By Gabriel Stanford-Reisinger
Copyright smashjump
Naoki Yoshida, also going by Yoshi-P, has described himself as “more of a businessman” as opposed to a creative following 12 years and counting working on Final Fantasy 14.
Speaking with Noisy Pixel, Yoshi-P explains he’s just an employee at Square Enix tasked with making games fans and gamers in general want to consume. But, even 12+ years on, he’s still hard at work with no sign of slowing down, even as he works on other games.
“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.”
Beyond Final Fantasy 14, Yoshi-P is the head of Square Enix’s Creative Business Unit 3, which handles the MMORPG, Final Fantasy 16, as well as the upcoming Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles. He’s also a co-producer of last year’s Fantasian: Neo Dimension. All that to say he’s got his hands full.
Regardless, though, he seems pretty content with working at Square Enix and excited to continue adding stuff to FF14.
Gabriel Stanford-Reisinger Editor-in-Chief
Gabe has been a gamer since he was young, playing games like Pajama Sam, Freddi Fish, Guitar Hero, and whatever looked cool on GameFly. Ever since 2018, he’s been infatuated with the inner workings of the gaming and entertainment industries, covering a wide range of topics from video games to TV and film. Starting as a contributor for PSX Extreme, he’s worked his way up to its Managing Editor. Using what’s he learned over the years, he founded Smash Jump to remind everyone to smash jump.
