Japan's game design elite speak out

TOKYO-- At last week's TIGRAF event (Tokyo International Computer Graphics Festival) held in Tokyo, a number of well-known developers from top Japanese game publishers came to talk about computer graphics (CG) and the game-creation process.

The final panel of the day saw Monolith Soft president Hirohide Sugiura, Square Enix developer Yuske Naora, Capcom developer Tatsuya Minami, and former Sega UGA president Tetsuya Mizuguchi together on stage. The session dealt less with the actual development of CG content, and more on current issues that developers face when producing the games.

After a short introduction, the panel was kicked off by a question from moderator Kouzy Watanabe, who asked if, compared to a few years ago, developers are able to do pretty much anything with CG in terms of technology. That question quickly sparked a response from Monolith Soft's Sugiura, who pointed out that today's limits have more to do with budget than the technology.

"Our company consists of ex-Square employees, so our [development] environment started from scratch," said Sugiura. "Our challenge was to develop [games] with Final Fantasy-like quality, but we were in a situation where we didn't have the money like a huge company. We had to struggle though areas where we knew what we wanted to do, but we just couldn't. And we're still struggling with that dilemma during our development.”

The other developers seemed to agree that budgets are becoming a real hurdle. Former United Game Artists president Mizuguchi followed up on Sugiura's comments, saying that larger companies also have issues when giving the green light on projects because even though expenditures might be high, the companies just don't know if a game will succeed until it is released.

Mizuguchi contrasted the current game development scene to what regularly takes place in the U.S.-based movie industry, which can green light films with huge development budgets due to numerous ways of testing the movie prior to release (and prior to commencing production). However, the gaming industry, he said, is still lacking these methods as the game industry doesn’t have scripts or storyboards to consult.

"The scenario may be good, the characters may be good, and the setting may be good [for a game]. But nobody will allocate 2 billion yen [$15 million, to bankroll development] just because of that," commented Mizuguchi. "The graphics may turn out to be excellent, but it might be a crappy game. There's no second chance if that's what ends up happening."

Capcom's Minami then added, "There's no company--be it a publisher or a sponsor--that will pull out their money if they receive merely a pitch and a request for 2 billion yen on a two-year project. We used to do it up until now, but things are getting tighter.”

In an example of how a company copes to make a successful game, Square Enix's Naora described the way that the company plans out a Final Fantasy title, which has been successful, game after game after game. But in doing so, Naora added, there is risk of trying to develop games that don’t take risks.

"Final Fantasy has been [developed] after much trial and error," said Naora. "We have core members who plan out the project, and we work from checking out successful examples in the past. But when I look at my company, I see that we have a lot of staff, and we should be able to come up with newer, more creative titles--if we tried. We were supposed to be able to do that. There's some sense of danger among the staff that the way we're heading, we may only be able to produce Final Fantasy games."

Mizuguchi went on to say that gamer expectations and standards are on the rise, and that the current development team structure may no longer work. Taking the movie "The Matrix" as an example, Mizuguchi commented that the movie might not have been as complete if it hadn't been produced by two creators (both Wachowski brothers).

"The Matrix covered all fields like drama and visuals. But I'm thinking that the movie may not have been possible if it had only one director. In other words, I think the days for a single creator or artist are over. Things will have to be developed with more precision, and be measured more objectively. Otherwise, I think the budgets for video games will stay stagnant, or may even drop."

Mizuguchi went on to explain that roles in Japanese development studios are not as clear-cut as those at American dev studios.

"When I was in America, people asked me about what I did and I told them that I was a producer. Then I gave them my business card which says that I'm the president of United Game Artists. I was told a lot that I couldn't create anything good if I were working in both the creative field and the management field. In American companies, the business management is done by ex-lawyers and so forth, and the borderline between their jobs and the creators' are clear cut."

Sugiura supported Mizuguchi's statement, citing an example about producers in the gaming field. "Producers are supposed to be working on the strategic points, such as meeting a budget for a project and planning on the release schedule,” said Sugiura. ”It's like that in Hollywood, and it's the same in Japan for the TV and movie industry. The director is the person in charge of the creative side. Producers are exposed in the game industry as though they are a creative staffer. So I feel a bit embarrassed to be called here to talk as a creator."

Comparisons of the gaming industry in Japan to Hollywood were made by others as well. The Hollywood system sees a system where a film project is created by assembling artists from different agencies or who are working independently. But in the old days, the industry was based on the studio system that saw movies created by employees, which included the actors and directors. Discussions addressed the fact that this studio model is what the current gaming industry looks like today in Japan. But it was noted that the game industry is in transition. Things are slowly moving towards the direction of modern Hollywood, as seen by numerous developers that have moved toward becoming independent in the recent year.

"Japanese companies are still making everything in-house", said Minami. "The producer, the creator, the distributor, the studio, everything fits into one company. I think that makes it hard for jobs to be clear-cut, and also for individuals to recognize what kind of responsibility or role they have. In that sense, I think that working as a professional producer or creator independently may be the ideal style, although it isn't happening too much yet. I think that it would be ideal [for the industry] if it changed to a format like the U.S music industry or Hollywood."

Company presentations went as follows:
Monolith Soft: A CG Manifesto
Namco subsidiary Monolith Soft sent three representatives to this year's Tokyo International Computer Graphics Festival (TIGRAF): CEO Hirohide Sugiura, art director Norihiro Takami, and effects artist Taizo Inukai. The three of them shared some information about how Monolith develops its CG cut scenes, and spoke about how CG effects add excitement to gameplay.

Doing CG is expensive, and like the other game companies that presented at TIGRAF, Monolith tries to minimize costly mistakes by adhering to a well-defined CG development process. Workers start with a storyboard, which they use to refine the scene, and then create a soundtrack. These materials are used to make a non-CG animated short that serves as a rough draft: the example screened yesterday consisted of simple black-and-white line art. This gives the motion capture actors a foundation to build on, and helps the animators pick effective camera angles for the finished scene.

Once the soundtrack and the "draft" are complete, they begin the motion capture process. Each motion capture actor is responsible for just one in-game character, but interestingly enough, they needn't be the same sex or age as the character they play, as long as they're about the same size and can produce the appropriate body language. In Monolith's video of the motion capture process, all three characters were boys in their early teens, but the actors were women in their 20s.

The motion capture section of Monolith's presentation concluded with a very interesting video clip in which the line animation, motion capture, and rendered CG versions of a scene were shown side-by-side. Monolith uses motion capture for almost all of its CG of human forms--the only exceptions are unnatural movements like flight, which are still animated manually--and it was clear that the company has developed a practical and effective procedure for getting it done.

Then Inukai took the stage and talked about the role of CG effects in games. He explained that he divides effects into three categories: nature (wind, rain, clouds), man-made (machinery, lighting effects, beam weapons), and supernatural (magic, ghosts). Showing a standoff between two sorcerers, with their respective auras looming above them and clashing in mid-air, Inukai pointed out "this scene would have much less tension without these effects."

The Monolith session wrapped with a Q&A session in which one audience member asked if technological advances in CG will result in significant differences between the first version of Xenosaga (released earlier this year), and the second version, which is now in development. Takami responded: "Actually, advances in technology aren't as important as our own increasing know-how." CG, he pointed out is just a tool, and skilled artists are the most important key to using that tool.

Square Enix: Leveraging CG to Maximize Use of Assets
Yusuke Naora and Shintaro Tamai let their work do the talking. The two Square Enix designers showed some extremely impressive CG, but were not as forthcoming with information on their techniques as some of the designers from other firms.

Naora, who has worked on a number of Final Fantasy games, spoke briefly on the evolution of CG in that series, and how improved technology has brought larger and larger development teams. He also contrasted the focus on realistic graphics for the FF series, with the "toon rendering" used in the Unlimited Saga, another Square Enix game. Tamai followed Naora with brief comments on the use of CG in the upcoming PS2 mech combat RPG Front Mission 4.

According to Naora, Final Fantasy VII was the first game in the series to use CG, but because of hardware limitations, CG only appeared in cut scenes. All the CG for the game was produced by a team of about six people in six weeks. The next game in the series marked the first use of motion capture in Final Fantasy. By the time that FFX came out for PS2, the hardware was capable of producing much more expressive animation, including in-game rendering, but programming budgets grew as well: the CG team for this game consisted of 120 people.

Tamai followed Naora's comments with video of Front Mission 4, scheduled for a December release in Japan. His film started with a long cut scene of mechs assaulting an army base at night--some of this footage can be seen in the game's promotional trailer available at a special Square Enix Web page.

Then Tamai showed a daylight version of the same scene, pointing out that CG has the potential to vastly simplify this kind of design change "I just changed one line of code." He concluded his presentation with some interesting footage showing how square Enix plans its CG sequences. They start with a simple CG "storyboard" that has all the events that will be included in the final version, but no textures, just wireframe models. The designers use this model to evaluate the script for the scene, making changes as needed. The next step is experimenting with camera location and angle to decide how the camera will move through the scene. In the last step, the designers add textures and lighting effects to produce the final version.

Capcom: Looking to Hollywood for Inspiration
Tatsuya Minami, producer of last year's Resident Evil 0 and Capcom's upcoming Nightmare Before Christmas game, talked about his thoughts on CG in an hour-long interview that seemed aimed at the many students in the audience. In addition to general advice on becoming a game producer, he talked about some of the difficulties and responsibilities of his position. He also mentioned that the game industry could learn from Hollywood (see above)--a statement that echoed comments by former IGDA head Graeme Devine at TGS as well as ideas that Tetsuya Mizuguchi shared in another session.

Minami's focus on the bottom line set him apart from the other speakers. He pointed out that game development in Japan is not always organized, and does not always follow a logical path. Development time and budgets tend to swell beyond original projections, and this can threaten a company's future, as a company that sinks all its funds into projects that run behind schedule will have difficulty funding its next round of development. Minami suggested that the project management techniques used in Hollywood studios might have a place in the game industry as well.

He expanded on this theme in a press conference after his presentation. At one point, he had outsourced some CG work, and when he showed it to his boss, his boss asked about the cost. This made him think about the cost-effectiveness of CG in games, and wonder about return on investment: does more CG always lead to more sales?

He concluded that CG should be used carefully, and should be used in ways that directly enhance the gaming experience, not merely serve as eye candy. In his presentation, Minami also mentioned the simple films of the Dogma movement, which are produced entirely without special effects, and wondered if there could be an equivalent approach in gaming.

Both the Q&A session and his press conference saw some probing questions, but Minami deflected these questions with a smile. One reporter asked if Chris Sarandon, the voice of Jack Skellington in the Night Before Christmas movie, would reprise that role in the game, but Minami just grinned and said "no comment." In response to a question about the reason why Resident Evil 0 was made a GC exclusive, he said, "well, that was a strategic decision, and I'm just the producer." A producer with a keen business sense like Minami might find himself making just that kind of decision in the future.