A Great Opportunity!
Not long after reviewing Endwalker for Kotaku AU, David Smith (the current editor of Kotaku AU at the time) informed me that I would have the opportunity to ask Naoki Yoshida between 5 and 10 questions. My little anxiety-filled brain went into overdrive. I’d been playing Final Fantasy XIV fairly religiously, was quite immersed in the lore, and now I got to ask the director questions? It seemed like an impossibility for someone who was writing on and off casually like I was.
The next issue was, what do I even ask? Most of my writing was guides or features. I’d only recently branched into doing reviews and now I needed to learn how to do an interview as well. I was very overwhelmed with everything, but not in a bad way. After taking some time to get over my initial excitement and nerves, I thought “What do I, as an FFXIV player, want to know about the new Materia servers?” That’s how I came up with the questions to ask Yoshi P, as Yoshida Naoki is affectionately known by players. I managed to sneak a question about Island Sanctuary in there as I was eager for it to release. It was very cheeky, and I feel like I got an appropriately cheeky response.
And yes, it does say that David Smith wrote it. Occasionally, David forgot to put things under my name, or because he put it in the back end, Kotaku AU would often default to David. If I picked up on it, I’d let David know, but sometimes I straight up missed it and so did he.