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[One of the first of a host of neat Tokyo Game Show interviews conducted by Christian Nutt, we managed to speak to ICO and Shadow Of The Colossus creator Fumito Ueda on his inspirations and creativity - and here's the oblique but fascinating result.]

What makes the director of Shadow of the Colossus tick? Drawing Fumito Ueda out on the subject isn't precisely easy -- on inspiration, he says, "I've gotten this question many times, but I actually don't intentionally think about inspiration."

The Sony-based creator is known for his careful approach to gaming, as seen in his trilogy of titles - ICO and Shadow Of The Colossus for the PlayStation 3 and the upcoming, much-awaited The Last Guardian for PlayStation 3.

As referenced, there's obviously a very deliberate method to Ueda's style of game design. And with that in mind, Gamasutra spoke in depth to him at Tokyo Game Show to try and get a handle on that process, in a rare interview:

All the games you've worked on are centered on a really important relationship, like with Ico and Yorda, or with the boy and the creature in The Last Guardian. What do strong relationships mean to you in your games?

Fumito Ueda: Well, there's a significant relationship between the main character controlled by the player, and then the AI character -- Yorda for Ico, the Colossi, and also the horse in Shadow of the Colossus, and in Last Guardian it's the beast -- but I don't have an intentional plan or some big concept, or anything like this.

But I think, maybe, I'm thinking that there's something that can be said about relationships, between the AI and the player, that can only function in the computer entertainment world.

A lot of games try to tell a story in a way that's very typical to other media, like film, whereas the interactive nature of the game allows you to build an emotional relationship with the character without telling it in a linear narrative...

FU: You're exactly right -- I exactly agree with you. I think that I tried to sort out within myself what exactly can be done only through video games. I think one way to use the computer is to use it like dice in The Game of Life, or something like that.

But I don't think that's the most effective way to use the computer; I think it's having AI, or having characters that have some sort of personality to them. I think that's the way to use computers.

Many of your games have a really young protagonist, too. Children are vulnerable, not quite so strong, whereas most game characters are strong people. What interests you about creating these vulnerable characters to play?

FU: It's not that I particularly like younger characters, or something like this, but I think it's really trying to figure out a cohesion with the game design, and what would be the most persuasive form of expression. And having a younger age was the answer that I reached.

What are you trying to get across, then? What kind of emotions are you trying to evoke in your games?

FU: Of course it's different for each title, but something that they have in common would be that to really illustrate or communicate that the world that you see is real. That it's a really existing world, and to actually have this reality to the world that's in the screen.

A lot of works that have really well-developed worlds have a lot of background data, and the background data never makes it directly into the product, but the creators know about it. Is that part of your process?

FU: It's not that we don't do it at all -- create this background setting -- but I think that perhaps compared to other teams, we don't do it as much. So I think maybe you're referring to background setting situations.

But really, compared to the amount of data information of the setting, we actually have more information about the actual details contained in the particular scene, or particular screen shot; in order to create this actuality, reality, tangibility to the screen. So, less background setting, more detail in the actual image.

So it's more about creating a world that has architectural believability, and the details that make sense, rather than saying that you know the history of the country, or something like that.

FU: That's exactly correct. I think somebody said that "God is in the details," and that's really what I'm looking at.

Where do you draw the visual inspiration that's the foundation of that -- the details that make the game believable?

FU: I've gotten this question many times, but I actually don't intentionally think about inspiration. Meaning that I don't really value or cherish it, inspiration, and specific sources of inspiration; rather, the reason why it looks the way it does is because of game design, and the necessity of game design -- the constraints of level design.

So, what comes first, then? Is it something like building a level, testing it, seeing how it plays, and then saying, "Okay, now I see how this is, and I see what it is, formally..."

FU: It's what you said. Actually building it, and seeing how it looks -- and then also looking at if it's a place that players would easily get lost in, and place some kind of landmark, or some kind of guide post, or something. If it's a dark setting, then open some windows. And also, then, to make it visually, aesthetically enjoyable, and pleasing.

It's easy for me to speak about Ico, and the castle; some of the areas in it were like set pieces. Do you think "Oh! I can do a gameplay design that will work in this environment!" and this is how you do it, or do you think, "Oh! This is a logical room, and what can I build out of that?"

FU: Actually, that is true, that sometimes we do have a visual image first, and then go into the level design -- I mean, what you described. But actually, for Ico, all the stages were made as individual, separate spaces, and then they were compressed together, and somehow made so that they had some compatibility, cohesiveness.

The PS3 will soon have motion control -- and it made me think about the closeness of interaction in your games, particularly between the characters, and I was wondering, does motion control appeal to you? In the way of bridging the gap of distance between the characters?

FU: I do have an interest in motion control -- just the technology itself -- but I don't think that perhaps it is most compatible for the themes that I'm looking for now. So, the motion control is a new, involved form of input to the game, but I actually have a stronger interest in what enhancements can be made to the output, so...

Does the power of the Cell processor allow you to have more complex AI, and more complex behavior from the beast character?

FU: Actually I don't really feel the enhancement of the PS3 through the AI, because we don't really use such complex AI. Actually I feel more the enhancement in the information density; how much information can be put onto the screen, in terms of the details, and how much more we can have.

[Super-popular Korean free to play MMO Dungeon Fighter Online was created by developer Neople, latterly acquired by MapleStory publisher Nexon, and as you can see from the videos, it's classic side-scrolling beat-em up heaven. Here's Brandon Sheffield's super-rare interview with its creator.]

Neople is the developer of Dungeon Fighter Online, a 2D action-based MMO which is soon to enter closed beta in North America through Nexon. The game has been in service in Korea for some time (as Dungeon & Fighter [video]), where it has been incredibly popular, and in Japan as Arad Senki since 2006. Currently, the major market for DFO is China, where it's reaching a over 1.5 million peak concurrent users.

The game borrows heavily from side-scrolling classics like Capcom's Dungeon & Dragons, and represents a different style of game than one traditionally finds in the MMO space.

In DF director Yunjong Kim's own words: "Dungeon Fighter Online is basically an action game, it's about hacking and slashing, beating the opponents and beating the enemy. It's based on a part of human nature, which is the need for violence. We think that this could appeal to anybody all over the world."

"Of course the result will be a little bit different because of the environment and network. But once you play it then we're sure you're going to have a good time."

Since launch, the game has rather consistently been among Korea's top 10 MMOs, and the company looks to repeat that success in the West, after a rather lackluster reception in Japan. To that end, Neople has been acquired by Nexon, the reasons for which are revealed within, and both companies began service of the game within the last few months.

In this interview, conducted in Neople's Korean offices, we discuss the game, the acquisition, the flagging state of the Korean online market, and the viability of 2D as a game delivery medium:

Dungeon Fighter

I really like 2D games myself - but for you, why did you decide to make Dungeon Fighter 2D? Because certainly in the Western market, developers have turned away from it but sometimes consumers may think, now that 3D games are now the norm, that maybe 2D is kind of unique. I'm wondering what you think about 2D games as a viable medium.

Yunjong Kim: Well, there are three main reasons why we chose 2D. The first is, since it's a side-scrolling action game, whether we make it in 2D or 3D wouldn't really affect the gameplay much.

The second reasons is that when I began the project, I was looking at Dungeon Fighter as a character oriented game, but at the time I couldn't find any 3D games that could capture the look and feel of the original illustrations of the characters. The last reason is that, at the tim within Neople, our strength was in 2D, not 3D. So I thought that if we made a bigger 2D game that it would be more successful.

Is it easy to find 2D artists in Korea still? I was talking to a company called Vanillaware in Japan; they make a game called Muramasa: The Demon Blade, which is a 2D high-res action game for Wii; and they were saying it's really hard to find good 2D artists anymore because everyone's moved on to 3D now. Here, are people still able to do it?

YK: It's pretty much the same story also in Korea too, but we have a lot of 2D artists in Korea, in the labor market, and if their companies decide to move on to 3D game projects, then those people would usually go to Neople to find a job.

There are very few companies that are willing to do high-res 2D stuff - do you think that's something Neople will ever attempt?

YK: You'd probably have to ask the art directors, but pretty much my main focus for developing games is efficiency; and efficiency-wise high-res 2D games will not be evaluated very high. So, making the resolution higher for 2D games would not be a likely option for us to take.

Makes sense. Too bad for me though! When I first saw the game – actually I saw it as Arad Senki (the Japanese version of the game), at a Tokyo Game Show two years ago or something like that. I guess it was launched in 2006, so maybe around then. I later thought it seemed like a really good game for Xbox Live Arcade, in the West. Have you ever considered putting it onto a console platform?

YK: There's been thinking going on for the conversion of the game, but most of it was just at the idea level. And also we almost came up with a DS version, and I think that's still going on. But I'm not really sure if the result will really be meaningful to the market. And right now we are doing many other projects. The Korean market is not the only focus that we're taking care of anymore, because we have all these overseas markets. So, if we do all that, if we can be successful in overseas markets with what we have, and still have some more time, then we could think about it.

What's your expectation for Dungeon Fighter in America?

YK: My expectation for the Western market for the PC version of Dungeon Fighter is not as much success as what we're having here, but I think it should be moderately successful.

State of the Market

One thing that I've been hearing from a lot of people lately is that the free-to-play market and the online market in general is getting really crowded. When companies release new games, people still just want keep playing the old games that they've invested all this time into. So when you release a big hit game like this, how do you know where to go from there? What is the next step? How long can you support one game versus, "okay now it's time to move on to another?"

YK: Well, starting from the pre-production stage, we actually come up with a sense of how long the life-cycle of the game will be. But it never really works. It's always wrong, and it always goes longer or shorter. What we do is launch the game and then just keep looking at it for, let's say, a three month period of time, then we decide how much of our resources we should put in.

For example with Dungeon Fighter, we only decided to put in about five months of time for the whole development, so it started as a small game. As we've been servicing the game, the response from the market was bigger than what we expected, so we had to make it bigger, resource wise.

I feel like right now it's kind of exactly the same landscape as it was last year. There haven't been a lot of big hits in the last couple of years – new ones I mean, it's just all the same existing ones. And everyone's saying it's hard to launch new projects now. What do you think about the market and where it's going?

YK: The situation right now for the Korean online game market is that it really feels packed with games. Up until maybe the early 2000s, Korean online games was a big market with a lot of niches, a lot of holes where new games could still fit in. But right now since we have so many games already coming out it's like releasing into a red ocean.

So, I think that we can't expect as many games as before coming out, because it's harder and harder. There will be too many streams coming out to the Korean market. One chance would be such big projects like Aion, those games are considering the global competition from the beginning stages, with a lot of money invested. Or it will be some games with outstanding ideas, which would be even harder.

I feel like everyone's kind of waiting to see what's gonna happen next. It seems like companies are maybe consolidating a little more, because since there are fewer games that are able to get released and get new success, developers are having to go under publishers. Do you think that's going to be happening more going forward?

YK: Yes, I think there will be more consolidation in the Korean online game market. We still have some small companies that are developing little games, but that's because they're not really looking at the market situation right now. But when they get their mind back they'll probably stop doing that kind of stuff.

So, it will be a lot harder to have a game released in the market unless you are really in a big company. You can take the Japanese console game industry for example. Except for some very few global game developer companies, all those little companies in the past, they either vanished or turned into outsourcing companies for the bigger competitors. So, I think that that kind of situation is also coming to the Korean game market as well.

Will there be more outsourcing and work for hire developers here maybe?

YK: We've always had some outsourcing companies in Korea but I'm not sure if the number is increasing.

Another thing I want to talk about is how in the online space, game developers don't necessarily have what we think of as traditional milestones. Is that true at Neople and if so, how does it affect development?

YK: The process for developing games here is a lot different than the traditional process for console packages. Even for online games as well, before the closed beta stage it's pretty much similar to the traditional console packages. Let's say, within one year's time or one year and a half, we should make at least a prototype or whatever.

But once the game is launched and we start servicing the game it becomes a totally different story because we start communicating with the users and we get huge amount of feedback from them. So the process becomes a lot tighter because there will be so much work that we'll have, tasks that we will have to do to meet their needs.

So it's kind of like instead of having milestones, you just have constant iteration, because you keep having to respond to what users are doing.

YK: Yeah, you're right. And it's a totally crazy story; for example for when we were doing the closed beta of Dungeon Fighter, we even had a one day period iteration. We would update the contents and have the users play it, but throughout the day we collect the data and we make the updates on it during the night, then update the new content the next morning.

The Company

Can you explain the rather unusual origins of Neople?

YK: We didn't start as a game company. In the beginning, we were trying to make devices, not games. Our first product was meant to be an alarm clock. It had a few mechanical and technical problems, so it never went on sale. Then people got together and had to figure out what to do next and then they came up with a game portal; which is called Candybar.

It was an online game portal which included middle core online games such as KungKungTa or Mr. Hammer. Around 2005 we started coming up with some bigger games, such as Dungeon Fighter and Neo Baseball. The result is that Dungeon Fighter became so successful that right now we're mainly focusing on that single game.

Why did Neople choose to get acquired (by Nexon)– or was it a choice - instead of remaining independent?

YK: From Nexon's point of view, they probably needed an instant cash cow for the time being, to help fund their future projects. Because they're making some more future projects right now but that takes some time. So I guess that would be their need for taking our company. And from our point of view, we have our strength in developing a good game and taking it out to the market. But we don't have that much experience in taking the project globally and making it successful there, but Nexon has. They have more experience and all the infrastructure they need to make it happen.

So, we thought it would be a win-win situation. What we figured out was that it requires different kinds of people and human resources and other resources to create a game and make it successful globally; and we've been trying to make it successful globally ourselves but it didn't work out as we expected. So we decided to focus on just the creation of games.

With the Candybar service, I read that there are also dating/social networking/game service components. A lot of people talk about running free to play games, and MMOs in general, as a service; but not a lot of companies seem to also be making peer services like that kind of thing. Do you think that that's an area that business could expand more?

YK: The need for social networking games is always there. Other than the action or like the real hardcore game, social networking is always required by people because it is part of human nature. It's always been in Korea too. In the past Say Club, which was serviced by Neowiz, played an important role in the market, and Candybar also participated in a major role there.

Right now the game called Audition is taking care of that role right now. Neople also, we also have a project coming up which actually has that kind of a social networking element. That was actually one of our strengths in the past, but we haven't been taking care of it too much nowadays but we're working to rebuild that, so...

What do you want people in the West to know about your company?

YK: Regarding Neople, our motto is “We make wonders!” So we always try to make wonderful things that are different from others' content. We might not have the expertize or experience that the big global companies have, such as Blizzard, EA, or so, but we will always try to make things that are outstanding.

[My colleagues continue to do a bang-up job on Gamasutra reporting, and we're reprinting the longer-form highlights here. In this one, a rare interview, Brandon Sheffield speaks with Realtime Worlds boss Dave Jones about APB, the EA Partners publishing deal, Counter-Strike's influence on the game, and "eco-gangs" roaming the beta's streets.]

On E3’s pre-show press event day, it was announced that EA Partners would be handling the retail distribution and publishing for Crackdown creator Realtime Worlds’ new action/shooting MMO, All Points Bulletin, or APB.

Dave Jones, creative director of Realtime Worlds and original GTA 1 and 2 creator, doesn’t typically do interviews, but was on-hand at EA’s press conference to answer a few of our questions.

We quizzed him, as well as CEO Gary Dale, on the newly-announced partnership, Realtime Worlds’ evolution as a company, and details about the game itself, from matchmaking, to instancing, to the choice of genre.

How did this deal come about?

Dave Jones: As you know, we’re about to release APB, it’s an online game, and we took the responsibility of things like the hosting, serving the game, customer service, and things like that. That’s something that we’re comfortable with, and that’s a goal of ours for developing the company. But of course, we still need at the end of the day, a tremendous distribution and marketing part.

And we talked to a few companies, but really you know, for the same reason it ticks the box with companies like Valve, and Harmonix in those days, it ticked the box for us as well. EA’s one of the best publishing and distribution partners out there. And they love the game, and I’ve never had a chance to work with EA as well, so it’s just for all those reasons.

Is that kind of why you previously tried to partner with Webzen, and then subsequently un-partnered with them?

DJ: (laughs) Yeah, so we partnered very early. The online space, when we partnered with Webzen was not something, that many companies over here in Europe or North America had any experience with.

We wanted to learn a bit, et cetera, and they had some plans to come into the west, so their plans kind of, you know, took a backward step in some respects, and we raised some money and said listen, we’ll just buy the rights back and publish it outselves.

Having internal customer support, it’s quite difficult to build up. How have you found that?

DJ: Well that’s part of the reason why Gary (Dale, CEO) came on as well.

Gary Dale: Yeah, the last three or four years that Dave’s been working on this, it’s been a very development-focused company. We’re now at the stage as we move toward the launch of APB that we transform from being a development company to also an online publisher, so that changes everything in terms of the retail distribution we’re going to need, in North America and in Europe.

We’re very happy with the deal we’ve got there, and we’ve built up our own internal operations team, and through that we’ve hired people who have some deep experience building these kinds of operations.

There are certain companies who are working with us, and we actually announced in the last few days one of the companies working with us. We have a deal with a company called Internap, which will be one of our partners helping to provide the backbone.

There will be other announcements in due course about other aspects of the infrastructure we’ve got in place in North America and Europe to support the game.

You’re right, it is a lot of work, but we think to be a next-generation online publisher, that is very much the kind of resource we need in house, and the kind of resource we need on the retail and distribution side is what we’ve got with EAP.

So Realtime Worlds is essentially self-publishing with marketing and distribution help?

GD: Well on the retail side, it’s a very deep publishing relationship we’ve got. I wouldn’t want to underestimate EA’s involvement.

Of course. Realtime Worlds is now how many people?

DJ: 225-230 or so.

I was just thinking one of the problems in the Scottish game industry previously was companies ballooning too large and then imploding. Are you looking at that?

GD: Well making great games always helps. (laughs) No, I mean I know what you mean. And Dave has a long history in this business and a really successful track record, so as Dave says, hit games support good companies. That’s not a major concern.

DJ: And that’s not just true for Scotland, that’s true for anywhere.

Well yeah, but Scotland being an easier-to-define region, one can be more specific about it.

DJ: Yeah, true. There’s a lot there.

As a kind of high-level question, for APB what was it you felt you wanted to fill within the online space? Obviously a lot of companies just feel they can chase WoW.

DJ: Yeah, just press the win button. Well really for us, a kind of action, you know, highly dynamic persistent online world. WoW’s great, and it’s attracting huge numbers, but let’s face it there’s probably still more players on GTA and Call of Duty in terms of online.

They love online games, they spend all their time there, but really, nobody’s trying to push the envelope in terms of personalization, customization, persistence, matchmaking, so many areas that are ripe for somebody to come in. It’s intimidating for those with less experience, or less time maybe, who want to dip in and dip out of the game.

When I look at it I don’t think of an MMO, I think more of like Counter-Strike missions or something like that.

DJ: We were just talking about that, and you’re absolutely right. I actually stated at GDC last year, the basis of this game is Counter-Strike. All the stuff around it.

Oh yeah, I was at that, so maybe that’s where I got that idea. Whoops!

DJ: But it is! And I just think the time’s right. And to be honest with you tough in terms of technology to bring 100 players into dynamic cities that people expect in things like Crackdown. So that’s one of the reasons why people haven’t done it yet.

Well I think having 100 people at a time, basically that solves all your instancing problems, you’ve got a persistent world that you can control a lot better.

DJ: Yeah.

But does that require more maintenance because other companies may have somewhat less fragmented of a playerbase.

DJ: We’ll it’s not been an issue for us. 100 is good, it means you can be kind of personal. How hard is it to be a winner out of 10-20,000, that’s kind of hard in some respects. Not everybody wants to lose, and it’s hard if you want to have a lot of winners as well. And people can pick and choose their 100 as well.

How is the matchmaking?

DJ: The matchmaking is actually pretty interesting, the matchmaking is all dynamic. It’s more about “I want to go there,” because there may be a clan there that you have some personal grudges with. And if you go into the 100 player city with them, there’s a very high chance that you’re going to get match-made with them.

One of the first things I thought is that there’s a high potential for someone to just join the law and order side and then screw it all up.

DJ: Well I don’t really think there’ll be much of that, it’d be hard for law enforcement to screw it up. In terms of if they don’t respond, the system handles that. If you’re having a coffee and a donut, and they put out an APB and you don’t respond, we very very quickly recognize that kind of stuff.

The game puts the APBs out to other enforcers, et cetera, and we start taking rep away from those players that don’t respond, so it actually works very very well, because I just think the setting, you know, law enforcement versus criminals, is so perfect for that.

Is it basically like the two groups, or do the criminals fight amongst themselves?

DJ: Absolutely. We never match enforcers against enforcers, but if there are criminals and you want to fight against other criminals, you’re right, absolutely you can.

I assume then that it’s much more like localized skirmishes and scenarios versus large-scale battles?

DJ: It is, but we have metagroups as well. So for example if there’s a group with 5 players from one of the best clans in the game, and they’ve been playing for an hour and having a really good run, then we’re quite happy to take 10-15 players to go after them.

So we take multiple groups and match them. And that’s a very neat mechanic because those five elite players, they love it. “They’ve got to send 15 at us.” For them it’s like “we’ve achieved something.” And for the 15, they think “hey, we’ve got a chance to beat these guys.” So it’s very unique.

Given that it’s kind of Counter-Strike scenario oriented, is there a more MMO-style environment? Is there a world that people feel a part of?

DJ: Yeah, there is. I mean basically when you join a typical kind of world server, MMO-style, we have about 10,000 players on those, basically broken down into leagues. There are leagues for everything.

So if your gang wants to be the number one in terms of car-stealing, grand theft auto, there’s a league for that. There’s multiple ways they can be number one, and multiple ways they can be renowned for doing a certain thing.

We’ve got players who, for some reason, decided to never use vehicles. They’re like an eco-gang. They only ever run around! And people start to recognize those people, saying like “that’s those nutters!” But they’re good players! It doesn’t happen that much, but it’s nice that they can find a way to be recognized in that world.