Conducted at the 3000+ person YCS Japan Tokyo, with two Konami staff members.
There was an interview by SocialGameInfo, a Japanese News Site, with two staff members of Konami at the YCS Japan event with two staff members
片岡 健一 Kataoka, Ken’ichi
Senior Producer for Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links
福田 寛志 Fukuda, Hiroshi
Producer for the Yu-Gi-Oh! Official Card Game
For sake of brevity, we’ll be noting some key things, as the article has some points that are mostly explaining to unaware third parties about what’s going on, and talking about the nature of the recent YCS Japan.
• Mr. Kataoka does note that when Duel Links initially launched, staff were concerned there would cannibalization of the game with the Official Card Game, causing real life players and sales to drop.
However, their data points to Duel Links and the official card game have a synergistic feedback where Duel Links gets people into the Card Game, and people who play the Card Game play Duel Links.
• Fukuda remarks that by creating different means of playing, there are more ways for players to get into Yu-Gi-Oh!
• Kataoka comments that as Yu-Gi-Oh! explores E-Sports, they’re trying to find ways of making Duels seem interesting from the perspective of a third party watching the game.
Fukuda comments that Duels as E-Sports might be more visually exciting if they can implement something similar to Solid Vision.
Kataoka then states he believes Yu-Gi-Oh! is quite compatible with the fields of Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality. Smart phones can be used as VR Goggles to an extent, so he would like to see that avenue explored in the future.
