20th anniversary
Ta meem A ntoni a des Ninja Theory co-founder
What’s the secret to perfect action? I think it’s probably expression. Good action involves letting the player express themselves and create their own style with the tools that they have. So the tools can be simple, like it is in something like Bomberman, for example. I would say that’s a perfect action game, because the mechanics are incredibly simple but there’s endless variation and expression in how you fight and how you play. In a combat game, giving the player the tools to express themselves and then rewarding them for that is the goal – not being too prescriptive.
What’s the secret to… R i c h a r d H o gg Honeyslug designer
…standing out? I think it’s really obvious: make something that doesn’t look like all the other videogames. Ours is a very conservative medium. So many games look and feel similar, and even the slightest deviation is heralded as ground-breaking or risky. Make something that is a bigger deviation from the norm (as we did with Hohokum) and everyone asks you what drugs you were on when you made it. But it isn’t actually that crazy. It’s just that in terms of how it looks, feels and sounds and plays, Hohokum had more in common with stuff going on outside of videogames. If more people were doing that then it would be a lot harder to stand out, but at the moment it’s like shooting space marines in a barrel…
051
Michiteru Ok abe Residen t E v il Re v el at ions 2 producer
…surviving a zombie attack? I get a suspicious feeling that there is a deeper underlying purpose to this question, but I’ll provide a straight answer in any case! My advice: bring together, and stick with, a group of friends who you can trust with your life.
K eita Ta k a h a shi K ata m a ri Da m a c y & Wat ta m c re at or
…connecting people?
Ninja Theory’s reboot of the DMC franchise revitalised Dante and co.
The idea for Wattam came when I was playing with my two-yearold son. I’m Japanese, you’re British, and I can speak in Japanese but you wouldn’t get it; so we all have many differences such as language, countries, age, etc. But maybe we can get over differences by making something nice – something fun like a videogame with different people. Stacking [Wattam’s] characters is just fun, and exploding them is a lot of fun too!