The Yakuza franchise has been a staple in gaming since its first release in 2005 and its newest title, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, got great reviews and sold a million units within its first week of release. With a Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii‘s release around the corner on the 20th anniversary of the franchise’s first release, Automation sat down with technical director, Yutaka Ito, at RGG Studios to discuss the new landscape of game programming in the world today.

Ito got the chance to respond to his intentions of posting the source code of the game on X earlier this year.

The reason why I created an X account in the first place was because I felt like there weren’t many game developers out there spreading technical information for people who want to become programmers.

Perhaps there’s a student out there who’s wondering how the Like a Dragon series is made and wants to become a programmer, but doesn’t know what they’re supposed to study. It would be very difficult for them to actually get answers from the development team or access information about how commercial titles are programmed.

Ito also added some words of encouragement for young programmers everywhere:

If your name appears in a game’s end credits in your second year in the industry, and your next title is right around the corner, you might feel like sticking at it for another year. Last year’s newbies had their names come up in three games in a single year.

Recent major titles tend to have long development cycles, so I think the new programmers at RGG Studio are blessed (laughs).

Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii is set to release February 21st, 2025 and hopes are high for the RGG team after the recent success of Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth.