Yoko Taro letter

Please tell us your hopes for 2024, or a message to 4G*mer readers.

Yoko Taro: When I was young, I talked to my male friends, and he started talking about how ‘seducing women was simple'. Of course, I wondered what he meant, and asked, “How?!” And he told me to just pass them a letter. I said, “There's no way such a simple technique will work that well.” “Then just try again. Keep repeating that.” His logic was that, even if the success rate was 1%, if you repeated it 100 times, you'd get closer to 100%, and that it was just a numbers game. Huh, I thought.

Actually, I had a few things to promote in this section. Not games, but other projects that have been announced.

But I couldn't get into the mood to do so. Looking back at 2023, the world has been cruel, hasn't it? The Ukraine war isn't even over, and yet a new war in Gaza tore out. According to UNICEF, over 5,300 children have died over 46 days. I'm the twisted sort who is skeptical about everything. So if UNICEF, if they really lied about the figures by multiplying the numbers by 10… that's still 530 people. Even at 1/10th. Heck, 50, or even 5. There's no way those deaths are a good thing.

So I watched this sort of news every day, thinking, “Wow, this sucks. But a game creator like me can't do anything about it.” Like I wrote above, I like kids. I cry, watching the news. But I can't do anything, so no matter if I laugh or cry, it's meaningless.

What I think is that I probably will never be able to think of a way to solve this problem in my entire life. I don't have that power. I can only discuss the issue like I'm knowledgeable about it, look for reasons I can't do anything about it, and watch from afar like it's not my business. Still, I look around everyday if there's any way to solve it. Despite faintly thinking that it's useless.

So I go back to my first anecdote about wooing girls. In this powerless reality, I thought, how about swapping it into a probability problem? I may be powerless, but I have a way to increase the percentage. If it weren't me, and someone in another position with the power to help, maybe they will come up with an idea.

It says here to write ‘a message to 4G*mer readers', so there must be people reading this. I don't know how many, but there definitely are. Try think for one minute how to save those children. Put all your effort in just thinking for one minute. I'm being very serious. Think of any possibilities without giving up from the start. 100 readers mean 100 minutes, and 1,000 readers mean 1,000 minutes. And then maybe someone will think of a great idea. Perhaps I, out of those 1,000, will be the one.

That's what I thought of today