It's addictive.
Translation/Stream of Light
Many people say that Hidetaka Miyazaki is a god and a genius.
He debuted halfway through the year before entering the game industry in his nearly 30 years, which is rare. The exquisite and profound artistic tone of the Soul series, the solid high-pressure and high-achievement experience, and the blank plot setting up to the point are all convincing.
Friends have a more interesting evaluation of him: electronic charm. This joke is inexplicably convincing, even if the games he makes always seem to be torturous, difficult, challenging, and mixed with a lot of "Miyazaki Hidetaka's conspiracy", but to understand the pleasure after these pains, the sweetness of the soul, people may never be able to get out.
And my impression of Hidetaka Miyazaki is more stuck on his ghostly smile emoji.
Rumor has it that he is very low-key and rarely gives interviews, but looking at his life, he can still find the lesser-known side of Miyazaki Hidetaka. In my opinion, he is more like an ordinary genius who takes his soul apart, which is the most normal, the pursuit of the essence of the fun of the game.
01
In 1973, Japan's first PC game was born. In 1975, Japan's first home console, tv Tennis, was released. In 1978, the game Space Invaders sparked a social phenomenon boom in Japan. Nintendo's FC was released in 1983. And Miyazaki Hidetaka was born in Shizuoka City on January 1, 1974, and it can be said that his growth coincided with the development of the Japanese game industry, and there is no doubt that the original generation of games.
However, while his classmates were playing Mario and Dragon Quest, his leisure time was spent with books. Since his family forbade Hidetaka Miyazaki to play games, he was left with books, and using the few books he found in his study as an opportunity, he began to indulge in the book world of fantasy and gothic horror.
One of the most influential series in his career is the game series Fighting Fantasy. The game series is a book that changes the direction and ending of the story according to the reader's choice, and can be experienced like a game. Battle Fantasy is known as the progenitor of the game series.
Created by British writers Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson, the series was inspired by the Dungeons & Dragons craze who wanted to experience the fun of this type of role-playing game even if they were alone, hence Battle Fantasy.
What Hideo Miyazaki is obsessed with is the more adult-oriented work in this series called "Sorcery", which is also the original experience he later experienced when he created a dark fantasy worldview, and it is also the opportunity to lay the foundation for his RPG design and narrative design.
Although Hidetaka Miyazaki wanted to read more stories, the family did not have the strength to buy new books, so he began to soak in the local library. However, in the books in his hand, there are many Chinese characters that he has not yet learned, basically more than half of them cannot be understood, but precisely because he does not understand them, he has developed the habit of relying on paintings and prompts to fill the imagination space.
It is as if he wrote and created stories together with the original author, and this wonderful experience and fun later formed Hidetaka Miyazaki's environmental narrative and fragmented narrative method.
That is, it was later known, similar to "Demon Souls" and "Dark Souls", through a small amount of cutscenes, a lot of fragmented information, many NPC remarks, item detail descriptions, etc., to restore the world view and story experience. To some extent, Hidetaka Miyazaki chose this technique because he wanted to share the pleasures he had gained in his childhood.
Slowly, although Miyazaki was subjected to many restrictions as a child, he unconsciously honed his qualities as a game producer. If no one had forbidden him to play games in the first place, he might not have developed the habit of reading; if the family had the money to buy books, he might not have access to the difficult books and the rich stories behind them.
However, these limitations do not always exist.
02
Coming to the big city of Hidetaka Miyazaki for his studies, he finally played the game of his dreams, and his first game console was the Nintendo SFC. As an opportunity, and perhaps also affected by the backlash from his infancy, he experienced a lot of games during this period, and later confessed that he even indulged in "Tokyo Magic Academy Sword Wind Post" for several weeks.
This is a PS game released in 1998 by ASMIK ACE, produced by Ken Kajii, who was in charge of the "Dokabang" series, and later worked with him to launch a masterpiece that shocked the industry, which is another story.
In college, although Miyazaki studied social sciences, he had long since become a captive of games, and naturally, he wanted to join the game industry. However, in the end, due to lack of money, he still chose ORACLE, the most expensive foreign IT company, after interviewing several game companies.
Although it was a job based on salary, in fact, during oracle, Miyazaki's work was very smooth, and his colleagues were very harmonious, and even for him there was no unsatisfactory status quo. At the same time, however, Miyazaki began to tire out of the job, because of the active work of his colleagues.
Colleagues are accustomed to thinking about the big things and small things at work outside of work, and they are not upset at all, for whom work has become a part of life. Looking at their appearance, Miyazaki realized a problem: fundamentally, he was not interested in the job.
Of course, for him, separating work from life and enjoying private time is also a very attractive choice, but the state of work of colleagues is too dazzling. "I also want to find a job that immerses me," miyazaki thinks, and Hidetaka Miyazaki comes across a certain game.
"ICO", a game recommended by classmates during college, made Miyazaki Hidetaka's life gear turn sharply.
It is an action-adventure game released on PS2 in December 2001 and developed by Sony. "I will not let go of this person's hand, and even the soul may accidentally leave her." Like the game's slogan, ICO was a rare game that featured hand-holding at the time.
Players play as a teenage ICO who is sent to the castle as a sacrifice, and encounters Aorda, a girl with a language barrier, and the two need to try to escape the castle together. In the game, the design that gives people a warm and dreamy art style and does not rely on words to rely on the player's world view has made Miyazaki Hidetaka have this idea: I also want to make one.
Later, Hidetaka Miyazaki confessed that he understood the possibility of video games as a media: "Making games is the work that makes me fundamentally interesting." So he finally made up his mind to turn to the game industry, but the problem came, at this time, he was already a "layman" in his nearly 30s.
03
Few game companies would hire such a person.
Hidetaka Miyazaki, who took one step at a time, finally met one of the very few companies that could accept him: FROM SOFTWARE. At that time, the company's president, Shin Naotichi, believed that "creation needs stimulation" and believed that the company needed richer and more diverse knowledge and experience, so he admitted Hidetaka Miyazaki halfway through the interview, and did not even ask him about his experience in the game industry.
In addition, FROM SOFTWARE has not started to make games from the beginning of its establishment, from its establishment in 1986 to 1993, in the 7 years, they are involved in the basic system construction business of large-scale universal PCs, when the commercial software field of the Japanese IT industry focused on the use of quantity to evaluate, equivalent to how much code, how high the rating. Even if there is the idea of "making better content", there is no recognition of technical ability and the quality of the work.
Therefore, based on the idea of "to fight, to get users to directly evaluate the work in the market", in 1993, FROM SOFTWARE tried to learn the experience of game production from scratch when all employees were programs. Perhaps it is with this background that the company will have a more tolerant attitude towards talents who try from scratch.
Later, Hidetaka Miyazaki once said of FROM SOFTWARE: This is a company that can really play a role in the face of "making fun games no matter what". Since the company wants to make money, it has to pursue profits, but FROM SOFTWARE is a company that is engraved with the gene unique to creators: "I can understand how to make money, but how to be a game".
It can be said that it is this creative attitude that makes the company choose the route of "doing what you want to do" and "providing players with the best possible content" after turning to the game industry, in the face of the increasing risk of high-performance product development, and in the wind farm where the market begins to be oriented to user needs, this kind of thinking has gradually led to their corporate culture.
FROM SOFTWARE debuted as King's Field, a rare first-person real-time 3D game that took just over 10 members and half a year to complete compared to the native turn-based games that were popular in Japan at the time.
This game has not only won the praise of many players, but also become a foothold for FROM SOFTWARE in the game industry. Later, the 3D action game "Amored Core", released in 1997, also became the company's representative series, and the company is gradually growing.
04
Hidetaka Miyazaki joined the company in September 2004, and along with the newcomers who joined in April of the same year, he started his career in the game industry from the enemy AI responsible for making Armor core: The Last Mercenary. At that time, Miyazaki's salary was the same as that of a newcomer, which showed his enthusiasm for the game industry.
In addition to the production of enemy AI, Hidetaka Miyazaki at that time was also responsible for a series of tasks design, game operation testing, menu status bar design and a series of other work, and this game also established a basic understanding of game production. He then worked as the head of the Panzer Core 4 planning team, where he was greatly recognized and promoted to supervisor halfway through development.
The release date of "Armor core 4" is December 2006, which is equivalent to Hidetaka Miyazaki's promotion to the supervision of the signature series after only two years of employment, and it can be said that the speed of promotion is extraordinary. Later, he also served as a supervisor in "Armored Core FA", and for this experience, Miyazaki Hidetaka himself commented on it as "lucky".
"If it weren't for the fact that there was no need for new supervision in Armored Core 4, this wouldn't have happened," Miyazaki later admitted, "and the reason why I was able to gain a lot of experience in Armored Core: The Last Mercenary is also because this work is closer to a sequel, and all aspects of the system are very mature." ”
Having said that, of course, it is impossible to rely solely on luck to become a supervisor.
Toshifumi Nabeshima, who has worked on almost the entire series of works in "Armored Core" and was a producer in "Armored Core 5", once spoke highly of Hidetaka Miyazaki: "When I first worked with Miyazaki, I felt 'this guy is amazing'. ”
Although Hidetaka Miyazaki was unspeakably immersed in the game production of his dreams, his innermost dream of fantasy RPGs was always asleep in his childhood. At this time, a new work being developed by other project teams encountered difficulties, and when Miyazaki Asked about the specific content of the game, his heart could not help but be happy.
This new game, "Demon Souls", was the popularity of Bethesda (B Society)'s "The Elder Scrolls" at that time, and Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) also wanted to make an action RPG game that matched the fantasy world. At this time, Ken Kajii, who jumped from Asmik Ace to Sony, happened to visit FROM SOFTWARE, and took the cooperation related to the new work of "King's Secret Order" as an opportunity, and SCE began to cooperate with FROM SOFTWARE.
However, the development of this new game encountered difficulties, and the development team repeatedly tried to make a game similar to the Elder Scrolls 4 Oblivion, and then encountered more and more problems, and never made a convincing prototype. Just when the company thought that the project was not saved, Miyazaki Hidetaka learned of its existence.
At this time, although Hidetaka Miyazaki was still the supervisor of "Armor core FA", he always wanted to make a game similar to "Battle Fantasy" depicting dark fantasy themes, and at the same time, he found that SCE's Kajii Ken was the producer of the "Tokyo Magic Man Gakuen Sword Wind Post" that he had been addicted to in college, so he resolutely applied to join the project.
2014 Eitakakazu Kajii Ken
05
In this way, Hidetaka Miyazaki took on the role of overseer of Devil's Souls, and he proposed several changes to make the project successful.
The first to be abandoned was the early goal of "making a Replica of The Elder Scrolls IV". Before he joined, the project had been following SCE's advice and moving in the direction of "Old Roll Like", but Hidetaka Miyazaki believed that the same route could not surpass the original, so he clarified to the team that the general direction should be focused on combat and exploration.
The second change is the perspective of the game. The game that originally went in the direction of the old roll adopted a production mode that can freely switch between the first-person perspective and the third-person perspective, but if you want to pay attention to gameplay such as combat and exploration, only a fixed perspective, the most appropriate angle and the expression of the battle to the extreme, in multiplayer games, the third-person perspective is also more able to reflect the gameplay. So the game designs the perspective as a fixed + third-person mode.
Third, for a project to shine again, one of the most important things must be reconsidered: the main axis that defines the essence of the game, namely, challenge, discovery, and sense of accomplishment. Hidetaka Miyazaki's vision is to recreate the most essential source of fun in these classic RPGs with the latest technology.
In an interview with 4Gamer, Miyazaki talked about the definition of these essential pleasures: "For example, in Wizardry, you can feel the heartbeat of exploring the maze, the fear of encountering enemies, and the joy of getting props. I don't think these are the good memories of the past, and those pleasures must be the most essential things.
As a result, Hidetaka Miyazaki redefined the main axis of Demon Souls, making the team's vision of moving forward clearer.
06
When making Devil's Souls, there was also this consensus between Hidetaka Miyazaki and Ken Kajii: "Regardless of popularity and popularity, in short, make interesting things first."
Although this is a natural idea at first glance, making games is also a business, and it is not easy to implement. With hundreds of millions of yen of production costs and investments, it is necessary to put together materials that can persuade investors and executives that "this will definitely sell.". Money is easier to get for projects that mimic popular masterpieces, but for brand new projects, it's hard to prove that you can really make money because there are no success stories.
In fact, Demon Souls was not simply accepted in pursuit of the fun of the game rather than the selling point. Later, Kajii Ken also admitted that in order to convince SCE, it really took a lot of effort. It is worth mentioning that the fireproof woman who appeared in "Demon Souls" is actually the result of SCE's request for the game to add a heroine.
"Developing a game with an uneasy feeling of not knowing if it can sell well, the pressure is really not small." Perhaps Ken Kajii has more to do with executives is not yet known, but even under such pressure: "I believe that the game that we even have to save time to sleep to play must have its most essential fun, and the fun at that time, I hope that today's young players can also taste it." 」 ”
With this expectation, the team continued to develop Demon Souls.
07
Fast forward 3 years, and the game is finally close to completion.
Finding solutions through constant death, overcoming difficulties through countless challenges, this game design is like the original vision outlined by Miyazaki Hidetaka, which presents the essential fun of classic RPGs with the latest technology. However, in addition to presenting the essence of fun, Miyazaki Hideko also prepared another core design.
That's the online element. Hidetaka Miyazaki believed that most of the online games at that time had negative experiences with too strong social elements, so he began to think about how to build a system that players could easily experience.
One of these systems is non-synchronous socializing, which is the SMS that can be left in the maze, and the death replay that the player can stay after death. So far, a large number of online games have relied on chat channels and voice functions to socialize, which is equivalent to an experience similar to "calling", but "Devil's Soul" is designed to be similar to the light social experience of "texting and emailing".
Demon Souls reset screen
There is also a system, which is the soul system. That is, in the spirit state, it can be summoned or invaded the world of other players, cooperate with each other or become enemies, cooperation is to speed up the speed of the main player to reach the boss battle, hostility, is to slow down or even hinder the former. In other words, the protagonist of the game is always the main player, and the players other than this are all additional elements that add color to the protagonist's adventure.
In this game, Hidetaka Miyazaki does not create the experience of "confirming intentions with certain people and then playing games together in the living room", but deliberately creates accidental scenes that "even if it is only a momentary thing, it will always remain in the heart". The reason for this is because of Hidetaka Miyazaki's personal experience in the past.
Once, when Hidetaka Miyazaki was driving up the snowy mountain, he encountered a ramp, and the car in front of him slipped up, so the vehicle behind him pushed one by one, and slowly let the car in front of him cross the slope. Miyazaki Hidetaka was the same, pushing the back of the car across the ramp, but even if he wanted to thank the car behind, he couldn't stop and thank him in such a section.
On the way back, he couldn't help but think repeatedly: "Did the last car go back?" These people who have helped me will probably never meet again..." Suddenly his mood was indescribable. Later, Hidetaka Miyazaki recalled the incident and felt that it was just like the cherry blossoms loved by the Japanese, because it was a fleeting thing, and it would be kept in mind for a long time.
As a result, this experience and idea were translated into design and integrated into "Demon Souls".
08
On October 12, 2008, a demo version of Demon Souls was exhibited at TGS, but it was met with a lot of game fans. Ken Kajii later recalled: "Nothing but misery.". Whether it is people who like dark fantasies or people outside the circle, they all give evaluations in a very critical manner.
At that time, when it came to action RPGs, most people would think of the Peerless series, but "Demon Souls" had no gorgeous special effects, no fancy combos, and only gave people a retro sense of operation. Confused players, almost all gave a negative impression, looking back, after playing Demo, only a handful of players.
Later, Kajii Ken reviewed: "Demon Souls is not a game suitable for exhibition. "The value of this game lies in the experience after the player accumulates experience, only 5 minutes of trial play, obviously it is impossible for players to experience the fun of exploring and thinking in the game, let alone to get the strong sense of achievement in the game."
Later, Famitong also added a knife, because of the high difficulty and serious atmosphere, so it only gave a 29/40 rating. Even Shuhei Yoshida of Sony's games division at the time commented that "This is Crap" because the game was outrageous, and judged that it could not catch fire overseas, so he gave the game distribution rights in North America to Atlus and the European publishing rights to Bandai Namco Games.
09
In the midst of the unfavorable winds, "Devil's Soul" was released in the Japanese market on February 5, 2009, due to a series of criticisms and bad reviews, the company's internal expectations for it were also very low, and the first week's shipments were only set at a conservative 50,000 copies, and various advertisements were not arranged.
But unconsciously, some keen players gradually unveiled the whole picture of the game, giving the expectation that "this game feels good". Therefore, the small number of players with feelings accumulated at the trial site, as well as pure FROM SOFTWARE fans, became the driving force of the game, making "Demon Souls" show a good trend when it was released.
Looking back, the game sold about 43,000 copies in its first week of release, with a digestibility rate of more than 95% in the library, which led to a shortage of "Devil's Souls", even if it was re-shipped in the second week, it was swept away, and in the third week, it directly landed on amazon's sales list, setting an amazing result that every participant did not expect.
After this, "Devil's Soul" still relies on word of mouth to maintain a long stream of sales, relying on the difficulty rare in modern times, constantly harvesting popularity on various video websites, that even if the difficulty is not low, it is still addictive gameplay, which not only attracts core players, but also makes many new players come to visit. At the end of 2009, Demon Souls sold 130,000 copies and gained excellent popularity in the global market.
As mentioned earlier, Sony gave up the game's overseas distribution rights, and then Demon Souls was brought to North America by Atlus in October 2009 and promoted to Europe by Bandai Namco Games in June 2010. That same year, the game was named Game of the Year by GameSpot, beating new titles from the same year's Assassin's Creed, Call of Duty, Uncharted and other franchises.
Later, after talking about giving up the overseas distribution rights of Devil's Souls, Shuhei Yoshida admitted that he "completely underestimated the value of this game" and admitted that he had misjudged. However, there was still a big difference between the version of the game provided to Sony at that time and the release version, and it was not easy to make an accurate judgment at this point.
Shuhei Yoshida
Over the next 10 years, Devil's Souls sold about 1.83 million copies, making it an important cornerstone for FROMSOFT to start its golden age.
10
The story that happens after this will be more familiar to players and practitioners who like the Soul series.
Hidetaka Miyazaki not only produced the "Dark Souls" series, which is known as the spiritual sequel to "Demon Souls", "Bloodborne" set on a gothic stage, and "Only Wolves" with ninja-themed tension and operability, until today's "Eldon's Ring of Law".
It can be said that these works are based on the concept of "challenge, exploration, and sense of achievement" inherited from "Demon Souls", and add different elements to make them, which ultimately makes countless players addicted to it every time. And Hidetaka Miyazaki, who forged everything, has also become the ghost talent who makes players suffer a lot, but enjoys all the fun.
Today, Hidetaka Miyazaki has long been a representative director and president of FROM SOFTWARE, but he is still on the front line of making games. In 2018, he received the British Gold Joystick Lifetime Achievement Award. Presenting him with the award were two authors of his childhood favorite game book, Battle Fantasy, Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson.
After thanking all those who supported him, Hidetaka Miyazaki added: "I will devote my life to making games, and I will do my best to make everyone have endless fun." ”
Article Source:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_pI-BbUWb0
Horse Racing Lady Dry Goods | Quadratic Chance | Blind MMO
Let's talk about the original god | Small and medium-sized teams are rare to die | Civilization and conquest
Two-dimensional user layering | interview with Lilith | Don't make products upside down