Nier director Yoko Taro: New game projects start ‘with the money’

Yoko Taro said new game projects usually start from budget, staff skills, and publisher requests, not from a fixed genre idea.

He joked that he tends to bring up deadline risks only when a project is nearly done, as a way to keep development moving.

Taro also said several recent non-game projects were canceled, even though he had already been paid for them.

The interview, from G-STAR, offers a rare look at how major game and transmedia projects are shaped by funding and staffing limits.