Nintendo 3DS

Thank you for coming today. This interview is being held at somewhere different than usual. A lot of light is coming through the large windows, and the room has a little different tone. The Style Savvy: Trendsetters game was made quite differently than the previous Style Savvy¹ game for the Nintendo DS system, so I have been wanting to ask you about it, but our schedules wouldn't match up, so we're doing it after release.

Most of the time, we hold these Iwata Asks interviews before release, but I'm having you get together now because I thought that Style Savvy: Trendsetters, was worth asking about even after release. So thank you for coming.

Thank you for the opportunity. 1. Style Savvy: A fashion-styling game released for the Nintendo DS system in October 2008.

Okay, please introduce yourselves and tell us what you worked on.

I'm Yamagami from Nintendo. I was producer of this game. I mainly listened to the staff, worked out the schedule, and determined the direction of development.

I'm Hattori from Nintendo. As the director on the Nintendo side, I played the role of pulling together Style Savvy: Trendsetters.

I'm Sasaki from Syn Sophia.²I was the director. I thought of all sorts of new ways to play to make the game more interesting than its predecessor, and worked as the team's organizer to lead all the staff members. But mostly, I made lots of items—like a factory—and that appears in the game.

You were on the front line battling a large number of fashion items.

Yes. I suppose I can talk about that later. 2. Syn Sophia, Inc.: Developer of such games as SimCity DS, Ganbaru Watashi no Kakei Diary, and Mawashite Tsunageru Touch Panic. They also worked on development of Style Savvy. Formerly, AKI Co., Ltd.

All right. Tamura-san?

I'm Tamura, here representing Drumcan.³ Drumcan is a company that produces fashion shows, but in making Style Savvy: Trendsetters, we were approached with a desire to hear the opinions of professionals in girls' fashion. We introduced stylists who like video games and gave advice. 3. Drumcan Inc.: A fashion-industry company that plans and produces brand and company fashion shows, parties and other events in Japan and overseas.

I'm Tsujii, the creative director. When development of this game began, I was working with Tamura-san at Drumcan.

But now you've gone your own way and established a separate company.

Yes. For this game, Tamura-san chose two stylists and I coordinated between them. I worked with them in imagining what will be fashionable next year and the year after next, and asked, "Do these go together well?" and "What do you think of that item?" But developing a video game takes a long time, so there were moments where I was taken aback with the differences.

I suppose that compared to holding a fashion show, video game development does take a long time. And when progress isn't satisfactory, we extend development. Situations like that arise that are unthinkable in the fashion world, so we must have caused you a great deal of trouble.

No, no, that's not true! (laughs) But if we only put into the game what we expect to be in vogue, we may release it only to find that it's past its time, so with that in mind, we gave all sorts of advice, like, "These kinds of clothes would be good on stages like this."

Truly, thank you for working with us for such a long period of time.

No, it was a pleasure.

Unlike last time, we developed together with fashion specialists from the very start in order to get even closer to actual fashion ensembles. Tamura-san, would you guys tell me what you have worked on in the past?

Let me talk about my work related to girl's fashion shows. I think it was about 13 years ago, when cell phone screens were switching from monochrome to color, that we got a request from a company wanting to do a show and began selling clothes by cell phone.

You got started with a show to sell clothes over cell phones.

Yes. Up until then, I believed that clothes were something you went to a store to try on and buy. You didn't think that just because screens had become color you could buy clothes over a cell phone. And back then, when you connected your computer to the Internet, it made that beepy-burbly sound.

It was the days of analog modems.

If you did a search for the keyword "fashion," you'd only get about two or three hits.

Sure! (laughs) Computer communications began in the technological world, so there was quite a lag before the fashion world joined in.

Because of that, I was extremely dubious that we could hold a real show and sell clothes over cell phones, but it sounded fun, so I was willing to give it a shot. Instead of using the conventional fashion models of those days, we used the types of models that appeared in akamoji (red-letter) fashion magazines⁴, which young women read, and began with a desire to provide easy-to-understand fashion entertainment. 4. Akamoji fashion magazines: Fashion magazines read by young women around 20 years of age. Their cover logos were often red, so they came to be called akamoji, or "red-letter," magazines.

That's how you got started, and you've done that to this day?

There were lots of twists and turns along the way. Seven years ago, for the first time, we held a big fashion show at a gym in Yoyogi, where you could buy—on the spot—the clothes that were appearing on stage.

That has become what is now the extremely popular Tokyo Girls Collection⁵. 5. Tokyo Girls Collection: A fashion show for young women held twice a year with the theme of bringing real Japanese clothing to the world. The first one was held in Tokyo at Yoyogi National Stadium Gymnasium 1 in August 2005.

Yes. Fashion shows until then were B-to-B (business-to-business), with free invitations going out to people in the industry, but we changed that to B-to-C (business-to-consumers), showing clothes to general consumers and having them make purchases.

In that respect, you defied common sense in a lot of ways. (laughs)

I suppose so! (laughs)

In the world of amusement, if you defy convention and it goes well, people are surprised as well as pleased.

Yes.

It's not like just anything will fly if you blindly ignore common sense, but if you ignore it anyway, sometimes doing something contrary to conventional thinking will find acceptance in the world, and eventually it will be widely accepted as a part of the ordinary.

I think so. We started up 13 years ago, then the girls' boom came, and now it's like a centerpiece flower that's in full-bloom.

You've always run counter to the conventional fashion world wisdom, so what is it you have in mind when you do your work?

Ultimately, it's whether it's fun or not.

Oh, so not in just the world of video games, but you ask that in the fashion world, too?

It may just be me.

(laughs)

In the video-game world, whether something is fun or not is one of the standard, and that's true in the fashion world, too?

Hmm, it really may just be me. That's why we did the Tokyo Girls Collection.

Mm-hm.

I thought that we'd try breaking down the type of show in which the models just come striding in and out. The models move all kinds of ways, so people watching sense a kind of story and feel closer to the experience. I thought that kind of show would definitely be much more fun!