One of SEGA’s most successful and prolific development teams Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio, or otherwise known asRGG Studio, which has been leading the charge in SEGA’s Yakuza and Like a Dragon series of games.
While most studios focus on one game that takes years to develop, RGG Studio isn’t like that. The studio has been very active, releasing one new game every year since 2005! RGG Studio has released two games each year in the past three years.
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RGG Studio Explains How They Reuse Assets Without Having Their Games Feel Stale
With gaming development budgets skyrocketing to ridiculous proportions, RGG Studio has manged to work around that by reusing assets in most of their games, which also lets the studio release games at a faster rate compared to other studios.
One example is Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii, which was in development for roughly a year. What made the job easier is how RGG Studio builds on and adds to the map they’ve already developed. In Pirate Yakuza, RGG Studio developed new ocean maps and new pirate ship gameplay, but enemies, maps, and even mini-games were reused from past games in the franchise.
Pirate in Yakuza’s Chief Director/Producer Ryosuke Horii and Game Director Yasuaki Uehara talked about the game’s development a bit with the press in a roundtable interview (viaUngeek).
The duo shared their thoughts on how they managed to develop Pirate Yakuza in just over a year, with Horii stating:
What really took for us to make the game in one year is just plain and simple, we worked really hard. That’s the number one reason we were able to put out the game in one year.
Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii reused a number of assets from Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth. We employed a lot of our know-how and a lot of the techniques that we fostered over the years to put the game together.
Reusing elements from previous games, there’s the chance that it can make the new game feel a little bit too familiar and stale. RGG Studios is aware of this, and have plenty of developers who are experienced in making sure things feel fresh.
It’s not an easy task, though, as the devs share there is an element of trial-and-error when it comes to it, especially when new features or mechanics are added to give a fresh spin on elements from previous games, as Uehara shares:
As Mr. Horii mentioned earlier, it really is a matter of our know-how, and we employed a lot of trial and error as we approached the development of this title. On our team, we have a number of members who have the same attitude about optimistically using trial and error to come up with new ideas. We used that approach as we created the game.
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Whatever RGG Studio did, it worked, as Pirate Yakuza is once again another excellent entry by the studio.Our review gave it an 8.5, and it’s sitting at a “Strong” rating on Open Critic with an average score of 81 across 132 reviews.
The next game on RGG Studio’s plate is the next entry in the Virtua Fighter series, which has no title or release date yet.
