What developers can learn from Like a Dragon

The greatest plague on the gaming industry now is the astronomical costs that AAA games take to produce. The combination of talent, technology, and time it takes to make a game at the scale and quality that we expect has reached the point where even the most beloved studios are one bad launch away from closure. In fact, without any course corrections, these budgets may end up becoming so large that no amount of success could recoup the investments. This is only part of the reason we’re seeing so many closures and layoffs recently, and also why so many studios and publishers are looking for alternate solutions.

Ryu Ga Gotoku (RGG), developers behind the Like a Dragon franchise, have had this solution for about two decades now. While the series only started to snowball in popularity in the West in the late 2010s, the franchise and its spinoffs have been released every year or other year ever since its debut in 2005. The pace of output was normal back then, but how has the team managed to maintain it while also raising the quality and scale to keep up with any other AAA game? The answer is simple, but not one so easily pulled off.

Welcome back to Kamurocho… again

Milking its assets for all it’s worth

For anyone who hasn’t played a Like a Dragon game, Kamurocho is more than just the setting — it’s arguably the main character of the franchise. Kamurocho is a fictional district of Tokyo that spans around three or four square blocks, give or take. It is a ‘red-light’ kind of district filled with bars, karaoke, arcades, gambling, and all the criminal activity you could hope for in a game.

At this point, anyone who is familiar with the series is intimately acquainted with every alleyway, park, and shop in Kamurocho because it has been one of — if not the main — settings in nearly every game in the franchise. It’s gotten various facelifts and renovations to keep up with the time period, but the map is essentially the same as it was 20 years ago.

The same thing is true for models and animations. Until there’s a reason to update them, RGG has no problem reusing them over and over. Normally, this would only work for so long — you can only make so many pictures out of the same puzzle pieces, no matter how versatile they are. What RGG is so good at is steadily adding to its games with each entry. Instead of making the first game and waiting several years to make a sequel in a new town with new models and animations, it reuses as much as it can while still adding “smaller” things like mechanics and mini-games until it is ready to drop a whole new zone on schedule. The incredible writing and performances pull a lot of weight, too.

Stop throwing away all your work

Building everything from scratch is irresponsible

Asset reuse is thrown around like a dirty word by many. Some people feel cheated somehow when they see Krato use the same animation in God of War: Ragnarok as he did in the last game. To anyone not familiar with development, it can look “lazy” to reuse work, but it would be irresponsible to do otherwise. In fact, that’s something we need more of if we want to keep getting games of this quality in under 6 years and $300+ million budgets.

RGG and Like a Dragon have earned the respect of players for its asset reuse, but not because it’s how it has always been. The difference is that this team makes everything with the intention of it being versatile enough to be used for several years, while also not abandoning anything that came before. When we got the brand-new area of Hawaii in Infinite Wealth, Kamurocho and Sotenbori weren’t tossed away, and it was no surprise at all that Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii would return to… well, Hawaii. When the team has 60-75% or more of the game already built, the cost and time to make a sequel is proportionally lowered.

It’s time we as players and developers embraced this scrappy nature of development where smart reuse of assets is the norm. The alternative, for now, appears to be either spending over half a decade waiting for a new entry to your favorite game because every tree and bird needed to be remade, or shotty procedural generation.