Initially not intending to pursue a career in video games, his first job a month after graduating was as a 3D CGI designer for
Namco. In 1999, he joined Sugar & Rockets Inc., a now-defunct in-house developer owned by
Sony Computer Entertainment. In 2001, a year after Sugar & Rockets' consolidation by Sony, Yoko got a job at
Cavia. He also helped create the scenario and characters, as well as co-writing the script with Sawako Natori. During its production, Yoko was unhappy with the amount of changes asked for by the game's advisory board. It got to the point where he decided he would not work on another
Drakengard. He was later involved in the production of
Drakengard 2, being credited as a video editor while also remaining as one of the game's creative staff. After
Drakengard 2 was completed, Yoko started work on a third entry in the series. As the game developed, the initial concept was developed to the point where the game was rebranded as
Nier, a spin-off from the series. Despite this, Yoko continued to consider it the third entry in the series. After
Nier was released and Cavia was absorbed into
AQ Interactive, Yoko left the company and pursued an independent career. During this period, he took an unknown role in the development of Square Enix's social game
Monster × Dragon. The majority of his freelancer work involved social mobile games. Many years later, Yoko teamed back up with multiple staff from the production of
Drakengard and
Nier to create a true second sequel to
Drakengard, determining through questionnaires that the main appeal to the fanbase was the dark stories. After that, he began writing a short-term special column for
Famitsu titled "Taro Yoko's Circle of No Good Thinking". In 2015, Yoko announced that he had started his own company called Bukkoro, staffed by Yoko, his wife Yukiko, and Hana Kikuchi, novelist and scenario writer for
Nier and
Drakengard 3. Yoko has stated his intense dislike of interviews. His reason, according to his
Famitsu column, was that he feels video game developers are not entertainers or commentators on their work and that he thinks the subjects they talk about in interviews would be overly boring to those reading or listening. When he does give interviews, he prefers to wear a mask to avoid being photographed, and in a video interview concerning
Drakengard 3, he used a
glove puppet. He is keen in experimenting with the video game format, feeling that many conventions of the video game market inhibit developers' creative freedom. Yoko also considers food an important tool in creating a game, stating that he thinks that types of food from across the world can help him get a feel for the people the game is being aimed at. Yoko was influenced in his style for the
Drakengard series by many games of the day: a commonality he noted was that the player got gradings for their performance after killing dozens or hundreds of enemy units in a "gloating" manner. Later, for
Nier and
Drakengard 3, Yoko explored the idea of a terrible event where both sides believed they were doing the right thing. For
Nier, he took direct inspiration from the
September 11 attacks and the
war on terror. Another direct influence on
Nier was of the gameplay of the
God of War series, which both he and the game's producer Yosuke Saito admired. He has stated his dislike for the "plain and forgettable" type of female video game character: he demonstrated his dislike for this and the stereotypical role-playing video game romance in Furiae, an important character in
Drakengard. In general, Yoko does not consider his writing to be as dark as others see it, while admitting that he deliberately incorporates dark elements. A notable influence on the gameplay of his titles was the classic
shoot 'em up Ikaruga; it directly inspired the dragon flight sequences of
Drakengard and bullet hell sections in
Nier; and informed Yoko on the synchronization of gameplay with the music. A biography of him drawn
Keiji Yoshida and based on Yoko Taro's own words was released in the
Game Creators of Biography web manga series, under the title
"ヨコオタロウ編" (
"Yokoo Tarō-hen"). It was published by
Cygames on its Cycomi platform, starting from February 21, 2021.{{Cite tweet|number=1361661630950477824|user=cycomi == Works ==