Know Thy Fellow Man

Know Thy Fellow Man was a Capcom development blog published 24th July 2009. It is the fourteenth in a series of some twenty-three blogs detailing the development of the game.

Transcript
My true feeling is that Darkside Chronicles has surpassed the original Umbrella Chronicles in pure entertainment quality. Here is why I feel confident in saying this:

Darkside Chronicles was designed and planned here at Capcom, and developed by the excellent production studio, Cavia.

Cavia is a superb company with a proven track record for quality. They create outstanding original brands, and I have actually worked with them on a number of great titles in the past. We worked on Capcom’s excellent Beatdown, which was jointly developed with Cavia. More recently, we created Umbrella Chronicles together. In my opinion, Cavia is a company with great creative vision and technical skill.

For Darkside Chronicles, I wanted to work with the same staff that I worked with on Umbrella Chronicles. I selected staff in order to get the very best quality into the game. I chose people who had experience with Umbrella Chronicles so I could put that experience to work.

Being conscious of people is very important when it comes to entertainment. This awareness is essential when trying to create something that’s fun. Of course the execution of a game involves mastery of the hardware and programming tools you are working with, but having a good understanding of the people making the game is absolutely indispensable. That consciousness is what allows a game maker to make his game better.

Cavia’s director Hiroaki Kotake was responsible for planning the foundation of the gun shooting action in Umbrella Chronicles. On Darkside, he had control of important factors such as game balance and difficulty. His work has really made this game exciting.

However, the most difficult thing is a consciousness of what your staff is enthusiastic about, and how to best use that enthusiasm to make something great.

People will often have differing opinions during development, and as a leader it’s difficult to get people to come around to your way of thinking. Opinions will clash, and sometimes creating games can feel like a mental battlefield!

Although it can be very difficult, I think that those conflicts of opinion are necessary. There’s no way to avoid friction when you get a lot of smart people with their own opinions together, but if you have a leader who can guide friction in the right direction, you will end up with a better result in the end. The director’s job is to guide that creative energy in the right direction during the whole course of production

A team with good results under its belt has already been through the crucible once so to speak, and therefore they have an advantage. Once the elements of Darkside Chronicles finally started to come together, I knew that the team’s experience really helped them. They were absolutely on the right track, and it’s obvious that Darkside has surpassed Umbrella Chronicles. Mr. Kotake has taken the awareness of his staff’s talents and opinions and given it shape in the form of Darkside Chronicles. He and his staff continue to put the finishing touches on the game.

I have to be honest, sometimes it’s downright scary seeing how heated things can get during the development of a game, but I hope you will enjoy the final product of that intense struggle!

■About me I have directed such titles as Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles, and Beat Down. I enjoys travelling. I’m also a fan of horror novels, especially Stephen King’s books. His earlier works, like “Salem’s Lot”, and “Firestarter” are must-have items. Both of those have been made into movies, but I strongly recommend you read the books.