I've had a few bad interviews, but this particular encounter at E3 2019 made me want to crawl inside my own shoe and die.
Let's start with some context. First off, it's hard to fly 11 hours across the world, go back in time eight hours, and function on four hours of sleep per night. It's tough to talk to people all day and be around all the loud noises with no escape, even in your hotel room that you share with your (absolutely great, please don't fire me) boss.
Despite all this, you get by on the buzz of the thing. It's E3, man. E3! The Electronics Entertainment Expo – gaming's Mecca and the chance to talk to loads of interesting, intelligent people about the cool shit they're making. It's extremely good, in the same way suplexing your brain into a skip is good.
Yakuza creator Toshiro Nagoshi was feeling the same when I went to interview him on the second day of the show inside Sega's booth. I arrived ten minutes early and my interview was ten minutes late – that's when I started to wonder what was going on. It turns out Nagoshi was asleep in one of the interview rooms and I was kindly offered an interview with someone else. The problem was, the questions I had prepared were for him specifically. As the brilliant PR person and I try to figure out what to do, a door opens and we can clearly see Nagoshi-san rising from unconsciousness through the cracks.
"Oh, it looks like he's awake, we'll get you set up." It was at this point when I realised I'd fucked up.
I was led into a small interview room where Nagoshi was sitting, along with a PR person and a translator. I could already see that he hated me for existing. He had literally just woken up and here's this guy bothering him as loud music and annoying noises blare from beyond the thin walls and through the open ceiling.
"I'm sorry to interview you when you're so tired," I joke, laughing by myself as Nagoshi's eyes roll into his head. "I'm only going to do a quick one anyway, but I wanted to start by talking about your research process. I wondered if he'd consulted with any real Yakuza on his games?" I direct my question to the translator.
"He's – what sorry?" replies the translator, unable to make out my question above the horrible sounds seeping into the room combined with my East Midlands accent.
"Consulted with real Yakuza," I repeat.
"Consulted, oh," the translator replies before relaying my question to Nagoshi.
A decade passes.
"No, there was no actual consulting work," comes the reply. "So there was actually already a lot of reference materials sourced from, like there's a lot of Yakuza-themed movies and books and comics and things like that to draw from."
At this point, I'm looking for a hook – a good personal anecdote to kick off a story about Nagoshi and the kinds of games he makes. I try another approach.
"He said previously in another interview that he drew from his time going around drinking, hearing sad and funny stories from the people he met. I was wondering if he could tell me any of those stories," I ask.
"He said it in another interview?" the translator replies.
"Yes, he said that he learned some sad and surprising stories," I clarify.
"From Yakuza?" comes the response.
"No, from going around drinking, just from people in bars and stuff," I clarify more.
"Oh, okay…"
More: https://www.vg247.com/2019/06/18/yakuza-creator-toshihiro-nagoshi-interview/
