In September 2010, Akihiko Matsui was named director of Final Fantasy XI. About two months later, according to the game's community records, he was no longer in the job. Mizuki Ito had taken the title, and Matsui had been assigned to help another team: the one working on Final Fantasy XIV, a game that had just launched to a poor reception.
He was not new to the work. By then Matsui had been at Square for nearly twenty years. His credits begin with battle design on Final Fantasy IV in 1991 and battle planning on Final Fantasy V the following year. After that he worked on the maps of Romancing SaGa 2, released in 1993.
Then came Chrono Trigger. Matsui joined the project partway through development. The 1995 game credits three directors: Yoshinori Kitase, Takashi Tokita, and Matsui. His part, as the record describes it, was planning and the movements of monsters in battle. When a player watches an enemy step forward, wait, and strike, that is the kind of work he did.
He moved on to other games from the same company: SaGa Frontier in 1997, and Legend of Mana in 1999, where he is listed as game designer and chief of system design. None of these gave him the kind of fame that follows a single named author. His name sat beside others, and it stayed there.
In 2000 he joined the production staff of Final Fantasy XI, Square's first online Final Fantasy, and took charge of its battle system. An online world does not end when the credits roll. Players log in again tomorrow, and the day after, and the battles they fight have to hold up each time. This became the work he kept returning to.
That brings us back to 2010. Matsui had been promoted to director of Final Fantasy XI in September. Final Fantasy XIV had just opened to its players and was struggling. He went to help it, as lead combat system designer, and the director's chair of XI passed to someone else. The sources say he was assigned; they do not record what he thought about it, and neither will this story.
In 2012, Hiromichi Tanaka, the long-time producer of Final Fantasy XI, left Square Enix. Matsui took over the producer role on August 1 of that year. Final Fantasy XIV, rebuilt, was released again in 2013 as A Realm Reborn. Matsui is credited among its battle staff.
On March 22, 2023, Square Enix announced that Yoji Fujito would become producer of Final Fantasy XI. Matsui had held the post for more than ten years. Reports say he would keep supporting the game in some form, and his later credits include assistant director on SaGa: Emerald Beyond in 2024. Over thirty years his title changed again and again: designer, director, planner, producer. The thing he was tending, a battle that has to work for whoever logs in today, stayed the same. When you look at the title on your own door, how much of it is the work, and how much is only the chair?