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Apr 15, 2024 22:54:44 GMT -5
Post by Xeogred on Apr 15, 2024 22:54:44 GMT -5
This huge article on Hyung-Tae Kim and Yoko Taro feels like such an apology tour on this guy, after IGN France was trying to bury him. Not sure if you guys caught more updates with Shift Up posting a huge congratulatory post of the game going gold, with dozens of female staffers. Then Hyung-Tae Kim hanging out in a photo with his wife. The guy who's "Never seen a woman" ...
This is a pretty candid funny interview between these two. I assume this means we'll be seeing a 2B costume for Eve!!
Kim: I agree. There simply aren’t many games with a female warrior fighting in a post-apocalyptic setting. NieR:Automata had a very big influence on me, so I can understand that people get NieR: Automata vibes. But actually I was inspired by many other things as well, mainly manga, anime and games from the 1980s and ’90s. I think that the people that enjoyed culture from that era will feel nostalgic when playing Stellar Blade. I’m not the kind of developer who is skilled at implementing the newest trends. Stellar Blade is simply a culmination of inspirations from my favorite culture and reinterpreting that for modern times.
Yoko: The work I was most inspired by is Neon Genesis Evangelion. I thank you for praising NieR: Automata’s story, but actually it’s pretty much just a retelling of Evangelion, so there’s not much originality to it. I don’t really watch recent movies, so I’m mostly inspired by memories of works I saw in the past.
They can't help but mention the Soulsborne genre briefly then there's some Japan/South Korea gaming history talk. Cool stuff...
Although the end was already in sight, when both of you directed your first game in the early 2000s, Japan was still seen as the big leader of the video game industry. Now, 20 years later, while Japanese games have seen a big revival, there are still some elements where Japan is falling behind. Especially when it comes to graphics, very few Japanese studios deliver games that look as polished as Stellar Blade. How do you see the power balance between Japanese games and South Korean games today?
Yoko: Japan found success with not just games, but also anime and manga early on. After being exported to the West and other Asian countries, games, manga and anime have evolved in their own ways in each region respectively. As for games, it has proven difficult for Japanese companies to implement Western systems. Japan has a long history with companies developing their own engines, and it was hard to move away from that. We were very late with incorporating rendering tools and middleware from the West. Even to this day, many schools don’t teach this to new developers. I think that Japanese people are not good at adapting technology from overseas. Chinese and South Korean games were much faster to use engines like Unreal for games with a Japanese aesthetic.”
Kim: What you say may be true, but it has to be said that Japanese games have a huge presence in 2024. It is no understatement to say that Japanese content is completely back on top. Big anticipated titles that will be released later in the year, I think things look very positive. China has great momentum as well. They have a lot of hits, especially when it comes to mobile games. I think their momentum is so great that they might have more hits on their hands then anywhere else right now for mobile games. South Korean developers have a tendency to follow trends. If there’s some new popular thing, everyone tends to go in that direction. I have the impression that most developers here have tended to lean on mobile MMO games even more recently, but I think it’s important to release games for other platforms too. We have been making mobile games here at Shift Up too, but I’m happy that we can release Stellar Blade as a PS5 exclusive. I hope it can trigger more South Korean studios to develop for other platforms.
Yoko: Japan found success with not just games, but also anime and manga early on. After being exported to the West and other Asian countries, games, manga and anime have evolved in their own ways in each region respectively. As for games, it has proven difficult for Japanese companies to implement Western systems. Japan has a long history with companies developing their own engines, and it was hard to move away from that. We were very late with incorporating rendering tools and middleware from the West. Even to this day, many schools don’t teach this to new developers. I think that Japanese people are not good at adapting technology from overseas. Chinese and South Korean games were much faster to use engines like Unreal for games with a Japanese aesthetic.”
Kim: What you say may be true, but it has to be said that Japanese games have a huge presence in 2024. It is no understatement to say that Japanese content is completely back on top. Big anticipated titles that will be released later in the year, I think things look very positive. China has great momentum as well. They have a lot of hits, especially when it comes to mobile games. I think their momentum is so great that they might have more hits on their hands then anywhere else right now for mobile games. South Korean developers have a tendency to follow trends. If there’s some new popular thing, everyone tends to go in that direction. I have the impression that most developers here have tended to lean on mobile MMO games even more recently, but I think it’s important to release games for other platforms too. We have been making mobile games here at Shift Up too, but I’m happy that we can release Stellar Blade as a PS5 exclusive. I hope it can trigger more South Korean studios to develop for other platforms.
So... modern South Korean gaming development right now is like Japanese games on steroids. Yes please.
Some game name drops here:
Both of you are developers with fans throughout the world. I would like to end this interview by going back to the roots. What originally inspired you to make games?
Yoko: The first time I knew I wanted to make games was when I played Gradius. The games I had played until then all just had one background screen. When you beat a stage in games like Space Invaders, Xevious and Dig Dug, you just got a new challenge on the same screen. But in Gradius, the scenery changed as I progressed through different stages, and it even had an ending. It made me realize that games could tell stories. I knew that computers were going to become more powerful over the years, which led me to thinking that movies and television were eventually going to be completely replaced by interactive media. I thought that video games were the future and that movies and television were going to die out.
The latter didn’t happen. My prediction was wrong, but it did function as the first reason for me to want to make games. That’s why whenever I make a game, I hope to be able to do something new that people haven’t seen before, just like how Gradius did the same for me.
Kim: Many of you have probably never heard of it, but Psychic World and Valis: The Fantasm Soldier [A3] are some of the first games that impressed me. Both games were created in the MSX era and feature female protagonists. It was a new discovery for me that you could fight as attractive females in a game, and I wanted to make something similar myself. NieR: Automata was an important inspiration for Stellar Blade, but a game by Capcom called P.N.03 played a big role as well. The female protagonist in that game inspired EVE’s action style. I have been inspired by so many different works of art. I hope that Stellar Blade can inspire someone one day as well.
Yoko: The first time I knew I wanted to make games was when I played Gradius. The games I had played until then all just had one background screen. When you beat a stage in games like Space Invaders, Xevious and Dig Dug, you just got a new challenge on the same screen. But in Gradius, the scenery changed as I progressed through different stages, and it even had an ending. It made me realize that games could tell stories. I knew that computers were going to become more powerful over the years, which led me to thinking that movies and television were eventually going to be completely replaced by interactive media. I thought that video games were the future and that movies and television were going to die out.
The latter didn’t happen. My prediction was wrong, but it did function as the first reason for me to want to make games. That’s why whenever I make a game, I hope to be able to do something new that people haven’t seen before, just like how Gradius did the same for me.
Kim: Many of you have probably never heard of it, but Psychic World and Valis: The Fantasm Soldier [A3] are some of the first games that impressed me. Both games were created in the MSX era and feature female protagonists. It was a new discovery for me that you could fight as attractive females in a game, and I wanted to make something similar myself. NieR: Automata was an important inspiration for Stellar Blade, but a game by Capcom called P.N.03 played a big role as well. The female protagonist in that game inspired EVE’s action style. I have been inspired by so many different works of art. I hope that Stellar Blade can inspire someone one day as well.