Hideki Kamiya recently sat down with GameSpot and discussed Scalebound, the upcoming Xbox One exclusive featuring dragons and other mythical creatures. While the majority of the interview revolved around information we already know, Kamiya did discuss what it was like working with a foreign publisher for the first time. He said:
“We’re working with a foreign publisher for the first time. If you think about the games that I made, first they were all at Capcom and then one with Sega and then with Nintendo, so I’ve always worked with Japanese publishers. They have the same game design culture about them. They’re very loose about how they make video games. They’re not super rigid or structured at any point, really, in the project with regards to schedule and quality along the way-not until you get to the end. Then basically everybody hopes that it all comes together. If it does, then everybody is happy, and if it doesn’t, everybody is not happy. Whereas with Microsoft, being from a totally different design and engineering culture than those Japanese publishers, it’s very much about a structured development style with lots of very structured gates with regards to quality and schedule. Everything is controlled and made in a way that’s very structured. Learning how to work within that structure, after I basically only made games in a very unstructured environment up until this point, has been one of the most challenging parts of the project.”
It’s interesting to see how much working with a Western company is different than working with a Japanese one. You would expect the opposite to be true given how precise and meticulous other aspects of Japanese culture are. I was surprised by how much Microsoft emphasizes quality and structure throughout the process rather than just at the end like Japanese publishers. This might explain why many of Microsoft’s franchises are rated very highly and sell a lot. I wish Kamiya would’ve told us more about the process. It would make for a fascinating read.
Source: GameSpot
Asher is a games journalist, former News Writer (Gaming) at Windows Central. They contributed 1110 articles to ICXM between 2015–2017, focused on opinion pieces, game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news: wrote over 1,100 ICXM pieces on Xbox news, hardware reviews, and platform commentary before joining Future plc’s Windows Central in 2017.