain positive and figured it'd all come together naturally. However, Mr. Tanaka (Hiromichi Tanaka, FFXI's first producer), Mr. Ishii (Koichi Ishii, FFXI's first director), and Mr. Matsuno (Yasumi Matsuno, PlayOnline's first producer) summoned me to a meeting room. After Mr. Matsuno drew up a rough schedule on a whiteboard, he strongly suggested that I needed to do a good job since everything was already in motion and the dates were set. Meanwhile, Mr. Tanaka and Mr. Ishii just sat there with their elbows on the table and kind of silently stared at me with a stern look on their faces.

Yikes! That sounds terrifying...

That meeting kind of lit a fire under me, and from that moment on, I pretty much approached the job full-throttle. That was probably September or October of 2001. I believe it was right before the beta version of the game. In the beginning, I was like, "What's an auto-attack?" So I ended up asking Mr. Kigoshi (Yusuke Kigoshi, former planner for FFXI) all kinds of questions while I wrote the manual for the beta test, which allowed me to quickly get a grasp of what the game was about.

We briefly touched upon this just moments ago, but can you please tell us how you started working on FFXI, Ms. Kawamoto?

Like we were talking about before, I worked at a publishing company in the field of architecture. I was originally interested in working for the video game industry, but Square wasn't hiring new graduates at the time. However, once I started looking for a new job later on, I saw a magazine ad where Square was hiring publicity staff, so I submitted an application.

And Mr. Hanyuda ended up hiring you.

After joining the company, I was put on Front Mission 3, and after that I started working for our overseas business. Although, there was nobody else on the team, so I was completely on my own. However, I still gave my all while working on the overseas PR team, but I remember looking fondly at the advertising and publicity teams and thinking about how much fun it would be to work for them.

Yeah, I was often playing other companies' games in the name of "research." (laughs)

Eventually, there was talk of people in another division taking over the overseas duties, and I got put on Kingdom Hearts.

So we ended up working together again, but I was almost immediately transferred to the FFXI team.

It was then that I was discussing work with Mr. Hanyuda and he told me we should work on promoting FFXI together, so that's how I ended up joining the team. Ms. Katayama was already a member of the team at that time, and she taught me a lot.

On that note, let's move on to you, Ms. Katayama. How did you end up working on FFXI?

Once I graduated university, I worked as an assistant director on things like television programs and various events. After about a year and a half, I decided to look for a new job and started reading through the job recruitment magazines. That's where I found an ad from Square looking for publicity staff, so I submitted an application.

So you also got the job through a magazine ad.

My first experience with the FINAL FANTASY series was FFVI, and I was also a big fan of FFVII, so I felt like this was definitely a place I wanted to work. Shortly after my interview, I was working an event out in the countryside, and I received a voicemail stating that I had passed the first stage of the hiring process. I remember looking out to the mountains and yelling, "I did it!" After that, I also happened to be out in the countryside when I got the news that I had passed the final interview. (laughs)

It sounds like they were working you pretty hard there. (laughs)

Once I joined the company, I was assigned to FFVIII as my first title, and then went on to work on FFIX and FFX, among others. I also worked on PlayOnline before moving to FFXI. Although, despite having played Ultima Online at the time, I didn't really have a firm grasp on the internet or networks, so I sat in on interviews with Mr. Ise (Koichi Ise, server systems director for PlayOnline at the time) and took notes in order to learn how things worked.

Instead of remaining with PlayOnline, how did you come to start working on FFXI?

At the time, I was talking to Mr. Hanyuda about some concerns I had in regards to my work, and he asked me to come join the FFXI publicity team. So as a result, I ended up working on both PlayOnline and FFXI in parallel. I felt like Mr. Hanyuda was someone who could seek out people who were having difficulties with their job and help create a new environment for them to thrive.

Is that what I did? Maybe I'm just easy to talk to. (laughs)

I also felt Mr. Hanyuda had a somewhat unique presence. He's not the type to have favorites within the division, and it's like he has a somewhat detached approach to the work, you might say.

Yeah, in a sense, it seems like he has a bit of a solitary aura. I don't feel there were too many others like him.

Make sure that finds its way into this interview. (laughs) Although, I have absolutely no recollection of anything of the sort. I simply approached them with the feeling that anybody that has a similar mindset for the work as I do will be just fine.

Moving on, can you tell us the details behind the start of the FFXI project up to its eventual release? First of all, how did you feel when you heard that FFXI was going to be an online game?

At the time, I felt the main appeal of FINAL FANTASY was things like leveling up your character and collecting items, so I remember having some fairly big doubts that the concept could work as an online game. Furthermore, although I was using the internet at the time, it was during the age of dial-up connections, so I also had concerns about whether you could even play the game at such speeds. So I guess you could say I wasn't really sure whether FFXI would be able to sell or not.

How about you, Ms. Kawamoto and Ms. Katayama?

I didn't really have any of the same preconceptions as Mr. Hanyuda, so I just threw myself into the work. Maybe it was because I already had people around me who were playing online games at the time? I was pretty young as well, so I probably just figured everything would sort itself out. (laughs)

FINAL FANTASY was a series that sold several million copies each time a new game was released, so I thought it was going to be difficult to compare FFXI to the titles that had come before it, given that it was in the still nascent genre of online games. However, FINAL FANTASY has always been about taking on new challenges, and Mr. Tanaka and Mr. Ishii had already achieved countless breakthroughs in regards to such challenges, so I was rather optimistic that FFXI would do well. I was also pretty young, so maybe it was just my happy-go-lucky attitude. (laughs wryly)

My feelings on the situation changed the moment I got a desk near the development team and could see what they were working on. Once I was near the people creating the game, my original fears were quickly dispelled. I remember the change in my attitude quite clearly.

You mean you felt like the game had a good chance to succeed?

Yes, exactly. One thing that really left an impression on me is something I previously mentioned in the Messages from Staff Members Then and Now entry on the WE ARE VANA'DIEL website, but I took part in a load test where a bunch of development team members created characters and rode on an airship. At that point in time, the character models were still quite rough, but once we all boarded the airship at Port Bastok, there was a cutscene that played as it took off. Afterwards, the game switched back to the airship and I was able to control my character and noticed that everybody else was doing the same thing. I feel like I will remember that sense of, "Ah, so this is what this game is all about!" for the rest of my life.

It is obviously commonplace these days, but back then, the ability to play alongside other people in the same space was quite revolutionary.

After a bit, when people started milling around on the airship and chatting with each other, I remember feeling that it had the potential to be amazing if that was representative of the final game.

I imagine it was somewhat difficult to convey the experience using the traditional publicity methods, but what kind of promotions did you end up running for the game?

I figured there would be many people out there who shared my initial reservations, so I felt it was important to actually get the game into their hands and let them experience it for themselves. However, there wasn't really a way to download game demos to your console at the time, so I had to think of other ways to make it happen. I decided to have people that I already knew come and play the game, so I asked the operations department to let me borrow a meeting room in the company. There, I set up six PS2 consoles and created an "Online Play Room" for people to test out the game for themselves.

So you invited numerous people from the video game press to come and play the game. About when was that do you think?

I believe it ran in conjunction with the beta test. The press members that came and tried out the demo all said that it was quite interesting, so I think creating that space and opportunity was the right way to help promote the title at the time.

Ms. Kawamoto and Ms. Katayama, do you have any memories about this time period?

When I was preparing promotional materials for the game, I remember noticing a distinct difference between online games and the traditional games that had come before them. I worked with Ms. Katayama on getting the positioning of monsters for the screenshots and the dialogue in the chat windows just right. I remember everything feeling so fresh and new.

Previously, you could take screenshots of games with just a single person, but with online games, you need the help of other people in order to get shots of scenes like party-based battles, so that could be relatively difficult compared to what we were used to. That was especially true when trying to get screenshots of things like coordinated attacks. We'd give each other the signal about when to press the button, but we often found our timing off and would yell out, "That's no good! Try again!" Actually, the promotional videos for FFXI at the time were taken by Mr. Hanyuda, so he gave out directions to us while we played the game.

Yes, that's right. Back then, it was hard work waiting for just the right environment within the game. If we wanted to grab screenshots of a daytime scene, but it was currently nighttime in the game, we'd have to wait about 30 minutes for the sun to rise. Conditions such as the weather and the position of the sun can have a large effect on the finished image, so it was often difficult trying to get the timing just right.

I imagine that was hard for everyone who was trying to capture FFXI footage. (laughs wryly)

Especially when grabbing footage for the promotional videos for the expansion discs, I'd have to bring a development kit into the editing studio and then connect it to the test server. Once that was done, I'd wait for noon to come around, or the weather to clear up, or for the sun to finally set. As a result, I was often in the studio for an entire day just to get the right footage for the video. There were even multiple times when I had to pull an all-nighter to get everything done.

Not only was it a challenge getting people to experience the game, but FFXI required an internet connection and also the PlayStation BB Unit (hard disk drive) in order to run. I imagine it must have been difficult to convey all the requirements needed to play the game. How did you approach sharing that information with the players?

That's something that I was really concerned about at the time. First of all, the PlayStation BB Unit wasn't available through the regular sales channels. You had to buy it directly from Sony Computer Entertainment (the company name at the time, now known as Sony Interactive Entertainment) or from somewhere like your internet service provider. So we had to make sure any potential customers knew that. Meanwhile, we were already planning a Windows version of the game from pretty much the beginning. I remember Mr. Tanaka talking about how more and more people were playing games on the PC and that we should work on preparing a Windows version from the start in order to reach them too.

Yes, the Windows version was released about six months after the PS2 version launched.

Still, the PS2 version came first, so I had to go to various ISPs and convince them to sell a PlayStation BB Unit to their users. I'm not really sure about the extent of any potential benefits for providers selling such external peripherals directly to their customers at the time, but I do remember them telling me that the game looked interesting. As a result of all that work and everything else that was in motion, I remember the player base for FFXI being much larger at the start than I had anticipated. Actually, the popularity of the game ended up causing the payments server to crash on launch day.

We've heard from various individuals here just how crazy things were at launch. On the other hand, I guess it showed just how much interest in the game had exceeded everyone's expectations.

Most definitely. Even right before the game went live, I doubt there was anybody who thought the game wouldn't sell. Furthermore, there was a good number of PC players that were already playing online games at the time, so we felt there was room for additional expansion and growth with the Windows version. The internet itself was also experiencing great evolution, as technologies such as ADSL and FTTH* began to emerge, so I met with ISPs and various hardware manufacturers early on in order to give a presentation on the game.

How did the PC manufacturers respond to your presentation?

They were quite impressed. At the time, you needed a fairly high-spec machine in order to play FFXI, so when they were able to sell one, it obviously led to bigger profits for them. Everyone listened to my pitch rather intently, as they were somewhat surprised that players would be able to get the latest FINAL FANTASY game on PC. Out of all the PC manufacturers, Dell was especially enthusiastic. FFXI ran great on their highest spec PC at the time, so they wanted to work together with us when the Windows version launched.

The announcement of the Windows version generated a lot of buzz.

When we announced the release date for the Windows version, we invited the presidents of Dell and Intel to the presentation, as well as NVIDIA's country manager for Japan. Square's president at the time, Yoichi Wada, and Mr. Tanaka also attended, and I think they both gave a speech. It was the official start of promoting the Windows version.

Everyone in attendance had quite the surprised look on their faces.

Since FFXI required a fairly high-spec graphics card, NVIDIA was eager to team up with us, and they were quite excited about the whole thing. There are various models of high-spec PCs, and then you also have users who like to build their own machines, so Mr. Tanaka ordered me to make a benchmark tool that could determine whether players could run the game smoothly on their PC or not. That turned out to be quite a boon for players and PC manufacturers alike.

In a previous interview, Mr. Tanaka mentioned what a great success the benchmark tool was. I actually remember a computer shop in Akihabara that was constantly running the FFXI benchmark tool on their monitors.

There were even some computers that used "Scored 10,000+ on the FFXI benchmark tool!" as a sales point. Speaking of Akihabara, there was the internet cafe known as Real Vana'diel* that let you play the Windows version of FFXI. Our focus with the promotions at the time was to try and create as many touchpoints for the customers as possible.

So as a result of the online play room you set up inside the company and various other measures, the game ended up becoming a success.

The video game press played the game a lot. Since so many of them became fans of FFXI, they also helped spread the word through various means. I think that when you watch someone enjoy a game they are playing, you naturally want to try playing it yourself. And as someone whose job it was to promote the game, that is something that I'm extremely grateful for.