Is that a new process within Capcom for this game?

ES: Yeah, that's definitely a new process for us.

Why did you decide to do it that way?

ES: There are a lot of goals when making a game like this, and for us, originally, our goals were, we want to make it quick, cheap, but good. And so that's your guiding mantra -- but then, we're trying to surpass what we did with RE5.

So it can't just be fast and cheap quality; you have to try and maintain a high level of quality in a game you're producing. So by breaking it down like this, we're able to localize our efforts and maintain high quality, I think.

Were you able to create something cohesive that came together in the end with that process?

ES: I think that yes, we did. Because we had a vision from the beginning, and I told people what we wanted -- "these are the goals, this is what we're trying to achieve" -- and then we broke them down in every unit, and went to work individually. But at the end of the day, they were still working towards the same goals that I had laid out from the beginning, and I don't think people deviated too much from what my vision was.

How do you communicate that vision, and how do you keep people on track?

ES: Well, from the outset, it would just be completely impossible for me to communicate with 150 people on a daily basis. But that's, as I said, why we have those individual units. And we had about, say, 10 directors -- one for each unit -- and I would have constant meetings with them, and I would explain to them what I wanted, and what my goals were. And they would translate what I was trying to say into stuff that each of the units could understand, and it was about just constantly refining that process.

Was stuff feeding back up to you? And is there room, on a project of this scale, to take into consideration what people on the ground level are saying and learning -- running into problems, or finding new solutions that you could then transfer over from team to team?

ES: I guess I should say that at Capcom we're all on the same floor for development, so it's not like we're all spread out and it's hard to communicate.

YH: And there's no cubicles or partitions like blocking communication, so we're very close together. So we can just shout across the room at each other and whatnot. The lines of communication are very open on that floor.

Does Capcom have a culture where people can say, "Hey, wait a minute. This isn't working," or "Hey, wait a minute. We've got to think about this in a different way"? Can they say that to people who are above them in the hierarchy?

ES: I think it's just something with human relationships. My door's always open for people to come and express their opinion to me, but sometimes there's things that are difficult to express to another person, and that's just life, I would say. For example, I could theoretically just go talk to the president of Capcom if I had a problem, but I probably wouldn't do that. I would probably go through someone, an intermediary, to convey what I wanted to say to him, and I think it's the same way throughout the company.

And like I said, 150 people on the project. That's a lot of people's opinions to try and incorporate into the project. So that's why we had to have these units broken up. And then we have core members that are always contributing and giving us feedback, and you try and incorporate those opinions into the game, and make sure you're always improving it.

But then you consider so many people working on the game, if you break them into disciplinary units, and they're working on an isolated part of the game – so it's like they're making just one part of the product – people get bored with just their one part and they don't feel like they're contributing to the whole. So because we broke everyone down into these units where they're contributing to a small whole, there's more satisfaction, more motivation for them to work on that part, and then we bring all of it together.