When many triple-A titles usually take years to develop, RGG Studios’ upcoming Like a Dragon Gaiden title took only six months to make. That is according to Chief Producer Hiroyuki Sakamoto and Game Director Masayoshi Yokoyama during an interview with Automaton.
How a title that’s typically well-funded be made in the span of only half a year may seem like a mystery to many. But the answer is more logical than it is mysterious—it was originally intended as a DLC for RGG Studio’s other upcoming title, Infinite Wealth. In other words, Like a Dragon Gaiden was being made from scratch while the same studio is working on Infinite Wealth, only to become a spin-off on its own.
For a game company that is set to release three titles in only a year, it would take a dedicated team of developers to bring that objective a fruition. This would be possible for institutions with large manpower. RGG Studios, meanwhile, makes it possible by making a single team work on all three simultaneously.
In his admission, Yokoyama said that the method was not without its confusion, especially to said team. In particular, they find themselves perplexed about which particular game they will be working on a particular day.
Yokoyama added that they could have eliminated the idea of turning Like a Dragon Gaiden into a unique title of its own. That is, to simply make Kiryu’s past a 30-minute interlude as part of Infinite Wealth. But they ultimately scratched the idea in favor of making a unique game out of it, following a team-led consensus.
