Shuhei Yoshida Warned Expedition 33 Team: Don't Call It a 'Turn-Based RPG'
The former head of PlayStation's indie division told the makers of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 to stop calling their game a "turn-based RPG" — because the label might scare players away.
Shuhei Yoshida, who left PlayStation in 2025 after more than three decades at Sony, shared the anecdote during a panel at the Busan Indie Connect Festival 2026. The session was aimed at indie developers learning how to choose a publisher and pitch their projects. Yoshida explained that as part of his consulting work after his departure, he collaborated with Kepler Interactive, the publisher of Expedition 33, and played a demo of the game at the Game Developers Conference roughly two years before its release (Eurogamer).
He was impressed. The battle system blended traditional turn-based combat — the kind familiar to fans of Japanese role-playing games, or JRPGs — with real-time actions like parrying and dodging, a mix Yoshida likened to The Legend of Dragoon, a PlayStation title he produced himself (VGC).
But the term "turn-based RPG" troubled him. At the time of those early conversations, turn-based JRPGs were widely considered old-fashioned, and Yoshida attributed his caution to the negative stigma around the genre (Automaton Media). "It's incredibly well-made, but it would be better not to call it a turn-based RPG," he recalled telling the team. "That alone might cause players to overlook it" (Eurogamer).
Sandfall Interactive and Kepler Interactive took the advice. Instead of "turn-based RPG," they marketed the game's combat as "reactive turn-based battles," a phrase that signalled the real-time layers underneath the familiar structure.
The game then went on to become one of 2025's standout success stories. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 sold 3.3 million copies in its first month, a figure that climbed to 5.5 million by October 2025. It won multiple honours at The Game Awards 2025 and placed second on Eurogamer's list of the 50 best games of the year (Eurogamer).
Yoshida also offered some broader perspective on publishers and trends during the same panel. Whether publishers chase trends, he said, depends on the company. Those picking up nearly finished games are more likely to care about what is popular at the moment. Those involved early in development tend to focus on trends less, because a trend could be dead by the time a game ships (VGC).
For a game that went on to sell millions, the lesson is plain enough: sometimes the right words matter as much as the right design.
