IGA's BitSummit 7 (2019) Interview with GameSpark
Jun 14, 2019 14:12:55 GMT -6
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Post by dareka on Jun 14, 2019 14:12:55 GMT -6
This interview by GameSpark was conducted during BitSummit 7, but published on June 13th, during E3.
Original article: www.gamespark.jp/article/2019/06/13/90576.html
Translation by yours truly.
It's interesting because you get to hear IGA's thoughts on the game's development woes and such. It's also laden with cultural references unique to Japan, so I'll be updating it with translator notes in the coming days.
GS: Thank you for joining us. So what's your overall impression of this year's BitSummit?
IGA: I spent lots of time with the press yesterday, and today there was this stage presentation and a live stream, and then some more time with the press... but the crowded show floor when I came in and the long entrance line I saw this morning really make it clear attendance is growing each year. Also, it used to be that most games showcased were indies, whereas now we have a lot of big-name publishers participating as well.
GS: There are a lot more overseas games, too, and players seem very accepting of them.
IGA: Yeah. It used to be that games from overseas1 were completely avoided.
GS: To the point that we had the word "yoge."2 Lots of them were very difficult, and Castlevania had a reputation for being pretty tough at that point, too.
IGA: And once the high level of difficulty had become part of the franchise's identity, it was a real challenge upending that image, telling players "that's not it!" The anniversary collection was released a few days ago, and you can see how the originals were really quite difficult. You couldn't change your trajectory when you jumped, you would be pushed back when you took damage ... and they put enemies right over the pits you can fall into!
GS: I remember often falling into pits on knock-back. It must be a real headache, getting the difficulty just right.
IGA: Well, there are lots of different types of players. I like to compare a game's difficulty to arithmetic. People who solve top-level school entrance exam3 problems don't simply enjoy getting the right answer - they enjoy the process of arriving at the answer, too. Some people, though, are not interested in the process - they just want the right answer, and so you have to find the right balance. The point is that there are people who look for a different sense of accomplishment from the one you get from getting all the answers right on a 10 x 10 arithmetic calculation grid4, from solving that kind of top-level school entrance exam problem.5
GS: Oh, so Castlevania was a top-level school!
IGA: That's right. And besides the difficulty, there's the thing that you have to keep the series' title. I made the games so that you could jump in from any installment, but I couldn't help but feel that some players hesitated to try it out because they hadn't played the previous entry.6 For "Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night," I wrote new lore for new characters, so there's a lot more that needs to be explained.
GS: So how will the lore for Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night be explained throughout the game?
IGA: You’ll find an explanation in the stream archive, but a lot of it is in the hints and dialogue. You can also find out more by talking to the alchemist Johannes, by reading the "books" on the shelves, and by reading a particular character's diary in-game. I ended up making the lore for Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night really complicated, which was really hard on my interpreter when I was doing interviews with overseas publications.7
GS: I mean, with a new game, there's a lot to explain.
IGA: I couldn't cover it all with Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. It's the same for all games, really, but with action games in particular, if you make the cut-scenes too long you'll disrupt the game's pacing. I cut a lot of lines and some topics for that very reason. The spots where you can put an in-game cut-scene, too, are dictated by the story, so you have to make adjustments so that they don't interfere with the pace of the action.
GS: So, "Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night" - the release date outside of japan is getting close…
IGA: The game's gone gold. Now it's just up to the publisher!
GS: Tell us about the things you had trouble with during development.
IGA: Well, we didn't use our tried and true development environment,8 but rather middleware like Unreal Engine 4, so we struggled figuring it out. Our development environment used to be unique and proprietary, so it was completely different from UE4.9 The game is 2D gameplay with 3D graphics, and this also made for problems we hadn't anticipated when changing development environments, and using UE4's physics shaders and such. We learned valuable lessons for next time.
GS: You mention UE4 - is a PS Vita release out of the question?
IGA: The release was cancelled, partly because UE4 doesn't run on it. The developer10 put in their best effort, but I think it wouldn't have been feasible.11
GS: Tell us about the elements in the game you’d really like players to notice.
IGA: We put a lot of effort into the graphics. You know, we were really hammered over the graphics by players from overseas when we released the beta demo; so, we worked on it, making changes to the point where the publisher uploaded a comparison video showing the differences between old and new. We really put a lot of effort into changing the lighting, so I hope players take notice. It was pretty overwhelming, but I’m thankful for having been given the opportunity to address the issue, as opposed to ending up releasing the game without realizing what players were looking for.
GS: Tell us a little bit about the difficulty.
IGA: The difficulty had been getting higher with each new installment12, so we toned it down quite a bit. In our test plays, I died quite often at the bosses with mechanics I’m not good at, but everyone else had no problems, so I guess I’m just not as good as I used to be!
GS: So the difficulty’s not at the top-school level anymore.
IGA: We did drop it a bit, yes. In this game, the shard skills are really strong, so not holding back on their use is one of the keys to success, I think. As for advanced players, I’d love for them to use cancels to create multi-hit strings like in the originals.
GS: With Kickstarter, I imagine the budget's fluctuation was a huge issue.
IGA: As far as the budget, we also obtained funds outside of Kickstarter. Development itself was more of a problem than the budget. For example, bonus modes were originally done by the main programmer in his spare time. However, with crowd funding, once you promise “we’ll do this,” you absolutely have to deliver the feature.
GS: So what was originally an optional extra for you guys was now a must.
IGA: Exactly! Also things like the level design, you optimize development by making choices - making changes to features and scope - but with crowd funding, you’ve already said you’re gonna do this and that, we’ll have this many rooms; and making these promises made for a new development experience, one that was pretty overwhelming. There were some great things, of course - feeling the fans’ passion, having them close to development, it was all very refreshing - but we also faced tremendous hurdles, so I hope other crowd funded games can learn from our example what not to do.
GS: I can’t wait to discover what kind of game was born from this new experience you had. Lastly, one final word for readers of this interview.
IGA: Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is on the verge of release, so I’m eager for fans of the series to sink their teeth into it. It’s a game that left a mark in people’s hearts, despite coming out in an age full of titles unique and peculiar enough that, at first glance, you’d ask yourself “who’d buy this”; and I’d like for players to enjoy it in this day and age.
GS: You want to show people what this game, that was not forgotten in the face of so many other unique titles, was all about. Thank you for your time!
Translator Notes
1. "Overseas" (kaigai, 海外) is their way of referring to anywhere outside of East Asia (which doesn't count as overseasbecause Chinese and Koreans look Japanese and have a shared history for some reason I cannot possibly fathom), most often used to refer to the "industrialized West" (because they've assimilated Eurocentrism and also poorer countries are not on their radar for some other reason I cannot possibly fathom).
2. "Yoge" (which should be transcribed as "yougee" and pronounced "yoh-geh", 洋ゲー) is a derogatory term for western games. They had the reputation for being difficult and simply not fun, to the point that you could hardly call them games. In their defense, hardly anyone played western computer games (and those that did went on to make Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy), and console games made in the west in that era were not always very ...er, good. Also, in Japan they really care about aesthetics, and lets face it: most westerners suck at low-res, low-poly visuals.
3. So, with many notable exceptions (particularly in the field of engineering) the way education works in Japan is College is basically for having fun while you learn to respect your superiors before joining the workforce. However, since pretty much every company under the sun hires new graduates with zero experience every year come April, they get a lot of job applications; so, to whittle down the number of applications, famous, financially stable companies only accept applicants from top Universities. This means that, basically, even if you don't actually learn anything in College, the Higher-Learning institution you get into determines how high you can shoot in your professional career, more or less; so top Universities will have these really hard entrance exams, to weed out the riff-raff, and take only those students that score highest on their tests (and children of politicians and other rich, powerful people, of course. What this means is that entrance exams for top-level schools (Nankankou, 難関校, lit. schools which are difficult to get into) - not just for Universities, but for just about every level, including grade-school - are something that's always present in the Japanese consciousness, and so they use that context for analogies and comparisons, a lot.
4. "Hyaku masu keisan” - it literally means "100 square calculation." You put numbers from 0 to 9 or 1 to 10 on the first row and column of a 10 x 10 grid and then apply whatever arithmetic operation appears on the intersecting square, like this.
Original article: www.gamespark.jp/article/2019/06/13/90576.html
Translation by yours truly.
It's interesting because you get to hear IGA's thoughts on the game's development woes and such. It's also laden with cultural references unique to Japan, so I'll be updating it with translator notes in the coming days.
GS: Thank you for joining us. So what's your overall impression of this year's BitSummit?
IGA: I spent lots of time with the press yesterday, and today there was this stage presentation and a live stream, and then some more time with the press... but the crowded show floor when I came in and the long entrance line I saw this morning really make it clear attendance is growing each year. Also, it used to be that most games showcased were indies, whereas now we have a lot of big-name publishers participating as well.
GS: There are a lot more overseas games, too, and players seem very accepting of them.
IGA: Yeah. It used to be that games from overseas1 were completely avoided.
GS: To the point that we had the word "yoge."2 Lots of them were very difficult, and Castlevania had a reputation for being pretty tough at that point, too.
IGA: And once the high level of difficulty had become part of the franchise's identity, it was a real challenge upending that image, telling players "that's not it!" The anniversary collection was released a few days ago, and you can see how the originals were really quite difficult. You couldn't change your trajectory when you jumped, you would be pushed back when you took damage ... and they put enemies right over the pits you can fall into!
GS: I remember often falling into pits on knock-back. It must be a real headache, getting the difficulty just right.
IGA: Well, there are lots of different types of players. I like to compare a game's difficulty to arithmetic. People who solve top-level school entrance exam3 problems don't simply enjoy getting the right answer - they enjoy the process of arriving at the answer, too. Some people, though, are not interested in the process - they just want the right answer, and so you have to find the right balance. The point is that there are people who look for a different sense of accomplishment from the one you get from getting all the answers right on a 10 x 10 arithmetic calculation grid4, from solving that kind of top-level school entrance exam problem.5
GS: Oh, so Castlevania was a top-level school!
IGA: That's right. And besides the difficulty, there's the thing that you have to keep the series' title. I made the games so that you could jump in from any installment, but I couldn't help but feel that some players hesitated to try it out because they hadn't played the previous entry.6 For "Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night," I wrote new lore for new characters, so there's a lot more that needs to be explained.
GS: So how will the lore for Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night be explained throughout the game?
IGA: You’ll find an explanation in the stream archive, but a lot of it is in the hints and dialogue. You can also find out more by talking to the alchemist Johannes, by reading the "books" on the shelves, and by reading a particular character's diary in-game. I ended up making the lore for Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night really complicated, which was really hard on my interpreter when I was doing interviews with overseas publications.7
GS: I mean, with a new game, there's a lot to explain.
IGA: I couldn't cover it all with Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. It's the same for all games, really, but with action games in particular, if you make the cut-scenes too long you'll disrupt the game's pacing. I cut a lot of lines and some topics for that very reason. The spots where you can put an in-game cut-scene, too, are dictated by the story, so you have to make adjustments so that they don't interfere with the pace of the action.
GS: So, "Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night" - the release date outside of japan is getting close…
IGA: The game's gone gold. Now it's just up to the publisher!
GS: Tell us about the things you had trouble with during development.
IGA: Well, we didn't use our tried and true development environment,8 but rather middleware like Unreal Engine 4, so we struggled figuring it out. Our development environment used to be unique and proprietary, so it was completely different from UE4.9 The game is 2D gameplay with 3D graphics, and this also made for problems we hadn't anticipated when changing development environments, and using UE4's physics shaders and such. We learned valuable lessons for next time.
GS: You mention UE4 - is a PS Vita release out of the question?
IGA: The release was cancelled, partly because UE4 doesn't run on it. The developer10 put in their best effort, but I think it wouldn't have been feasible.11
GS: Tell us about the elements in the game you’d really like players to notice.
IGA: We put a lot of effort into the graphics. You know, we were really hammered over the graphics by players from overseas when we released the beta demo; so, we worked on it, making changes to the point where the publisher uploaded a comparison video showing the differences between old and new. We really put a lot of effort into changing the lighting, so I hope players take notice. It was pretty overwhelming, but I’m thankful for having been given the opportunity to address the issue, as opposed to ending up releasing the game without realizing what players were looking for.
GS: Tell us a little bit about the difficulty.
IGA: The difficulty had been getting higher with each new installment12, so we toned it down quite a bit. In our test plays, I died quite often at the bosses with mechanics I’m not good at, but everyone else had no problems, so I guess I’m just not as good as I used to be!
GS: So the difficulty’s not at the top-school level anymore.
IGA: We did drop it a bit, yes. In this game, the shard skills are really strong, so not holding back on their use is one of the keys to success, I think. As for advanced players, I’d love for them to use cancels to create multi-hit strings like in the originals.
GS: With Kickstarter, I imagine the budget's fluctuation was a huge issue.
IGA: As far as the budget, we also obtained funds outside of Kickstarter. Development itself was more of a problem than the budget. For example, bonus modes were originally done by the main programmer in his spare time. However, with crowd funding, once you promise “we’ll do this,” you absolutely have to deliver the feature.
GS: So what was originally an optional extra for you guys was now a must.
IGA: Exactly! Also things like the level design, you optimize development by making choices - making changes to features and scope - but with crowd funding, you’ve already said you’re gonna do this and that, we’ll have this many rooms; and making these promises made for a new development experience, one that was pretty overwhelming. There were some great things, of course - feeling the fans’ passion, having them close to development, it was all very refreshing - but we also faced tremendous hurdles, so I hope other crowd funded games can learn from our example what not to do.
GS: I can’t wait to discover what kind of game was born from this new experience you had. Lastly, one final word for readers of this interview.
IGA: Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is on the verge of release, so I’m eager for fans of the series to sink their teeth into it. It’s a game that left a mark in people’s hearts, despite coming out in an age full of titles unique and peculiar enough that, at first glance, you’d ask yourself “who’d buy this”; and I’d like for players to enjoy it in this day and age.
GS: You want to show people what this game, that was not forgotten in the face of so many other unique titles, was all about. Thank you for your time!
Translator Notes
1. "Overseas" (kaigai, 海外) is their way of referring to anywhere outside of East Asia (which doesn't count as overseas
2. "Yoge" (which should be transcribed as "yougee" and pronounced "yoh-geh", 洋ゲー) is a derogatory term for western games. They had the reputation for being difficult and simply not fun, to the point that you could hardly call them games. In their defense, hardly anyone played western computer games (and those that did went on to make Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy), and console games made in the west in that era were not always very ...er, good. Also, in Japan they really care about aesthetics, and lets face it: most westerners suck at low-res, low-poly visuals.
3. So, with many notable exceptions (particularly in the field of engineering) the way education works in Japan is College is basically for having fun while you learn to respect your superiors before joining the workforce. However, since pretty much every company under the sun hires new graduates with zero experience every year come April, they get a lot of job applications; so, to whittle down the number of applications, famous, financially stable companies only accept applicants from top Universities. This means that, basically, even if you don't actually learn anything in College, the Higher-Learning institution you get into determines how high you can shoot in your professional career, more or less; so top Universities will have these really hard entrance exams, to weed out the riff-raff, and take only those students that score highest on their tests (and children of politicians and other rich, powerful people, of course. What this means is that entrance exams for top-level schools (Nankankou, 難関校, lit. schools which are difficult to get into) - not just for Universities, but for just about every level, including grade-school - are something that's always present in the Japanese consciousness, and so they use that context for analogies and comparisons, a lot.
4. "Hyaku masu keisan” - it literally means "100 square calculation." You put numbers from 0 to 9 or 1 to 10 on the first row and column of a 10 x 10 grid and then apply whatever arithmetic operation appears on the intersecting square, like this.
yey