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[In this development-oriented opinion piece, Game Developer magazine editor-in-chief Brandon Sheffield lays out some all-too-common bugbears that have plagued games for too long.]

With 2009 come and gone, we enter a new decade of new challenges. But some of the old pet peeves still linger in modern games, and most of them can be fixed now. We needn't wait until 2011!

Lack Of Stereo Downmixing

I still play games on a two-speaker television, and so do a whole lot of other folks. Until the entire world has 5.1 surround sound -- which might take a while -- there needs to be a viable two-speaker option.

It surprises me how many big-budget games have this problem. Just the other day I was playing Army of Two: The 40th Day, I didn't realize until halfway through the intro cinematic that there was a narration track, because it was buried so low in the mix.

The in-game cut-scenes were a bit better, but not by much; critical dialog about what to do and where to go was hard to hear unless I turned my character to the side of the character speaking. From blockbusters like Far Cry 2 to smaller titles like BlackSite: Area 51, games continue to ignore the default audio setup of the average consumer.

Contextually-Different UI Buttons

You know those Windows Mobile smartphones that map the same buttons to different options in different contexts within the same program? And you know how everyone hates that? Consider that when designing menus and user interfaces, because a lot of games look a lot like Windows Mobile.

I love Dragon Age: Origins -- I put more than 60 hours into the Xbox 360 version -- but its menus are atrocious. Switching which buttons do what depending in whether I'm in a store or in the field, not allowing use of items in organizational menus but setting them to a separate subset of a different menu wheel -- these are not great ideas.

It says something about the maturity of our industry that a game can have an interface with that level of inconsistency and still be critically and commercially successful -- and which I will play through to completion anyway.

Poor Texture Streaming

Storage has increased over the years, in terms of physical disc media size as well as RAM and hard drive capacity. So why are we still waiting several seconds for normals and textures to properly appear in many big-name titles?

Texture pop runs rampant through the industry, even when it comes to the largest and most accomplished companies. Some teams can do it, some can't. It does depend on what type of game you're making at times, but really, I'm not sure there's a context in which a studio absolutely couldn't fix this, given the time and dedication.

No Tutorials

It's amazing that in this day and age, some games still don't offer proper tutorials. Tutorials that are fun and properly integrated into the narrative are ideal, but even something that just tells me how I should play would be great. Some games simply throw you to the wolves.

To pick on Dragon Age again, the game presumed a certain level of knowledge which, when combined with the confusing menus, led to me not knowing how to use an item to heal my injuries until about 10 hours in. I just decided to fiddle with menus until I could find the option. The game did inform me that I should heal, but gave me no indication of how I should do it.

Some players made fun of the gated tutorial in Halo 2, in which you had to independently test your left and right analog sticks before proceeding into the single player campaign. But just last week I played Left 4 Dead 2 with a person who had never touched a twin-stick first-person game before. For him, such a tutorial would have been useful. Even though he intuitively knew where he wanted to go and where to aim, never having used both sticks before, his learning curve was very steep.

Long Load Times On Consoles

I thought I'd end with something to make everyone feel a little better about themselves, because this is tough to fix, and it's easy to shift the blame onto console makers. Load times are incredibly difficult to get rid of, and I don't expect they'll go away anytime soon. But there are things we can be doing with background loads, loading during cut-scenes, using more advanced streaming, or even reusing or recombining assets as is often done in open-world games.

In the old days, we used to fear the "juggling monkey," the animated monkey that appeared on the loading screens of old Neo Geo CD games. Back then, we were waiting for several of megabytes of data to load. Iin the Dreamcast and PlayStation 2 era loading came down a bit, but now it feels like I'm staring down that old juggling monkey once again.

High Fives For A New Future

Games are getting more engrossing, more varied, and more complex, and I think the industry is moving in impressive directions. Every once in a while, though, it's good to take stock of the things we still haven't fixed before we move on to what's next. And this was only a fraction of what we need to work on. As luck would have it, there are only so many words I can fit in one article!

[Virtual items are the subject of much contention. Are free-to-play games devaluing retail products? Are they changing the industry? In an editorial originally published in the December 2009 issue of Game Developer magazine, editor in chief Brandon Sheffield weighs in.]

Early this month, I was having a discussion about free-to-play games and virtual items with Raigan Burns of Metanet Software. He was arguing that virtual items represent the equivalent of digital snake oil -- you’re paying for a few altered lines of code.

It’s a question of degrees, because all games are lines of code after all, whether they be many or few. And in fact Metanet’s latest game, N+, is primarily sold via digital distribution on Xbox Live Arcade. In many ways it's a larger, more involved virtual item.

But I understand his point very well. The idea of paying money for something that a designer maybe spent an hour tweaking, or which an artist only adjusted the colors on, just doesn’t sit well with me.

This is rooted in our consumer-oriented society. Ultimately all value is perceived. Why is a diamond more valuable than cubic zirconia? Mostly because we say so. As a society we’ve decided that between these two similar subjects (though the latter is synthetic), one is worth more, and the other less. Meanwhile both are worth more than food, which we actually need to survive.

Food, air, and water have intrinsic value, because we can’t live without them. Aside from those stand-out examples, our entire value system is fabricated -- so depending on one's desire to have these things, they're worth as much as or more than anything else. It’s quite relative, and in a society in which most of us actually do pay for the water we drink, this perception of value is very important to a lot of people, including, I’m dismayed to say, myself.

Dr. Sheffield’s Cure-All

For me, if there’s an object I can own versus a digital version, I’ll go the ownership route every time. I still buy CDs, DVDs, and records, and prefer physical copies of games I really enjoy over digital ones. Over time I’m letting go of this -- after all, my enjoyment of these media is not based on their physicality, but rather the data contained on them. Still, I find much more value in a full game I can purchase that has physical weight than I do in a game that must be purchased in bits and bytes.

For a lot of people, that need for the physical simply isn’t there, and that’s why the individual is the most important part of perceived value. For someone playing MapleStory who really wants that purple sword because it matches their outfit, that sword is possibly one of the most important things that person could buy.

Raigan’s point was this: "Goods like a paperback novel, a pen, or a shovel might have a resale value that's close to zero, but they still have some sort of ‘functional’ value in that they can be used for some purpose. For example, I can read or write or dig a hole.

"In comparison, most virtual goods are purely useless. Of course, I'm referring to Animal Crossing 'cool yellow shirt'-type goods; something like a really good sword in WoW would actually be useful, because it will allow the owner to farm gold more effectively and then sell the gold on the black market or whatever. But even that is a contrivance, the developer could easily modify a variable to let the player do a lot more damage, they don't 'need' the sword -- it's an artificial constraint imposed by the developer."

"This is typically benign in ‘normal’ games because it's done in the service of gameplay, but once you enter virtual goods land though, the rules are designed to extract more money out of people rather than to provide people with an enjoyable experience. This seems very different and possibly awful."

A book or a physical version of a game may lose its value after it’s completed once, unless you plan to go through it again, much like a virtual item. Still, I do agree with Raigan mostly, and my discussion of perceived value was partially to be contrary. But perceived value is also exactly the reason this model is working. There are people for whom the physical element of the purchase isn’t important. They’re paying for added fun, and if that fun is in the form of a yellow shirt, so be it.

That’s perhaps the most important part: For those who play these games, these items aren’t perceived as designed to extract money, they’re part of a fun experience. For instance, I’m not a religious person -- but what seems to me to be a method of controlling a populace appears to others as a way to approach the divine and achieve personal fulfillment. It’s all a question of perception.

Gimme That Olde-Tyme Religion

While the concept of paying for something so virtual initially seemed alien to me and my experience, I thought back to good old La Val’s Pizza in Berkeley, where I grew up. How many quarters did I scam out of my parents so that I could get a few more lives in Final Fight, or another go at Rampart? In essence I was renting time with the game -- the virtual items I was paying for were lives. In practice, these free-to-play games that run on microtransactions (even moreso subscription or pay-per-play games), which many core or old-school players decry, extrapolate from a revenue stream that comes from the very source of electronic games.

Anyone who’s been reading my editorials and interviews for some time (more the fool, you) will note that I’ve covered the free to play space, especially in Korea, rather extensively. In the two years since I wrote my editorial titled "Why You Should Care About Korea," that country and its business models for games have been more and more on the minds and lips of game developers around the world. One might presume I would be happy to see this model continue to gain traction among consumers, as microtransactions bleed into Facebook’s social games, and iPhone apps. I am not.

Like Raigan, I am curmudgeonly reluctant to admit the value of the piecemeal experience over the whole, finished one. But the fact is that more and more people see that free-to-play experience not as piecemeal, not as incomplete, but rather a living experience that can grow and change. Or perhaps a new kind of experience with a low required investment and barrier of entry.

And some of us fogeys may do well to recall that this model is not so different from that on which we were raised, or for the fogey-er amongst us, the games we created. The trick is how to make these virtual items actually worth what the users pay for them. But that’s a yarn for another day.

Grasshopper Manufacture head Goichi "Suda51" Suda enjoys a reputation for creativity that sets him somewhat apart from other designers -- his games are never mammoth blockbusters, and yet titles like Killer7 and No More Heroes have earned acclaim and an enduring seat in gaming culture for their wild unconventionality and distinctive tone.

Here, GDMag EIC Brandon Sheffield catches up with the always-intriguing Suda to discuss both his current projects and his approach to theme in games like No More Heroes -- including a discussion of the lesser-known Michigan -- the fate of that EA/Mikami project, his fashion sense and what he wanted to be as a kid.

Some basic questions first. What's going on with the EA/Mikami game now?

Goichi Suda: It's under development. He's the one working on it.

I also heard a rumor that the original No More Heroes was planned for the Xbox 360 -- is that true?

GS: Yeah, it was a game that I had in mind for the 360 when I first wrote the project document.

Will that ever happen?

GS: Well, as it is now it's fully a Wii title, so the idea of remaking it for another controller... It's just really suited for the platform, as it is now.

So is that a no?

GS: It's not something I'm thinking about, no.

It seems like it'd be a good idea.

GS: Mmmm...I dunno. (laughs)

One thing I thought was funny about No More Heroes is that the main character's motivation is that you're trying to sleep with a girl.

GS: It sure is.

In a lot of games, you rescue a princess, but this is much more direct. Why did you decide to do that?

GS: Well, when you think about the Travis character, he's an extremely up front, in-your-face guy. He acts totally off of his instincts. That's what makes him so susceptible to Sylvia's advances, you could say, so that's why it becomes his goal. He can't say no.

When developing the game, what made you decide to go so direct like this? I think it's a good thing, by the way.

GS: Why he became that sort of character, you mean? Mmm... well, as the title No More Heroes could suggest, I wanted a hero unlike anything seen before -- someone who's more like you and me, someone who sees the world more casually. I wanted to make a hero that could really be an extension of ourselves. That's how he wound up so cool like that.

I ask because there aren't a lot of games that make direct sexual references like that. I wonder why not -- it seems like a very natural human thing to do, but games don't touch upon it much.

GS: That's a good point, and I don't know why either. Maybe it's because there are so many crazy guys in Grasshopper. (laughs) Of course, part of the charm of the game is all the characters that show up in it. Travis isn't the best hero you could think of, but the thing about him is that he thinks he's the best hero in the world.

My impression is maybe that a lot of companies are afraid of addressing any kind of actual sexuality.

GS: Certainly, yeah.

Is that something that's important to you, or did it just happen to come along?

GS: It just sort of came along, I suppose. It's not like we're that good at it ourselves. (laughs) Grasshopper is all about making violent, hard-boiled games; that's our first priority. Maybe that's why.

Do you have many game design ideas that you've thrown away or not been able to implement?

GS: There are aspects that I've had to take out of games in progress, sure. That's especially the case for if you're working on something licensed, because if the licensor demands something, then there's not much you can do. I wouldn't say I've ever completely thrown away any of my own original ideas, though.

I'd like to talk a bit about Michigan. I've heard it's not your favorite game, but...

GS: Did I say that? I didn't really say that, I don't think.

So is it a favorite of yours, then?

GS: Well, everything I've made I like to some extent, and that's especially true for the output of Grasshopper itself. In fact, I'd like to make Michigan again, or something like it. There's a Spanish horror film called REC [Ed note: it was remade in the US as Quarantine], and when I watched it, I realized it was pretty much Michigan, right there. I still have a lot of ideas along those lines, and I'd love to work with Spike sometime to make a new Michigan or a remake.

It seems like the original would be a natural for the Wii, since it was released on the PS2 originally. Maybe you could make a downloadable sequel for the 360 or something.

GS: Yeah. (laughs) I'll be discussing things with [publisher] Spike.

I actually proposed to a US publisher the idea of just releasing the PS2 version in the U.S.

GS: Oh!

But Sony said it couldn't happen.

GS: Oh, why not? Too violent?

The European guys allowed it to be published, but the U.S. guys said there wasn't enough gameplay. Personally I think the game presents very interesting moral choices. You can watch the newscaster die and it doesn't really matter because you just get another one, or you can save her, or you can just film her panties or something like that. It's really...

GS: Definitely. I think Michigan had a really innovative sort of game concept.

It seemed to me like it was a kind of commentary on voyeurism, like a commentary on the way that we view people on the screen as not really people, necessarily. Like, they don't really exist because they're removed from us. It's just an avatar character, not a real human, and the game was an examination of that concept.

GS: Well, I didn't think that deeply into it. (laughs) It's really an investigative-reporter kind of game.

Honestly, I think that that's kind of what art is about, when you just create something and other people put their own meaning into it. I can see that as a critique of voyeurism, while to you, it's just something you made.

GS: Art? Mmm...

When you created that, did you have any kind of goal in mind, or was it just "I want to create a game with choices" or something?

GS: Certainly, your individual morals play a thematic role in the game. Being able to make these choices that directly affect the future was one of the things we were aiming for, and I thought it turned out to be pretty innovative.

I thought it was particularly interesting that if the reporter dies, you just get another one right away, as though the previous one's existence was not really important.

GS: Certainly.

I noticed that you always dress well. You used to wear D&G; now you've switched to Hysteric Glamour. Do you think it's important as a designer or company head to be an icon or to have a fashion sense?

GS: There's a personal drive to look nice, sure, but I think it's not as important as presenting a positive image to the kids and the young people that look up to those in the game industry, that want to be the game creators of the future. We're in the business of creating dreams, sort of.

Did you want to become this sort of icon when you were younger?

GS: Not at all. (laughs) I wanted to become a sushi chef or an astronaut.

Game designer is close to that.

GS: It sure is.

[In an editorial originally published in Game Developer magazine magazine's October 2009 issue, editor-in-chief Brandon Sheffield considers whether the "evil" part of "necessary evil" really applies to game publishers, specifically discussing U.S.-based publishing processes.]

Publishers. Are they a necessary evil? Developers seem to portray them that way at times, and even the "necessary" part goes away in the indie and online spheres, where a developer can self-release. But evil? I'm not sure.

It's often been said that publishers are only out to make a buck, and the larger they get, the more that can be true. Take, for instance, this quote from an interview I did with Sierra stalwart Mark Hood about his time at Vivendi in the early 2000s:

"It basically became sitting down on a panel with eight people, probably three of whom were from the game industry, and the other five were either from a cosmetics company or hair color or water and power company, and they would be approving our games. It was like the same questions would come up every time. 'Well, how is this like Diablo? Tell me how this is like Diablo.' 'Well, it's not like Diablo. It's not at all like Diablo. It's completely different.' 'Oh, well, no. You need to give us a game like Diablo.'"

The situation has hopefully changed since the Activision merger, but in that scenario, the game is seen in terms of numbers. How much will this make us? The larger a company, the more likely it is that your executives will think this way, whether they came from another game company, or a restaurant chain.

Bury Me With My Money

Someone has to think about the money, and I'm sure you don't want it to be you, who would rather just get on making a good game. The trouble comes when the money and the creativity appear to be at odds. I'm optimistic, and feel there are ways that the money issues and creativity can fall in line to create something excellent that also makes its money. Somebody greenlit Halo, and Call of Duty, and Resident Evil 4's three restarts.

Developers and publishers often have a curious relationship. The best analogy I can think of is that of parent and child. The publisher or parent thinks it knows best, because it's been there before (shipped more games), and because "it's my money, so you'll live by my rules."

The developer or child is rebellious, and thinks it has all the answers. In many ways, it does know more than the parent, and is closer to what's innovative, but maybe hasn't figured out how to hone that energy yet. I could take this analogy further, with talk of advice, feedback loops, and misunderstandings, but ultimately, publishers have the money and the marketing, while developers have the creative spirit and know-how.

Because I Said So

What makes a good publisher then? It seems to vary based on your market. In the case of the iPhone, I've heard developers say that having a publisher is largely useful for marketing. Some might say they take a good game and promote it. Others might say they take a game that would've sold anyway, and exploit it. It all depends on how your deal went, I suppose.

For MMOs, a publisher is most likely to be the one serving your game, taking care of customer service to some extent, and performing marketing. In general, a third-party publisher isn't going to do much to your game aside from localize it.

It gets more complicated in the console arena, of course, and that's where the back-and-forth parental relationship can come into play. Ultimately, a publisher is only as good as its employees. Some of external producers at the publisher can actually really help focus your work. In a recent Game Developer postmortem, Sucker Punch mentions that marketing helped the studio trim the fat.

Publishers sometimes do know where the money is, and money allows you to make more games. What's unfortunate is when they can't see past GTA and Guitar Hero to see an actual new idea, forgetting that GTA and Guitar Hero were, at one time, new ideas, or at least clever new amalgams of old ones.

I do think publishers can definitely help make a game better. On top of marketing and feedback, publishers often also offer external QA, take care of any legal issues that may come up, and pay the bills. But that's only if they're willing to take a little risk, and actually trust the developers they're working with. Incidentally, since both companies should really be doing some proper due diligence on each other, trusting each other shouldn't be part of the "risk" bit.

IP Freely

As a developer, your job becomes knowing how to give publishers what they want (more guns!), while also making the game you want (time travel!). As publishers, the risk assessment work should mostly be done at the top end. After that, there needs to be a lot of monitoring -- after all they should get the game they pay for -- but also a lot of trust.

If you're trying to make a risky game with new ideas, it's best to wrap the concepts in the familiar. Making new IP is always going to be a battle. But if you stay strong, and both parties really listen to each other, it can be a battle that winds up getting you a better-playing and better-selling game.

[Our own Brandon Sheffield sat down with Nippon Ichi president and COO Souhei Niikawa and Disgaea team development lead Masahiro Yamamoto to discuss the SRPG-focused company's new PSP game, as well as its philosophy and operating practices.]

For over 15 years, Japanese developer and publisher Nippon Ichi Software has been releasing hardcore-targeted RPGs, particularly strategy RPGs like the successful Disgaea series.

Most recently, the team behind Disgaea has announced its newest game, Zettai Hero Kaizou Keikaku (which Siliconera translates as Absolute Hero Modding Project), a PSP dungeon-crawling action RPG that -- like many other Nippon Ichi games -- features plenty of randomly-generated content.

We talked with NIS president and COO Souhei Niikawa and Disgaea team development lead Masahiro Yamamoto to discuss the small company's attitude toward game development, its RPG success, and why throwing characters is such a big deal in its titles:

Your focus has been on RPGs, particularly Disgaea. Where will you focus going forward?

Souhei Niikawa: Well, RPGs remain a popular genre for the hardcore audience, so I think that RPGs will still be a central part of our strategy.

Disgaea is certainly an important title for Nippon Ichi. We'll continue to grow that game by doing what's best for that particular series. Placing our fortunes on nothing but Disgaea wouldn't be right at all. For example, we want to grow this new game in the same way that we've grown Disgaea. We want to make games that are different from Disgaea, of course, but sell just as well as that.

A lot of Nippon Ichi's character designs have "moe" and "loli" elements. Will that continue? Has for the market for that become smaller?

SN: We made games for the people who play them. If the audience's needs shift away from moe or loli, then we'd certainly go with a different design. We still think there's a demand for that, though, so it will probably continue. From the creator's perspective, we think it's very important to keep trying new things, and as a result, we naturally don't want to stick with any one thing for too long.

What made you adopt that style in the beginning? Did it start out with what the development team liked?

SN: Yes. Well, it's undeniable that a large part of our audience is what people would call game otaku, or hardcore game fans. So we want to make what they want, but at the same time, we're all pretty hardcore too. So, there's that. (laughs)

The first Disgaea really seemed to be designed around picking up and throwing characters. That influenced the rest of the dungeon design and combos in battle. Would you agree with that?

SN: Certainly. Well, not just with Disgaea, but it's been an important aspect of a lot of our games, including this one here. It's been that way from around that time.

It's sort of a Nippon Ichi trademark.

SN: Yeah. We're all about throwing people. (laughs) Using that as a vital tactical tool.

Where did the idea for that come from?

SN: The original task before us was to figure out how this game would be different from the rest. We needed some strong and unique gameplay aspect that would give this project some sort of individual hook. I think it's something that's worked, as you can see how the series has progressed from 1 to 3.

Masahiro Yamamoto: I don't really remember the individual process that led to the pick-up-and-throw idea, but we were coming up with all kinds of ideas to put in the game and make it unique.

The original Disgaea is full of original little ideas like that, but it's undeniable that the throwing system is the idea that stuck out the most in gamers' minds once it came out. It's the result of that kind of thought process.

Just thinking about it by itself, it's hard to conceptualize how it'd be fun. How did you decide that the feature was so important to have?

MY: Well, we're a very small company, and none of the teams behind our projects is particularly large. That structure allows individuals to test out assorted ideas pretty quickly as they come up with them, then show them around to see what the rest of the team thinks.

I don't think that teams the size of what you have for Final Fantasy would be able to try out such risky things within development. I think that's one of the merits of having a small company like ours; it's easier to try new challenges, and that's how a lot of features in our games are born.

You go through a lot of iterations.

MY: I think so, yeah.

How much content is too much for one game? With the item world, you could keep going forever. How do you know when to stop?

SN: I guess you could say it's when we feel like there's nothing left to add to the gameplay.

MY: Oh, we never really stop. (laughs) We put so much stuff into each project, and eventually we get to a point where we ask ourselves, "Do we really need all this?"

When a majority of staffers start answering, "I'm not sure" to that question, that's when we stop. (laughs) That's pretty much how it works.

We really think that having a lot to explore in our games is very important -- especially with the Disgaea series, where it's become kind of a hallmark. Of course, we definitely can't take that approach with all of our titles; instead, we find different ways of making the games engaging and fun to our audience.

I was wondering if you're concerned that if you give too much, there might not be any need to buy sequels.

MY: That's not really much of a worry to us. The way we see it, in fact, most of audience goes through our games pretty quickly, especially the really hardcore people who support the Disgaea series. It's really something, the amount of time they put into playing our stuff. I wouldn't call it a big worry.

Nippon Ichi is pretty much the only game company in Gifu Prefecture. Do you think your company has any regional flavor since you're isolated from other developers?

SN: Well, the Internet is everywhere, and we're a game company, after all, so it's certainly not an inconvenience or anything.

I would say [our flavor] is not in the location so much as our style of company. Since we're kind of out in the country and have small development teams, that helps to add individuality to our games.

In Tokyo, you have a lot of developers who have gone from company to company, quitting one job and picking up another one right off. I think the fact that we've not experienced that as much helps us keep consistent in the sorts of games we release.

Do your staffers come from all over Japan?

SN: Yes. We don't really headhunt from other companies or anything. Sometimes we hire new grads who apply to our company; sometimes we get people who have previous experience with other game companies.

Finally, when you start a new game, from what point do you begin -- an idea, a list of features? What is your jumping-off point?

MY: In the beginning, there's only an outline, a very general idea of what kind of game we want to make -- what kind of world we want, for example. Then things just expand off from there, and eventually we figure out what sort of genre would be best, like how this game turned out to be a dungeon RPG. That's how things begin.

[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.

[In his cheerfully quirky way, our own Brandon Sheffield talks to U.S. Natsume president Yasuhiro Maekawa about his uncommon hands-on approach, the acquisition of the Afrika license from Sony, and using niche genres to build out new franchises.]

Natsume is known primarily as the U.S. publisher of the Harvest Moon series, developed in Japan by Marvelous Entertainment. But the company has much more to it than that.

First, there’s the Japanese developer of the same name, which is not so much a parent company as a sister developer. Most recently in the U.S., Natsume Japan developed Omega 5 for XBLA, which was published by Hudson, not Natsume U.S.

Also curious is U.S. Natume president Yasuhiro Maekawa’s very hands-on approach to development. Often he will come up with an idea himself, and hire a developer in Japan to realize his vision. Such was the case when he commissioned the young female-targeted DS game Princess Debut from classic shooting game stalwart Cave.

Perhaps most intriguingly, Natsume has gotten the license to release Afrika, a quirky first-party Sony PS3 title involving wildlife photography, in the U.S.

In this interview, we discuss with Maekawa all of these facets of Natsume, as well as the why and how of the Afrika deal, and how the company uses lower-selling niche titles as a market test for bigger ideas.

We also discuss here the cancellation of the U.S. version of the PSP action title Umihara Kawase, (to be Yumi’s Odd Odyssey in the States) which had something of a cult following, and was to have a number of bug fixes and improvements over the Japanese original:

Afrika, Umihara Kawase

How did you wind up getting Afrika? This was a big surprise to everyone, because it’s a Sony first-party title.

Yasuhiro Maekawa: This is kind of a difficult question to answer, because Sony has a lot of third party people. But to make a long story short, Afrika was something we were very interested in. But of course, it’s a first-party title. So we thought in the beginning, we can’t do anything. But there was an opportunity, and it became apparent that we could get the license.

And when I thought about it, if you look at our titles, they’re very much oriented toward peaceful, friendly, type of titles. Afrika’s nature perfectly matches with our lineup. So we started talking about it. Just saying “this game is really good. Good for Natsume’s family of titles.” So basically that’s what happened.

Is this the beginning of a larger relationship with Sony in that way?

YM: I don’t think so. As I understand Sony basically doesn’t license products developed by Sony. As is shown with Afrika there might be one or two exceptions to the rule, though.

Yeah, that’s why it was something of a surprise.

YM: I know – there have been a lot of people walking by saying “oh, you got it! How did you get it?” (laughs)

That’s pretty much what everyone thought! So when will Afrika be coming out?

YM: We are targeting some time around September. We want to run some special presale promotions. So the game might be ready for release even in July, but we’d like to hold until we feel comfortable.

Is this the first HD game published by Natsume?

YM: Yes, it’s the first.

Do you think Natsume will do more in that direction, or is this just an experiment?

YM: We are not so interested in the so-called “value” titles. Most of the Natsume games I’d say are about in the middle. Sort of normal retail price titles with normal graphical levels.

Like with the DS, we want to price things at $29.99, not $19.99. But for a PlayStation 3 title, this will probably be $49.99. That’s what we’re thinking. Between $39.99 and $49.99. $59.99 is probably too much.

I also mean whether you think you’ll publish more games of this level.

YM: If this game is successful, we may. This game is kind of a test.

Whatever happened to Yumi’s Odd Odyssey (known as Umihara Kawase in Japan)?

YM: That’s on hiatus.

Why is that?

YM: That one, basically with the copyright, there seems to be some issue outside of us between the copyright holder and the publisher in Japan. So we were trying to get the license from the publisher and apparently they have some issue with the copyright holder. I think at the last minute we had to put it on hold. Which means it won’t come out. From our side, it’s canceled. We don’t want to be involved in some complicated... stuff.

The DS version is also getting made, might you pick that one up instead?

YM: If there’s a chance, or if somebody offers it to us, certainly we’d look into that.

Building Niches

How did Princess Debut do, in the end? Was it ok?

YM: I’d say it did so-so. It’s not like a big hit, but certainly Princess Debut, got a really loyal fanbase. So we’re now planning to release Princess Debut in Europe in August. So we localized it into French, and German.

Do you think you’ll ever work with (Princess Debut and classic shooting game developer) Cave again? Because I love Cave.

YM: If there’s any chance, yes. I’d like to.

I keep hoping someone will release Cave’s Xbox 360 titles in the U.S.

YM: Right now we’d like to concentrate on Sony and Nintendo titles. As you know, we don’t have a big overhead. So in the future when there’s an opportunity, we will branch out more.

And it looks like you’re still trying to expand further into the girls’ market, because you’ve got this game Cheer We Go! here.

YM: Yes, we’re targeting the tween girls’ market there. Age 8-11, and the storyline is based on something like a popular middleschool cheerleader, with an intriguing storyline.

How do you feel smaller titles like Squishytank for instance, will do on the DS going forward?

YM: You mean like these sort of unknown titles on DS? I think it’s a niche title. And if you look at what we have now, we have a bunch of niche titles nobody’s heard of before. But niche titles are one of our marketing strategies, along with competitive marketing strategies.

For example, with Squishytank, or Cheer We Go, we’re not thinking about selling a big amount of units. If we can sell even smaller units in the beginning, that should be fine. Then when we think – ok, there are some real fans there. Then we’ll gradually expand the franchise.

Like Harvest Moon. Way back almost 11 years ago, the first Harvest Moon for SNES wasn’t a big seller. But I realized, ok, this is a niche title. It may have great potential to grow. Then, my idea was correct.

Do you foresee something similar for Princess Debut, since you said there are some devoted fans?

YM: Yes, that’s what we’re thinking.

Natsume and Downloadable Content

What do you feel is the current status of Natsume in the U.S. right now? Are you expanding more?

YM: We are expanding. As I probably explained to you before, we don’t want to just jump all of a sudden. We want to grow slowly but surely. One way we’re expanding now is growing from the package business to download contents business as well.

We have downloadable contents for WiiWare, with Harvest Moon: My Little Shop, and Reel Fishing Challenge, which is exclusively for WiiWare. And also we’re expanding our business into cellular phone and iPhone business as well.

We have Harvest Moon: Frantic Farming for cellphones, in Java, Brew, and iPhone versions. So this is where we’re heading. We’ll keep our packaging business. Of course we’re trying to expand that too. But at the same time, we’re trying to grow our downloadable contents business.

What do you think about the DSi hardware, do you foresee releasing games for that as well?

YM: I think it will do well. I don’t know how well, but we have a pretty big expectation for the DSi.

So will you be bringing Harvest Moon to DSi?

YM: Yes, yes.

Any plans for when?

YM: That should be probable sometime in summer of next year. For now we’d like to wait and see just how well DSi will go in America.

What about the PSPgo?

YM: I think it’s an excellent idea, just because we are now expanding our business model to download contents business, and as I understand the PSPgo is download-specific. So yes, it’s a good opportunity for us. Oh and by the way, we’re already working on the PSP so-called “legacy” titles, converting them to download.

What do you think about download-only titles? For the PSPgo for instance, do you think download only will make sense for that console?

YM: Yes, and the reason why is I think that Natsume, and also publishers in general have a big issue right now. Basically, there are so many titles out there, but retailers, store shelves are very limited. If you go to Wal-Mart, they have one case there, which may hold 48 titles. However the top row is all Nintendo titles, second row, all EA.

Which means the middle-size publishing companies like us, if it’s Reel Fishing or the Harvest Moon franchise, or maybe Afrika, they might possibly show interest. But if it’s our original titles, and we have some more original titles here, it’s very tough to sell to retail stores.

In that case, the online downloadable content becomed viable. Plus the development costs are not as high as in the package business. So for us, I think it’ll do well.

One of the difficult issues with some downloadable stuff is that there can be too much on there too, and it can be almost as hard to get noticed, sometimes.

YM: Right. So first we have to establish some brand image. Then after that we’ll extend into different arenas.

Who’s developing your iPhone game?

YM: I don’t know if you’ll know the name of the company, it’s a company called Platinum Egg.

Yeah, they do a lot of stealth development, like Tose and other companies.

YM: Yeah, Platinum Egg, we’ve been working together for many many years now. So when I thought about the iPhone, all of a sudden it came to my mind, “ok, that’s the only company that can develop the Harvest Moon game for iPhone and iPod Touch, based on my own idea.” You know a lot of creators are not so flexible sometimes. But Platinum Egg is really flexible.