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Earlier this year, longtime Konami employee and Silent Hill composer and producer Akira Yamaoka left the company -- and popped up at Grasshopper Manufacture, the upstart Japanese developer headed by iconoclast Suda Goichi, he of the golden sneakers and playful moniker SUDA 51.
This interview was conducted after the long-awaited reveal of the studio's project for EA Partners, Shadows of the Damned. When the publisher showed off the game for the first time, it also revealed that Yamaoka, whose soundtracks for Silent Hill have long been beloved by fans of the series and game music connoisseurs, would be providing Shadows of the Damned's tunes, too.
In this interview, Yamaoka speaks of a Japanese game industry in flux. While Grasshopper has lofty claims of wanting to become the number one studio in the world, it is untested and in a process of expansion right now -- and bringing in key talent like Yamaoka is a big part of transforming it into a powerhouse.
In the bigger picture, the Japanese industry's transition to the current generation has proven complicated, and Yamaoka weighs in on that issue, too.
You first entered Grasshopper as a producer, but now you've been asked to do the soundtrack for Shadows of the Damned.
Akira Yamaoka: [That made me] very happy. Before, I was working at Konami -- I wanted do go in a different style, working and making things at Grasshopper.
A different style?
AY: A different style. That was something I wanted to do. Now I'm very much enjoying my work.
So did you go to Grasshopper to work on Shadows of the Damned?
AY: Not exactly. There wasn't a particular game under discussion in the beginning. When Suda approached me, he was talking about how he wanted me to join and help his company become the number one developer in the world. So I decided to join him at the company -- not just because of Damned, but because of everything they have going at the moment.
Do you think GHM can become number one?
AY: Well, not yet, but in the future. I think our collective goal is to attain a number one position in about five years.
What's your strategy?
AY: Oh, we have many ideas. We'd like to become number one as quickly as we can.
It's often said that Japan game developers' technological skills lag behind their American counterparts. Do you have a plan for dealing with that problem?
AY: I do think that the younger developers in the industry need more education -- technical education, I mean. Grasshopper has a wide variety of people from foreign countries in addition to Japanese staff, and working together with them, I think it's possible for us to achieve things more easily.
Japan's game culture seems to involve a lot of casual titles and gal-games these days; these titles don't have much presence in America. Do you have an interest in Japan-made games these days?
AY: It's about half-and-half. Damned is a wholly new style of game, and I think it'll appeal to a group of users who are neither fully casual nor fully hardcore. Perhaps not everyone, though -- I mean, hardcore gamers are different from anime fans or people who play sports games -- but I'm hoping people who aren't in one of these categories will be interested in buying it.
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Halo Reach, Call of Duty, Rock Band, Guitar Hero; they're all like products. It's an industry wide problem, not just a Japanese one.
But, naturally, I could be wrong. We'll have to ask Yamaoka what he thinks.
Either way, excellent interview. I look forward to exploring the game when it goes live.
Some eastern games still knock it out of the park though. The original Team Silent was brilliant.
As far as the next generation of designers and coders, I would probably be one of them. This makes me want to seek out jobs at some of these smaller more creative studios (particularly in Japan) and do fun new things with them.
You are totally right about the east making the video game scene stay afloat with arcades, but now over here in the west, who goes to arcades?
I went to the arcade all the time when I was a kid, because I didnt have a console, but now everyone can get a console, and now almost everyone has at least one console in there house, Wii especially.
But sorry, the east definitely dominates still in the video game scene. Almost every game that comes out of the east that is awesome, is freakin awesome, and almost no west developer could touch it. But I will admit, the west is getting better, and I do think its only a matter of time before both scenes just get soo good, we have awesome games just getting pumped out.
Even though Japan has games as a part of it's culture (which can arguably be said about the west, just not to such an extreme) it doesn't translate to great games.
This whole reply (even my other one above) is all based on western perception though. From what I've heard, gamers in the east hate open-world games while gamers in the west beg for them. There's a cultural difference between the two and while games sell across oceans, gamer's tastes differ and so the games produced by each will vastly differ.
3D Dot Game Heroes, Silicon Studio
Little King's Story, Cing & Town Factory
Professor Layton , Level 5
Yakuza 3, Amusement Vision
BlazBlue, Arc System Works
Honestly I could go on, and if you notice none of them were made by the big Japanese Companies that you mentioned. Japan's doing just fine, gamers are just not looking hard enough.
In the Past Jp titles were willing to take more risks. They weren't huge blockbusters but they managed to be amazing. I remember when MGS was a failure in jp.
Part of the reason for the lack of motivation is the strict hierarchy. Western studios are willing to accept pitches from even the nice lady at the front desk (as long as it doesn't cost too much) or if a lead designer wanted to do something different he(it's not that easy i know,but at least it's possible) could. At a jp entity you would probably have to leave and setup your own studio. You can't even voice out an opinion without disrespecting your "superiors".
It's not motivation they lack (otherwise they wouldn't put up with the crunch time), it's a sense of entitlement to the product. It's become a job not a pursuit of passion. Why else would you explain them doing amazing work in their spare time.
It's kind of funny most of the western games we play now are all evolutions of the japanese games we used to play and love, most jp games now are looking like the western titles we used to avoid like my high school principal.
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