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Is it enabling you to do things that you couldn't do at Capcom?
KI: One of the things that I can do now that I couldn't do at Capcom is I can just jump into some new creative venture that I never could. Like at Capcom, even if I had a really good idea, I had to sit there and pass it by a bunch of approval processes and get the okay from people to move forward. So, it would take six months. Here, I can have some great idea, and the very next day just say, "We're going to do that," and we start doing it. So, just being able to move very quickly behind some of the creative ideas I have is something that is nice to have at the company.
Are you planning to keep the companies small and agile, or do you want to grow, and grow, and grow?
KI: Ultimately, it would be nice to grow the company to be larger than Capcom, but even if I did that, I want to make sure that we'd have some of the key values that we've developed through these small companies, and that is being able to have a speedy decision-making process, along with sharing information effectively between the different companies.
What inspired you to come up with these concepts of how you want to run a company? Is there anything you looked at in other industries or other countries? What is different here than the traditional Japanese game industry?
KI: So, one of the things that makes my business model and my company very unique compared to other traditional Japanese developers and publishers is that Comcept in itself kind of focuses on what we feel is a good concept for a game, and something that's very creative, and something we want to build a brand around, build a game around.
A lot of companies, if you look at them today, they'll be like, "Oh, Okay. How do we monetize? Where's the money to be made? What are we giving the consumers that they want?" They don't really have a creative vision for what to build a game around.
That's one of the things we have that feels very unique. We have this creative concept, and that's what we're going to build our IP around. We're not going to focus it necessarily on the money. That's still going to be an important feature. We're not going to focus it necessarily on what exactly the people want. This is going to be our vision and what we're going to stick to it. And sort of having a company that does that these days is actually quite rare.
King of Pirates
Okay. Why?
KI: The big difference is those companies don't have Keiji Inafune working for them. I'm not running the company. I'll go into a little explanation on that. That is, Comcept, Intercept, all the companies, they work under my umbrella. They understand who I am. They understand the concepts that I've got, right?
So, if you look at other companies, they may have a president, they may have producers and directors, but these guys sometimes don't really understand. In the end, you can't say whose game it was that they made. They're not really unified as a company under a single person's vision.
And these companies are all unified under my vision. Therefore, we're able to be very focused and understand that this is the concept. All the people that work for me understand how to follow and how to iterate and execute on that concept. So, we're just a unified team moving forward versus some people being political, some people pretending to be a producer and not really having a true skill to do it, and not really having a vision, or whatever. We are a unified single unit.
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I think its a good thing that Gamasutra keeps close ties with some of the best in the industry even when no one else is.
Now hopefully Inafune will indeed be able to show the japanese sector a more effective way of how to get things done.
After the metascores of Ninja Gaiden 3, RE:Operation Raccoon City and Armored Core V we've talked about what's wrong with the Japanese game industry, but as well with the one in Germany. Seems it's almost the same. Monetization and copycatting are more important than original game mechanics and prototyping. There seems to be no more space for Innovation and Creativity for the major Developers and Publishers.
What some small studios could have done with the money that those two titles had cost ... gosh, it aches!
And the problem as a whole is that there's nothing new. Interest in the game industry has been raising tremendously but 'nothing' has changed. To just allow that to remain leads to loss of interest followed by a collapse.
No one is inventing, and David has nailed it on the head.
This is particularly bad for an industry that is dwarfed exponentially by the constantly reinvented technology it is using.
I'm not particularly big on this constant need for "innovation" or "invention", but it does have it's place of importance. Nintendo stepped it up because they knew they had a problem. Continuing to simply compete for the same audience would lead to stagnation and eventual destruction. So they gambled (seriously, they gambled HARD) with a completely untapped market and struck big. HUGE, even. Now, there's a larger focus on a casual market as a whole with Move and Kinect walking into the areas of motion control that the Wii couldn't. But that's only on the tech end. Simply relying on the latest console, graphics engine, or apple product to drive our creativity is terrible. If we keep that up the first successes on the platforms will dictate all the genres and tropes of the market, and we'll be flooded with copycat syndrome again.
But Inafune's level of change is really on the management end of our industry. How do we as developers make games? One of his problems at Capcom is how it took so long just to push an idea out. He's a seasoned developer at Capcom and it takes him MONTHS of approval time. Imagine the new starters of the industry who have less experience. They probably never get heard from for years. By the time you DO have any say, the next wave of hardware might be coming out. Now, you've got to flow with the tide of changes that generation brings whether it's a new level of control, a new method of feedback, or a completely new market that your company wants to focus on. It's a system that can bottleneck creativity.
Inafune is working with a group of people differently than how he did at Capcom: Having staff working at positions that they wouldn't have until they were at least a decade more experienced, more focus on creative development and its directed vision than monetization methods, and an rapid-decision process. The innovation doesn't lie necessarily in the games, but in how they are developed. The kicker is that this isn't even new. It's just the perks and freedoms of indie development! Indie devs are praised consistently for their ability to add new and different ideas quickly as opposed to many of those AAA studios we point to because they have specific markets to target. Inafune wants to push out more creativity into the industry, so it's not a surprise that this is how he's doing it.
innovation is more than having a new fancier machine that does the same exact thing as its predecessor and I believe that's where the japanese game industry and what inafune is attacking . Not the machines or hardware but the mindset and development process of japanese games. As David Asksys why can't we have several badass games a year? why do we have to be subjected to a large number of uninteresting and cliche titles before the occasional demon souls comes out which is both uncompromising in its design and a new model as far as gameplay mechanics and implementation are concerned ?
I'm not convinced there'd be an increase in masterworks though, because even in the days of 1 year dev time, 5 man teams there were very few really good games. I'll take Mortal Kombat (1992) as an example. It was a game who's style (digitized sprites) that lots of other developers tried to copy, but just couldn't nail. By the time MK3 came out they were waaay ahead of anyone else in the field. Metroid was just as innovative, and by the time Super Metroid came out, many developers were making simple run and gun shooters with different weapons. What I'm saying is that the best games of each generation are really difficult to make, even in small teams.
I love how he wants to make a game that is just his pure idea. Not for the customers, not for the money, simply out of a love and passion for making games. Bravo, Inafune-san, Bravo
Unfortunately that question was not asked. But it's still true. The only public effort he's got so far is the basest form of the thing he is railing against.
"The big difference is those companies don't have Keiji Inafune working for them... Right now, all of these concepts, basically, they come from me."
That comes off as egotistical and frankly crass. It sets him up as apparently the only way Japanese games can not "suck." It's also totally at odds with his complaint that the "young guys" aren't getting chances. Combined they make a really straightforward complaint of "young guys aren't thinking like me!" which is the most stereotypical "conservative old man" complaint imaginable.