Hiromichi Tanaka Leaving Square Enix for Health ReasonsFollow

Although it's probably not new to anyone that was following VanaFest 2012 last night, at the end Hiromichi Tanaka announced that he will be leaving Square Enix for unspecified health reasons. Akihiko Matsui, who served as XI's director in late 2010 during the height of the Abyssea add-ons before being brought over to Final Fantasy XIV as lead battle designer, will be replacing him as XI's producer.

I know that everyone's opinions on Tanaka are mixed, some consider the very name blasphemous in regards to Square Enix's MMO's, whereas others see what he's done all in all as a testament of his abilities, with only a few low points in an otherwise amazing track record. I felt it was appropriate to have this here so that people can discuss their opinions and view points on his past work. I ask for no flaming or trolling, and try to keep things somewhat clean. I know a lot of you could probably sum up your opinions of him in a series of expletives, but I'd like for something more PG-13-ish.

With the way that corporations in Japan work, I can't help but feel that 'unspecified health reasons' may very well be a ruse of some sort, and that this is effectively their way of showing him the way out while trying to save face both for Tanaka, as well as the company.

Still, taken at face value, I do hope him the best in terms of his health, and that whatever he's going through is something that he is able to get through. In the end, this is all just a video game, and I'd never wish ill will or condition on someone solely because of my opinion of them as a developer of an MMO.

A new expansion and now this... This must be a dream! Or am I dead? o.O

To sum it up, incredible weekend.

Brilliant man in terms of single-player games. Without him, we wouldn't have gotten Secret of Mana, Chrono Cross, or an outside-of-Japan release of Final Fantasy III.

I know a lot of us here (especially in the XIV forum) do not care for his actions done in the MMO universe, I hope he joins future single-player game development projects in the future and maybe see some spiritual sequels to games we've wanted. (Mistwalker with Sakaguchi, perhaps?)

There is more to life than playing games.

Best wishes, Tanaka. Thanks for the memories!

My response? ...

Time to resub! I think that says it best.

I think he's a scapegoat in XIV, a game that clearly showed it wasn't ready to be released yet it was forced to be released to compete with a WoW expansion and Rift. Had they worked on it like they are doing with 2.0 then they would not have had that issue. Sadly when all is said and done "Tanaka" is seen as the villain in everything yet it's his "Villainy" that allowed SE to grow and evolve from the issues they were having back in 2010. It's like he sacrificed himself so that the company could revive it's way of making games and produce content that people could enjoy.

Without him you don't have XI, he prolly had to convince Wada so much to convince him to go through with the mmorpg since during the history segment people didn't have much faith that the game would succeed, but look it's 10yrs now and the servers are still live.

It's really sad how a personal passionate for his creation can be depictated as being an evil mean person cause of the mechanics he created which forced community to work together to overcome challenges. FF is all about working as a team to overcome challenges and Tanaka succeeded in producing an MMO in the same vein. If he was really such an evil person then why did people continue to play a game that was extremely unforgiving and challenging? Because they liked to be challenge, it's only the small population that may go into an uproar about how challenging everything is but at the end of the day when you finally overcome those challenges you feel a sense of accomplishment because you overcame something difficult as a group.

I do hope Tanaka the best in everything, hopefully if his health recovers maybe he'll be able to produce new single player games. Be nice to see another Chrono game XD.

Man I certainly hope I don't @#%^ up royally before I retire and all my work before that point becomes irrelevant to massive wave a rage.

I do hope this will be better for both games and will happily see the man to the door but I don't think tripping him and kicking him once he gets outside is necessary. haha

It seems MMOs have really taken their toll on him, so it's not surprising he's getting away from them. Whether they forced him out or not is irrelevant. If they did I'm sure he was happy to leave. But I've said it before and I'll say it again: Tanaka was absolutely around when he said yes to Abyssea, and now he's said yes to a new expansion. Point is despite his crappy love for making us grind things, he has brought many great things to FFXI whether you want to admit it or not. And he may very well have kept certain things in check to keep the game going that will no longer be there now. For all we know, without his influence SE may very well feel inclined to turn the game into a full on cash cow in the future. I'm talking free to play, Square Store future, even less dev crew than they have now.

I'm just saying, for all of those people who love this news here, be careful of what you ask for. FFXI will suffer to some extent without Tanaka. What that extent is will be realized in the future. I can't think of one MMO that went on to great things after it's lead man departed or the game exchanged hands for control through sale. Usually it's never the same again as those that come after are only concerned with a cash cow product, and lack the care that the original producer had for the game...

But let's say for sake of argument that Tanaka wasn't involved in Abyssea beyond giving the green light. Let's say the good that came from it was the work of Ito alone. Well then if that be the case, the outlook for FFXI may very well be excellent. But I'm cautious as hell when it comes to the heads at SE. If they rushed FFXIV out to it's doom, they are capable of anything.

Anyways, farewell Tanaka. You will be missed and not be missed by me. But for what it's worth, not that you'll ever see this post anyways, I fully understand the good you have done. But the one thing that everyone agrees on, is very true: You made us grind like slaves in the end. You surely did troll the stew out of us. And that hate has been well earned. I don't know if it's because we didn't jump on board FFXIV and you were getting revenge or if you were just trying to keep us occupied because you knew the expansion was a ways away or what, but yeah... I think I am willing to take the chance of a Tanaka-less FFXI for the future. But I thank you for your parting gift that is the new expansion. Thank you for believing in a future for FFXI still, and not delivering add on after add on for the rest of time. Thank you for giving us Final Fantasy XI and the many games before it. I hope SE will continue those feelings and your legacy lives on through their efforts, to continue proving certain players wrong in their presumptions of the state of FFXI, to continue exploring new worlds, to go where no man has gone befor- oh wait, too much Star Trek lately.

Anywho, Qa'pla, Master Tanaka!


The rest of my weekend shall be spent honoring the man that changed my life nearly a decade ago. I suggest everyone do the same. If not for his vision, we would have no FFXI. Or at the least, not the FFXI we know. He has earned that much, has he not? To look past the misdeeds for just a day, and honor the man that has brought us together in this time and place, for his many good deeds do indeed outweigh the bad. Honor him, and look forward to the future.

The cynic in me wants to say the 'health problem' is the health of FFXI and FFXIV, not his personal health.

The realist in me wishes him well in his future. Whatever the man may have done, I can't say that I haven't had years of entertainment under his eye, even if I didn't agree with the methods. I pray all goes well for his future as well as the futures of FFXI and FFXIV.

+1 my friend.

Oh wait, no not dreaming england just got booted out of the Euro..... bleh.. not been a good day for the brits.

thank you for saving the rest of us (read: me) the time it would have taken to google that ourselves.

This.

Same reaction from me. And I actually looked on Google News as well. -.-

Like on Facebook: a guy posted "Italy!" as their status, and the comments immediately filled up with "All right! I'm excited for you!", "Have a safe trip", "Bring me something!", until he clarified he was rooting for Italy in the soccer game.

I mentioned everything on the other thread (like posting the 2010 vs. 2012 pics). He definately looks worn down significantly. Another thing I wonder about is did SE not have intentions of forcing him out or were they waiting? They could have easily trotted out the faux health excuse back in 2011 when FFXIV changed directors, but they kept him around. What much changed behind the scenes from 2011 to now?

He was great for developing FFXI and oversaw the early content that made the game so great (FFXI original, RotZ, CoP, yes CoP. Has a great story & characters despite difficulty being polarizing), he did greenlight ToAU and let squishy Colibri get added and WS-based parties give way to TP burn-based parties, but things really turned south with WotG when a string of bad judgments occurred. Before, good calls outweighed all the stuff people were complaining about (or else FFXI would not have been so enduring) but after, bad calls outweighed the good that was being added. It seems he didn't evolve with the industry/player-base. Or maybe his disease was in the early phase with the only noticeable effects being a decline in judgment & decision-making in hindsight? That might be the puzzle piece explaining why the baffling decision to toss out everything learned from FFXI for FFXIV and why not hire a bunch of new staff for FFXIV or FFXI (it felt like he didn't reduce it by 10-25%, it felt like he reduced it to a skeleton crew). I certainly hope he didn't get the disease from the negative physical effects of stress from producing FFXIV. That would make it quite nasty- to take a big chunk out of SE's profits, to destroy significantly damage SE's reputation, to weaken FFXI, and to debilitate the producer in charge of it. Umm... King Tut's mummified body isn't under the computers they're using to develop FFXIV, right?





Fixed that for you. Or is it a crime to correct a moderator?



And this was an unrelated story. I saw it on NHK maybe a week and a half ago and thought "that guy looks like Tanaka". I found an ABC video of it, not as good as the NHK version-
http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=14639708
(best resemblance at 0:28). The guy's name is Tanaka and his face looked to resemble Tanaka enough to make it seem like they're related at least some ways back (yeah, Tanaka is a common Japanese name but there does seem to be a resemblance). If anyone can dig up the NHK video, he talks on it for longer and the camera quality's better making the resemblance more obvious. It's a cool story BTW, making lifepods for people to survive a tsunami, complete with being able to float, fit 4 people and some supplies, watertight but with ports to open for airholes, bright yellow color to make it easy to see, and registration numbers to know who's likely to be inside. Just another manifestation of that awesome Japanese innovation. Ocean tosses a tsunami at them?... They make lifepods to be ready the next time.

BTW, did people know about the tsunami warning passed down over 1000 years in one town in Japan? The short version of it was a high point in town was a trap, that it survives the initial tsunami but bay geography causes a larger backwash tsunami wave to wash over it. It killed everyone who sought out that higher ground. The story was a warning that the hill there wasn't safe and they had to seek a higher one passed down generation to generation there, which they all remembered and did on March 11th.

In a normal Western company, yes.

In an Eastern company where tenure and seniority rules over all, no, his hands were not tied.

Then man needs to go back to what he stated he wishes to do: single player games. Some people just do not have the mentality to be able to bridge that gap that's needed on a developer<>producer<>customer level in an MMO that doesn't really exist in a single player game. I sure as hell won't touch another MMO from the man, but if he were a part of another offline RPG I'd probably play it.

Wow, some of you people are just freaking heartless. The man is suffering from an incurable disease and you cheer that he has to retire because of it!? Harsh.

Did Tanaka screw up with FFXIV? Yes. Was he the only one to blame? Of course not, It's kinda of hard to make FFXIV to compete the market yet you don't want to lose subs from FFXI. I didn't realize it until after I played SWTOR and listened to all the SWG complain, that FFXIV's main problem was it's design concept. It's a sandbox MMO launched in an era where nobody wants to play in a sandbox anymore. FFXIV was bad but I got over it and moved on. I'll see how it looks this fall and decide if i'll give it another shot or not. But if it still sucks, oh well. Plenty of other game out there to play.

Besides, Square Enix has been in decline for years now and FFXIV was just an example of this. I'm a rapid SquareSoft fanboy and even I can admit this. Delays upon delays of titles announcemented, Versus for example. Rehash of the same title a dozen times over a dozen different platforms, really do we need FFIII launched on PSP at this point? Hell, I can buy it on my iPhone. SE, like the rest of the Japanese gaming industry has lost its way. They want to appeal to the world market but just don't understand it. I think the big problem is the generation gap. You still have the old school guys from the 80's and 90's make decision where as Western studio's are headed up by devs in their 30's and 40's just making games they want to play.

I got off point here but I hope Hiromichi Tanaka the best and would like to thank him for all he has given, From Secret of Mana to FFXI, I have alot of fond memories of the stories he helped bring to life. m(_ _)m

Just curious, has it been said what he's suffering from? What the incurable disease is that you're saying he has?

Regardless of internet tough guys, this man was an integral part of the game that sucked the most time out of my life.

For that, I am grateful. I hope he enjoys his retirement.

I wish him the best in his rl.

His worked sucked and I'm glad he isn't working on this game anymore, now it has a chance. The next year will show if he was the master of disaster afterall I guess.

Same way he screwed up FFXIV, being unable to adapt and change along with his plyaers.
MMO market has changed vastly since 10 years ago

The way he suggested his replacement shows he knew his ideas were out of touch and to put the guy back that everyone liked.

I don't think he retired cause of health, i don't think he retired at all..he just left SE cause he had nowhere else to go to work on in the company. FFXIV players hated him, he quit, FFXI players hated him he had to move off it.

I bet he works on other non SE titles in the future, hopefully offline ones.

Wow - well I hope that he takes care of himself. He had a good run with SE and maybe he does realize that it's time to move on. I wish him well. I may have disagreed with almost everything he did with XI in the recent years, but he DID work hard and he was just doing what he thought was good for the game.

Good bye Tanaka. Take care of yourself.

I would argue some here aren't worried about that distinction

I don't care as long as the "thank god this guy is off the game" isn't lost in all the sympathy.



The guy was despised, on FFXIV and FFXI. The next year will show if he really was the bogey man, right now it's pointless to argue. If the game continues to be crap we know you guys were right, if they start to listen again and content stops sucking I guess we were. I saw him as an dominant force in the meetings and everyone was afraid to say no to his ideas, no matter what his official job was he would say something and it would be so.

Did it say when he was retiring? Was it right after Vanafest? (god I hope so)




Edited, Jun 25th 2012 12:38pm by Runespider

To the people talking about the high-ups possibly overturning Tanaka's decisions, Tanaka wasn't just an ordinary producer. He was head of the whole Product Development Division, the whole sector of Square Enix that made part of the FF franchise. He was the successor of Sakaguchi to carry on the FF-name, as Yoshinori Kitase and Hiroyuki Ito were selected as well.

He was also Senior Vice President of Software Development.

Now if you're saying all of those positions he had had no say in the company or the products it was releasing, then that says something strong about Square-Enix as a whole.