Recently, Keiichiro Furyama, producer of Silent Hill and Dead Souls, invited Resident Evil and Evil Possessed producer Shinji Mikami to be a guest at Bokeh Game Studio Studio. Under the lights and alcohol, the two talked about their past experiences making horror games, the differences in the identities of front-line creators and behind-the-scenes producers, and many other topics.
See below for the video (Note: There are some slight errors in the subtitles in the jane), and the following is a brief excerpt of the video content.
Create horror
The birth of 3D games such as Resident Evil and Silent Hill
In the mid-1990s, 2D fighting games represented by Street Fighter 2 were threatened by new-age 3D games such as VR Warrior, so manufacturers such as Capcom began to turn to 3D game development.
The original Resident Evil experienced a very painful start-up period due to the 3D transformation, and so did the Silent Hill team. At that time, when the Waishan team was asked by the senior management about various small production details, waishan at that time would reply that "it would be good to copy Resident Evil".
Shinji Mikami laughs and says that the game director uses this kind of answering technique when he is busy.
The original Resident Evil and Silent Hill
Shinji Mikami's goal when he made the original Resident Evil
Creating horror and allowing players to experience it in real time was Shinji Mikami's primary goal when he made Resident Evil.
How zombies turn around as the player passes, how to force the player to consider ways to kill zombies, and how to give players the possibility of avoiding them when they lack ammo, Shinji Mikami says these are all well thought out by him.
The impact of the horror game Sweet Home on Resident Evil
The 1989 film adaptation of the horror game "Sweet Home" had a deep influence on Mikami, and the director of the work, Fujiwara Toro, can also be said to be Mikami Bole.
Fujiwara thought Sweet Home's system was excellent, but the in-game performance was poor, so he hoped to try it again in future works, and thus hit it off with the fledgling newcomers of the time (although Mikami thought it was a weird system that made you think humans were connected").
Meanwhile, in Sweet Home, players can get different items to get stronger, and need to make a series of choices to survive with limited resources, and these ideas are also retained in Resident Evil.
Tokuro Fujiwara's Sweet Home
Give up or save a wounded companion? Give the player a choice
Some deliberate plots in horror movies annoy Shinji Mikami, such as the fact that the partner character will be injured and fall to the ground when fleeing, and the protagonist is forced to abandon his companion (the supporting character tries to save his companion and is killed back, etc.), there are no surprises, and you can guess it even before watching it.
Shinji Mikami wants to give players a choice and instinctively believes that this choice is feasible in the game.
Since the team members were not fully confident in this idea at the time, Shinji Mikami was worried about whether the team would follow him, but in the end he and the team made a game against all odds.
The 90s when you were "free to make games in prison."
In the memories of Waiyama and Mikami, the game development environment of the 90s, although painful, was also very interesting. Waishan recalls that the studio in the 90s was like camping, eating and sleeping in the company. And Mikami said it took him 15 years to find the perfect metaphor: game development at the time was like "going to jail where you could make games freely."
Creators and producers
A generation that led the way 3D games are made
Waishan cites that many of the game's creators born between 1969 and 1971 are now directors or producers.
For example, the likes of Tomita, Masahiro Sakurai, and Taro Yokoo (all three born in 1970) have led the way in 3D gaming by riding the 3D console boom.
Mikami and Waishan were also in their early 20s when they started making Resident Evil and Silent Hill, and the game development team at that time had no concept of schedule and budget, full of enthusiasm and recklessness, and the whole studio seemed to be a classmate.
Games that focus on horror also need to be entertaining
Mikami said no one wants to be reprimanded by their bosses, but a small percentage of people like to be yelled at by their girlfriends or wives, and then more people are addicted to haunted houses or roller coasters.
So Mikami at the time wanted to appeal to a wider public base (from passive to active, from horror to excitement) through games, and to make a game that could sell a million copies in Japan.
If pure horror was pursued, it might only sell 300,000 copies in Japan at that time, and it was good for players to feel the original fear, but it would definitely not become the benchmark for future horror games.
Horror games like Unicorn Beer and Mongolian Noodle Soup
"Metaphor Da" Ren Mikami also gave a self-considered strange analogy: horror games are like Kirin beer, which are not as popular as treasure ore power and tea drinks, and it is more bitter and more intense, not as popular as Asahi beer, but it is still the mainstream of the beer market.
Taking Japan's Mongolian noodle soup as an example, Waishan believes that horror games should have a balance between business and taste, satisfying fanatical fans but also attracting ordinary users.
The big four japanese beers: Kirin, Asahi, Suntory, and Sapporo
Mongolian noodle soup in Nissin
The creators of horror games are best only half a step ahead of the big one
Mikami believes that in order for horror games to be accepted by the public, creators should only take half a step more than a lot, and if they go too far like some talented producers of other types of games, the public will become difficult to follow them, so that they cannot succeed commercially.
Waishan also added that the pursuit of psychological horror of "Silent Hill" can perform overseas, while "Dead Souls" is not performing well, the pursuit of psychological horror of the work does have some difficulties in business, he is very grateful to the fans for their support to him all the time.
"Resident Evil 4", which pursued the horror of Benge, was very popular, and led the trend of third-person shooting, and also made Waiyama sincerely admire Mikami.
The creator's Sanjo Shinji and the producer's Sanjo Shinji
Contrary to popular perception, Shinji Mikami's most famous work, Resident Evil 4, is the weakest game in his eyes as "the sense of accomplishment of making this game by himself".
At that time, Mikami was both a front-line creator and a producer behind the scenes, and this dual identity made Mikami almost schizophrenic: most of the novel ideas he thought of as a creator were rejected by his own rationality as a producer.
It wasn't until the time of "Hands of God" that Mikami, who was the creator, was finally able to release some of his creativity.
A legacy for the future
Responsibility as a game creator to the younger generation
Waishan said that he hopes to be able to maintain his essence, like a wedge/bond, to help newcomers create. He wanted to continue making games that were often considered difficult to make and gather people with the same philosophy to prepare for the future.
Mikami said that he has been in the industry for more than thirty years and is about to retire as an "old man", but after talking with Waishan, he felt that even if he was demented, he hoped to lead the studio and work with the younger generation to contribute to excellent works (here Mikami also complained that Waishan's speech was too slow, and it took too long to reach this conclusion, so that he endured so much pain).
If Mikami and Waiyama are asked to make a new horror game
In Mikami's view, horror should be a fear of the unknown, just because of his past achievements in horror games, he can not face the things he already knows to start creative thinking, just as it is difficult for him to persuade a person who is familiar with "1+1=2" to accept that "1+1" is not necessarily equal to 2.
Mikami also made a strange analogy, the new idea grows like eyelashes above his eyes, and he also hopes that when the new eyelashes fall, he will be ready to make a game.
Waiyama said that he had accumulated a lot of new ideas in the years when he did not make horror games (such as "Gravity Fantasy World", etc.), and he hoped that the new work "Wild Dog" would make players feel scared but curious at the same time, and hoped that Mikami would give him feedback in the future, after all, Mikami was like a mentor and has always inspired his creation.
Of course, Mikami didn't want Toyama to think about him when he was playing the game, and because Furzan said he couldn't do it, Mikami joked that he would check The Outer Mountain's work after the release of "Wild Dogs".
At the end of the conversation, Mikami also said that the imprint left by Silent Hill on horror genre games is quite profound, and Silent Hill should not be compared with Resident Evil.
Keiichiro Toyama's New Work "Noguko"