Masayoshi Yokoyama (横山 昌義 Yokoyama Masayoshi, born June 30, 1976) is a Japanese game producer, director and writer from Sega, most specifically Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio, a studio within Sega Div. 1, where he's the head of the division and studio since 2021. He is mainly known for his work in the Yakuza series, where he has been working since the very beginning as a writer and later on as a producer.^[1][2][3]

Career

Yokoyama studied advertising and marketing and applied to various jobs as a planner, not knowing what it really meant. He was open to entering any industry as a planner, be it a wedding planner or financial planner. He then realized that the games industry, specifically in Japan, also had planner positions. In the end, he chose Sega because it seemed the most interesting to him, due to being asked very different questions during the interview process than other companies at the time. Due to his father managing a toy store, he knew the name Sega and was surrounded by games, but was actually more of the athletic type, and never thought he would join the game industry.^[4]

His first title since joining the workforce was Jet Set Radio where he did "menial tasks" and "everything he could" such as level design, voice recordings and enemy placement. His level design work was influenced by Excitebike on the NES. Later on, he became a key developer for the Yakuza franchise. He once again did multiple jobs, including script writing, sound and stage direction and since Yakuza 5 also doing producer work. For the Like a Dragon series, the greatest influence is Oishinbo, since he has read that manga over and over again since childhood. Working on the Yakuza series gave him pride as a creator, as before, he has worked on games that some people thought were interesting but did not do great business wise.^[5][6]

In October 2021 after Yakuza series creator Toshihiro Nagoshi left Sega and Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio to join NetEase and establish his own studio, Yokoyama took over and became the new head of Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio after over a decade working in the series and studio.^[7]

Works

References