Wii

Today I have the staff from Namco Bandai Games. To be honest, when I watched all the videos on YouTube's Namco Bandai Games Channel, I thought "I can't believe they put this much in!" I asked you two here today because I really wanted to hear how the fruit of your labor that is Go Vacation came about. Thank you for your time today.

Thank you for having us.

Sakagami-san, I spoke with you for the Ridge Racer 3D¹ section of Iwata Asks: Nintendo 3DS Third Party Game Developers, but please introduce yourself and tell me about your position on this new game. 1. Ridge Racer 3D: A racing game for the Nintendo 3DS system released in March 2011.

All right. I'm Sakagami, from NAMCO BANDAI Games. I was involved in development as the chief producer.

I'm Kobayashi from NAMCO BANDAI Games. I'm the producer of Go Vacation. Thanks for having me.

Thank you for your time. Before Go Vacation, NAMCO BANDAI came out with the We Ski series² I'm very interested in how a team in charge of racing games came to make a game about skiing. How did We Ski come about?

Well, after we finished work on one of the games for the Ridge Racer series, we were asked if we wanted to make something for the Wii console. Other members of our company actually suggested a racing game, but I wanted to make a game that really utilized the Wii console's intuitive controls, and before I knew it, the racing game had turned into a skiing game. (laughs)

I wondered if a racing game was really what we wanted, because I thought the Wii console's main users are children and their mothers and fathers, who are in their thirties and forties. I wanted to make something using the intuitive controls that the whole family could enjoy, and that's when I got the idea that we should do skiing.

Because the people who are in their thirties and forties now are the generation who spent their youth on the slopes. Editor's note: The number of ski goers largely increased in Japan in 1980's. Skiing is still a popular winter leisure activity in Japan, but the slopes today are shared with snowboarders as well.

That's right. I figured that skiing was one of the formative experiences from their youth, and one of their best memories. And that meant that the mothers and fathers would really get into the game because they'd feel like, "I can't let my kid beat me! I must be a much better skier!"

There's also the fact that since we spent all this time making racing games, we knew how to race through 3D space at high speed, which can be applied to make this game. So that's the idea I presented to the higher ups at the company.

The people listening your presentation must have been taken aback, since they thought you were going to present a racing game.

Yes, that's true. (laughs) Opinion was divided into two camps, but everyone had fun discussing how great skiing was, and how it made them think of Yuming.³

Oh, so Yuming³ came up really early then. 3. Yuming: A nickname of a Japanese singer Yumi Matsutoya. One of her songs is used as the BGM for We Ski. Ski resorts in Japan commonly have speakers build along the slopes where music and announcements would play. Songs from Yuming were popular on the playlist during the 80's.

That's right. We played one of Yuming's songs during our presentation.

That's right, we did. Yuming was perfect to communicate the game's mood and image.

And at the time, there were a lot of Wii games that had players moving the Wii Remote controller vertically. In the case of skiing, players would move the remote diagonally, as if it were a ski pole, and that motion mimicking a ski pole really immersed you in that headspace. There was something so new and interesting about that.

But even so, your team had been so focused on cars. Was it hard to really put a lot of passion into making a skiing game?

That's true. When I first explained it all to the staff, it was like I could see the question marks floating above their heads. It was hard to really get the idea across with an explanation. It was only after we made the prototype that everyone was really on the same page about the game.

After you made that, they understood what you wanted to do.

That's right. Midway through, we made it so that you could ride the ski lift to move around. Of course, there isn't really anything game-like about riding a ski lift, and the action itself is a bit slow, but riding a ski lift to the top of a snowy mountain suddenly gave that visceral sense of actually being on the slopes.

So then the idea of Yuming's music making you think of skiing lead to her music being used as the background music.

That's right.

Everyone, including the main programmer, loves skiing, so as soon as we were able to build that atmosphere, things proceeded very smoothly.

The main programmer was actually in charge of overseeing all of the other programmers, but he was so enthused that he would program it himself saying, "I'l take care of the skiing motions myself!" If we had let him he may have made it himself. (laughs)

I'm sure he had this image in his head of how much fun skiing can be, and he must have wanted to be the one to get that experience across. Someone who knows how it feels does have a much better chance of succeeding there.

We actually all went skiing together, so we could share the experience of being on the slopes.

So We Ski was well received, and then came We Ski & Snowboard, and that's what lead to the birth of Go Vacation. Where did you begin, when it came to making this new game? It's a huge area—it looks 4 or 5 times bigger than Wuhu Island⁴ from the Wii Sports Resort game⁵—and you made 50 different activities that make me wonder how you guys decided to take on that astounding challenge! (laughs) 4. Wuhu Island: The island where Wii Sports Resort takes place.

5. Wii Sports Resort: A sports game released in June 2009, where players can enjoy 12 types of leisure sports.

That's quite true. (laughs)

I could understand if each game was something simple the number 50 would be easier to understand, but you're making 50 activities with some that involve a lot of work. Today I'm most interested in hearing about the reason that you went in this direction, one where you could almost say is reckless.

Part of the reason is that after we made We Ski, we polled our users, and a lot of people said, "The fields of snow and all of that, it had such a great atmosphere."

I think it really brought back fun memories for them and gave them the chance to do something they'd been longing to do.

That's right. After we heard that, we talked about how one thing that we regretted was that we should have made something that really gave a more complete sense of winter. And then people started to say things like, "We should add summer, instead of staying limited to winter!" and "No, if we're going to make this, we should make the definitive game where you can play games all year round!" And our discussion kind of took on a life of its own.

From there your direction changed into of trying to make the "definitive game that gives you a place to play." I'd say you were quite right if you don't consider the effort needed to make the game. It must have been a very hard to thing to actually accomplish.

Yes, it was. But Kobayashi-kun* over here agreed to it all very nonchalantly. (laughs) Editor's note: Similar to "san" as in "Iwata-san", "kun" is an informal honorific primary, generally used towards males. It is used by persons of senior status in addressing those of junior status.

I'm not sure whether it was nonchalantly, but I did rather agree to it casually. (laughs)

When you agreed to do it, were you prepared for how difficult it would be?

Oh no. I didn't think about that part at all. (laughs)

Oh, not at all? (laughs)

The We Ski games were both made at a comparatively fast pace, so Kobayashi-kun made a very light schedule like, "We'll probably only add about three more fields." Isn't that right?

Yeah. (laughs) Because the ski slopes got such good feedback, we figured we'd make the new game a year round resort experience, so we planned to make a game where you could experience an all season resort with snow and a beach and mountains and a city. At the time I imagined it would take about four times the amount of effort compared to We Ski. And from there, well, it was a long, difficult journey.