Hironobu Sakaguchi was tired.
He’d been tired for a very long time, now.
Working as a games developer wasn’t going the way he’d hoped.
It was stressful, time-consuming, low-paid, and finding success was incredibly difficult.
His small team were working on an ambitious fantasy role-playing game, but even his bosses
didn’t think it was going to succeed.
And so, Hironobu decided to go out with a bang.
If this game didn’t bring the success he’d been striving for, he’d quit games development
and go back to university.
Little did Hironobu know, that this one last game, this Final Fantasy, would define an
entire genre of video games for decades to come.
[INTRO CREDITS WOO YEAH] University hadn’t agreed with Hironobu Sakaguchi.
His degree in electrical engineering had seemed like a good idea at the time, but in retrospect,
it didn’t suit him particularly well.
Frustrated and annoyed, he dropped out mid-semester, without any plan on what to do next.
By sheer good fortune, Hironobu stumbled into a part-time job at Square, a new video game
studio that eventually began growing in size and popularity.
For a while, things seemed like they were going exceptionally well, and Hironobu saw
himself promoted to the position of Director of Planning and Development.
Not bad for a college drop-out!
As the years went on, though, it seemed that Square’s initial success in the games market
wasn’t necessarily an indication of things to come.
The studio fell on hard times, as a series of flops hurt their profits, and their games
failed to make the impact on the gaming market that the company hoped they would have.
In spite of this, Hironobu remained optimistic and dedicated to his job.
He pitched an idea for an expansive roleplaying video game to the higher ups at Square, only
to be shot down – such an ambitious game was far too risky at this point in the studio’s
development.
Over the next few months, though, things only got worse for Square, and its employees began
preparing for the worst.
Without a big hit to support the company, things were looking grim.
Then, something unexpected happened.
A rival company, Enix, released Dragon Quest, which was exactly the kind of expansive RPG
that Hironobu had pitched to Square.
As the studio executives saw the widespread popularity of Dragon Quest, they rethought
their verdict on Hironobu’s game pitch.
The team decided to greenlight the project, in spite of the risk – after all, there
was definitely an audience for this kind of game, and at this point, what did Square have
to lose?
Hironobu set to work immediately, but he soon found that this wasn’t going to be an easy
development period.
Several other studios were also rushing to capitalize on the success of Dragon Quest,
and while Square had approved Hironobu’s game, they weren’t overly confident about
its chances.
Hironobu was assigned a small team of seven Square employees to get the job done, while
another game in development at the same time had over twenty people working on it.
It also didn’t help that many of the new team members were fairly fresh.
The game’s programmer had never programmed a game before, and had to figure things out
as he went along!
One designer, who was given the job of designing the game’s battle system, had never even
played a roleplaying game, so, without any understanding of how a combat mechanic should
work, he based it on something he did understand – American Football.
Their little game was definitely an underdog.
This was a point that Hironobu stressed with his team regularly, as he attempted to motivate
them by pushing them to outperform all of their competitors, including those within
Square itself.
The team decided to mix up the RPG video game formula, by drawing heavy inspiration from
pen and paper roleplaying titles like Dungeons and Dragons.
A large part of these tabletop titles was the ability to customize characters, and the
option to work alongside fellow players, so Hironobu’s game allowed a party of characters
that gamers could easily choose between.
Each character had their own special set of powers and abilities, and the game featured
an element system where some enemies required certain specific magic types of overcome.
This, the team hoped, would help set the game apart from all the other roleplaying games
that were flooding the market at the time.
Hironobu initially decided on the name Fighting Fantasy for his masterpiece.
It seemed fitting, and, crucially, it shortened to the letters “FF”, which sound really
nice in Japanese.
This name wasn’t to be, though, as Hironobu was soon informed that another company already
held a trademark for a Fighting Fantasy brand.
As the project wore on, Hironobu found himself feeling less and less optimistic about his
little game’s chances.
After years of work as a game developer, Hironobu had absolutely nothing to show for all his
hard work.
He was no more respected in the industry than he had been on his first day at Square, and,
having never seen any of his games go on to become huge bestsellers, he was tired of wasting
his efforts.
Hironobu decided to call it quits.
He’d push his way through this one last game, and if it didn’t see the success he
was hoping for, he’d go back to school.
At least with a life of drudgery as an electrical engineer, he’d be in a better financial
position than he was at the moment.
With this in mind, he scratched the word “Fighting” off of his game project.
He was done fighting.
This, instead, was his “Final Fantasy”, and he named the game as such.
The team worked hard, and Hironobu decided that if this was to be his swansong, he’d
go out in style.
He figured that he wasn’t actually all that good at making video games – instead, he
was a storyteller.
So as the game developed, Hironobu put more and more emphasis on the game’s narrative.
He worked closely with the lead artist to create a beautiful, immersive game world that
highlighted the story that Hironobu was telling.
As he worked his hardest, Hironobu found his passion for storytelling fueled his enthusiasm
for Final Fantasy.
He began coming up with ideas for sequels and additional stories that he could tell,
and decided that maybe he’d been hasty in planning to give up.
If this new game sold well, perhaps he’d stick around after all.
Of course, Square wasn’t going to help the game to sell.
Unconvinced that this little game would perform well in a crowded RPG market, the company
elected to print a relatively small number of cartridges.
For Hironobu, this wouldn’t do!
His game needed a chance to succeed – after all, this was his greatest achievement!
After some persuasion, he convinced his bosses to double the order of cartridges, despite
the enormous financial risk that this presented to the struggling company.
Against all odds, and to everyone’s surprise, this gambit paid off in a big way.
The game was selling fantastically, in fact.
Hironobu’s little roleplaying game became the smash hit of the year, as hundreds of
thousands of gamers rushed to play the new title.
It wasn’t long before the Higher Ups at Square began knocking on Hironobu’s door,
asking how quickly he could produce a sequel!
With this kind of reaction, how could he say no?!
And so, Final Fantasy became one of the bestselling games for the Nintendo Famicom, and the series
went on to define roleplaying computer games for an entire generation.
Every RPG that has come since owes at least some of its success to the Final Fantasy series,
and the original game’s impact on popular culture remains relevant decades later.
The moral of the story, is that nothing is ever over until the end.
No matter how long you’ve been struggling with personal goals and challenges, don’t
throw in the towel early.
It’s better to go down swinging, like Hironobu Sakaguchi, than to give up early and never
see the success you deserve.
Fight to your last breath for the things you want in life.
If you’re patient, and if you give it everything you’ve got, you’ll succeed one day.