Have you ever had the chance to surprise someone you truly admire? 

I recently got that chance – to surprise Nicolas Doucet with congratulations (and a cake!) celebrating his and Team Asobi’s well deserved Game of the Year win at The Game Awards for Astro Bot! It was such a fun moment… Neither of us are experienced talk-show hosts and I got to bust in on him when he was nervously recording his own intro for this entry in Sony’s Creator to Creator series.

But while that was a super fun bit, it also kind of broke the ice – and gave us the chance to really just enjoy talking to one another about our personal experiences making games…. About the principles we use to try to shape the design and tone of our work.  While our teams at Team Asobi and Sucker Punch Productions make games that appear on the surface to be very different – we discovered how many shared values we have, and how much our teams have in common.

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Nico shares lots of insightful thoughts about how Team Asobi crafts their games, how they think about the blend novelty with difficulty, and even how they designed some of our Sucker Punch characters into their games.

Then he turned the tables on me and we got to talk about how nervous we both were making our first games for Sony, some of the lessons learned when developing Ghost of Tsushima, and which moments from the game stood out the most.

I left our conversation feeling super inspired, and appreciative to have the chance to have spent this time talking to Nico and learning from him.  I hope you enjoy this Creator to Creator half as much as I did surprising and chatting with Nico!

Enjoy! 

First off, a huge thank you to everyone who has been playing LEGO Horizon Adventures — seeing the community share their stories and experiences with the game has been incredible! If you’ve played LEGO Horizon Adventures, you know that everything in the game is made entirely out of LEGO elements. Now that same creativity and attention to detail have been brought into the real world with our official Aloy & Varl vs. Shell-Walker & Sawtooth set! With only a couple days left until the set releases in stores on March 1, we want to give you a behind-the-scenes look into how we brought the game’s vibrant world to life in physical form. Watch the video below or read on to see how it all came together! 

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Stephane Varrault, Design Director at Guerrilla reflects on the collaboration with Studio Gobo and The LEGO Group: “Working with LEGO bricks and trying to replicate all the machines in this universe forces you to think about abstraction, and abstraction is good for a designer because you start to think about the essence of fun. It’s about going back to the essentials.” 

With that design concept in mind, Senior Model Designer Joseph Kyde at The LEGO Group went to the drawing boards to figure out the design for fan and developer-favorite machine, the Shell-Walker. Figuring out the inner workings of the crate with precious cargo that Shell-Walkers keep on their back was no easy feat. “The hexagonal cargo pod was an extremely challenging build to make out of LEGO elements and it was one of my favorite examples of a problem-solving exercise for this set,” Joseph points out. He remembers starting with a crate that closely resembled the in-game version but quickly realized it needed to be simplified for easier building. After days of trying out multiple iterations and different ideas, he ended up on a design with two symmetrical components that come together with a satisfying *click*. 

The Shell-Walker is not the only machine included in the set. “I’m super excited for the fans and builders to get this set, because you can build the Sawtooth!” Guerrilla’s Senior World Artist, Lucas Bolt exclaims. “They are very detailed, and you can also pose and animate them.” With its articulated design, the Sawtooth makes a formidable opponent to include in your own adventures. “Having that ability to make your own storylines from this incredible LEGO set is a brilliant opportunity, and I’m so incredibly honored that it’s coming out of LEGO Horizon Adventures,” says Kat Woolley, Senior Producer at Studio Gobo.    

All adventures need their heroes, and this

Last week, we asked you to climb into Lara Croft’s shoes in Tomb Raider IV-VI Remastered and share epic moments using  #PSshare #PSBlog. Here are this week’s highlights:

call_me_xavii shares a close up shot of Lara with sunglasses on.

DopeAFD shares Lara standing in front of a tomb entrance flanked by statues

Maurice_II shares Lara contemplating crossing lava.

call_me_xavii shares Lara crossing a rope highlighted by a helicopter spotlight

Maurice_II shares Lara leaping towards an enemy with guns drawn

Search #PSshare #PSBlog on Twitter or Instagram to see more entries to this week’s theme. Want to be featured in the next Share of the Week?

THEME: Pirates
SUBMIT BY: 11:59 PM PT on February 26, 2025 

Next week, we’re hitting the high seas. Share swashbuckling moments with pirates from the game of your choice using #PSshare #PSBlog for a chance to be featured.

Run amok, PlayStation fans! It’s every outlaw for themselves in Fortnite Battle Royale Chapter 6 Season 2: Lawless. Looting reaches a whole new level as you go from job to job — heisting Fletcher Kane’s train transports, plundering his riches from bank vaults, or targeting his armored caravan. Here, the hustle never stops: Big Dill drops the beat and high-value Dill Bits, Midas returns later in the season, but the real score? The outlaw life.

There are plenty of ways to make a splash in some cash, so let’s dive into it!

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Havens for heisters

Go for broke in your mission to be rich! Prized Bars saturate the Island more than normal, but your dreams of living the high life can be snuffed out as public enemy number one Fletcher Kane is in the running to take all the riches for himself. To get ahead of the competition, scope out the potential hauls in these new locales:

Welcome to Crime City

Corruption and deceit are the name of the game in Crime City. Peruse the Wise Guys Bookstore, Hostile Hotel, or the Launder Mat to build your stash, but don’t linger here too long. Swindling outlaws  — a.k.a. other players — are itching to stop your hot streak.

An Outlaw’s Oasis

Even heisters need a chance to relax! Outlaw Oasis’ luxurious facilities provide just that, giving you a zen environment to plan your next major raid. 

Shiny Shafts

Feel like making your claim to highly sought-after wealth? Make a hustle to Fletcher Kane’s Shiny Shafts, the mining source that puts the Bars in his banks. 

Lonewolf Lair

SEGA is gearing up for the February 21st release of Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii on PlayStation^®4, PlayStation^®5!

Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii places Goro Majima as the sole main character of the story set after the events of Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth. Set on the tropical waters and islands of Hawaii, Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii offers an unpredictable assortment of high seas thrills. Sail aboard the Goromaru and enjoy hot-blooded battles, a treasure trove of minigames.

Meet a charismatic cast of new characters, brought to life by star-studded actors, including First Summer Uika, Kenji Matsuda, Munetaka Aoki, Ryuji Akiyama, Ayumi Tanida, and Shunsuke Daitoh!

Story

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Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii, a sequel to the action-adventure Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, is due to set sail tomorrow, February 21 for PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4. We recently had a conversation with Masayoshi Yokoyama, RGG Studio Director and the Like a Dragon Series Executive Producer, about what went on behind the scenes during the development of the Pirate Battle system, as well as why he thinks Goro Majima remains a fan-favorite to this day. 

Masayoshi Yokoyama

A narrative-driven game design

Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii introduces a new combat system called Pirate Battles, where players can engage in cannon battles aboard their ships. Was it your plan all along to create a game that was vastly different from the rest of the series? How did the idea come about?

To be honest, we weren’t sure where the game would end up when we first kicked off development. We had a story that we wanted to tell, and we started from there. There were still a number of unanswered questions after Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, like what would happen to Hawaii and how the former yakuza, after their complete dissolution, would continue with their lives. We thought the best way to answer these questions was to create a spin-off game. That being said, at the start of development, we had no idea that we’d end up implementing Pirate Battles into the game. 

Did you develop the Pirate Battle system from the ground up, specifically for this game?

Yes. The Like a Dragon team excels at reworking existing assets to build new systems, but we did create the Pirate Battle system from scratch. 

The canon battle that is part of the Pirate Battle is essentially a shooting game, and shooters can end up being too complex and difficult for players who aren’t used to action games. We ideated various concepts to avoid increasing the difficulty too much, like creating a mini-game where you shoot enemy ships from a 2D bird’s-eye view. However, our development team worked hard to implement realistic 3D pirate ships that the player can steer to engage in cannon battles. It did make the game slightly more challenging though, so we spent extra time making sure the difficulty level was just right for a Like a Dragon game. 

It’s easy to make something as effortless as possible, but if it’s not challenging or rewarding, it’s not a lot of fun. In the end, we decided to make naval battles in the main story easier to play, and at the same time came up with the Pirates’ Coliseum, an arena perfect for players looking to challenge themselves with back-to-back fights with powerful enemies. There are only a few battles that are required to progress the main story, but we also wanted to cater to players looking for a challenge. This is similar to what we did with the Coliseum in Like A Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name, so we’ve taken this kind of dual approach more often with our recent games.

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