another requested repost of something I previously posted in an inconvenient place: a post by a former dev on Taito's Rakugaki series about the shutdown of Rakugaki Kingdom, the ill-fated smartphone series revival that launched and died in 2021.
It's worth mentioning that the series did indeed find another way: Rakuga Kids, an under-12s amusement facility that lets players create their own monsters on in-venue tablets and gain experience points by playing the various attractions, is running in multiple Japanese malls and has won awards for innovation in children's entertainment.
(This is a quick and dirty translation of a post written by Yuichi Tanzawa, former developer on Taito's Rakugaki series, concerning the soon-to-be-terminated smartphone game Rakugaki Kingdom; you can find the original post here [https://note.com/tanzawa/n/ncd5fcf2d7264] and you can find him on Twitter @TAMTAM_U1 . Sorry for any silly errors, lockdown is hell.)
Today, September 2nd, it was announced that Rakugaki Kingdom would be ending service. It wouldn't be an overstatement to describe Rakugaki as the game that's most important to me, and I have far too much to say about it for Twitter, so I'm writing this note.
When I was a student, I played Rakugaki on PS2 (Magic Pengel: The Quest for Color) and wanted to make a sequel, so I set my sights on joining the developer, Taito. After joining the company (albeit not smoothly), I had the good fortune of being assigned to Rakugaki's development team, "Garakuta Studio", just as I'd hoped, and participated in the making of Rakugaki 2 (Graffiti Kingdom) as a planner.
After Rakugaki 2 (Graffiti Kingdom), several plans were made for subsequent games in-house, but unfortunately, they were not greenlit and the series went dormant. The primary reason is that, although the concept seems appealing at a glance, we were never able to solve the ever-present hurdle faced by creativity-based games: only a small percentage of people would be so interested in the drawing system that they'd actually buy the game, and all those people who merely enjoy watching the game don't buy it.
After producing games like the LostMagic series, Garukata Studio was disbanded, and knowledge of the inner workings of the "Rakugaki Engine" was lost. Later on, after I'd left Taito, I was picked up by Square-Enix and switched from being a planner to a producer; even after changing companies, whenever I saw an opportunity—like around the launch of new gaming hardware, or whenever there was an internal pitch competition—I'd try to get a new Rakugaki game off the ground, but ultimately, I could never overcome that issue of profitability, and so I was never able to get it greenlit during my time there. (It's for this reason that my hard drive contains over 50 pitch documents titled "Rakugaki 3".)
It was early 2018 when I was contacted by Rakugaki Kingdom's producer, Shimosato-san.
"I want to make a game using the Ragukagi game system, but all the old know-how has been scattered to the winds, so I'd like your help to salvage it."
When I received an email to that effect from an unknown sender, my immediate thought was, "there's no way that'll happen". None of the original developers were still with Taito, and after all, if I, the person who (supposedly!) loves Rakugaki more than anyone else in this industry, wasn't able wrangle this project into existence, there's no way someone else would be able to waltz in and make it happen so easily.
However, when I actually met with Shimosato-san in Taito's conference room, I could see in his eyes that he was serious; he wasn't taking it lightly, and I could sense his resolve to make this happen. Shimosato-san is a veteran with far more experience than me, both as a producer and in general; he talked very enthusiastically about the Rakugaki game system and where he wanted to take it, and so even though I'd expected to leave fairly quickly, before I knew it, I was listening to him.
As you may or may not know, the most important role of those who work as producers is getting projects greenlit. If the completion of a game could be broken down into 100 points, the producer gets things going by turning 0 into 1, and from that point, the assembled development team builds that 1 to 100, and in the case of service games, a management team takes over to maintain that 100 in order to ensure the game remains fun. (This isn't a hard and fast rule, though.)
It's often said about producers that "they don't actually make games", but without someone who can turn that 0 into a 1, a game will never make it out into the world, no matter how skilled or talented the developers may be. Only when a project is greenlit can a budget be acquired, development resourced secured using that budget, developers like directors and programmers are hired to make up the team, and marketing and other operational plans are organized in tandem with development... they determine the entire outline of the project. The profession of a producer is to create something out of nothing.
As Shimosato-san spoke so passionately in that conference room, I could see that he was prepared to take on that incredibly difficult obstacle of turning Rakugaki's 0 into a 1—it was an obstacle that I'd faced many times before and failed to pass just as often, and one I'd all but given up of overcoming. Part of me was jealous, but the other part of me decided to support him with everything I had.
In the end, I was only involved with the process of recovering the Rakugaki system, but the following year (2019), the system from Rakugaki 2 was able to be replicated on actual hardware with a very high degree of accuracy, and we were able to reveal it at TGS, and in January of 2021, Rakugaki Kingdom was officially released.
At the time of that first meeting with Shimosato-san, I thought it'd be an extremely difficult task to construct a business model around the Rakugaki system that'd recoup development costs, and I still think the same thing now. Even so, I have a ton of respect for Shimosato-san, who was fully aware of the enormity of the challenge and still turned that 0 into a 1. If nobody has taken on this task, the Rakugaki system would never have been revived for the Reiwa era, and even if I could have foreseen today's announcement and travelled back in time, I would never tell Shimosato-san, "you ought to stop".
I'll say it one more time: thank you for rising to the challenge. Thank you so, so much for loving the Rakugaki system. And, thank you for all your hard work. When the world calms down, let's go for a drink.
I played the original Rakugaki and went on to work on Rakugaki 2, and Shimosato-san played Rakugaki 2 and made Rakugaki Kingdom, so I'm optimistic that somebody who played Rakugaki Kingdom now will someday rise to the task of keeping it alive.
Rakugaki Kingdom has been able to maintain the hopes for the series that have existed over the last 10 years. If the Rakugaki system is something that's universally fun (and I truly believe that to be the case), it'll surely be rediscovered and once again see the light of day. Be it in 5 years or 10, I'm looking forward to seeing how we'll be able to enjoy Rakugaki next time.