Platinum Games are the ones behind titles like Bayonetta 1 and 2, along with the upcoming Bayonetta 3 currently in development, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, Nier: Automata, and more. The double-A studio, however, took up an interview with another publication site to talk about publishing, developing, microtransactions and new games.
Publication site GameInformer has posted up an interview that features Platinum Games’ head of development and producer, Atsushi Inaba. The interview touches on some interesting subjects.
For starters we learn about Inaba’s thoughts on developing stylish games, which you can read his thoughts on said topic here:
“I wouldn’t actually say “stylish” is necessarily in our DNA, but it certainly conjures up the idea of smooth controls, pretty art that pops, something that sticks out and has a unique visual footprint, etc. It’s nice to be thought of that way. And ultimately for us as an independent developer, we’ve just naturally grown into being able to focus on that sort of gameplay. Probably it is in how we develop games.”
Inaba continued on about Platinum Games and stylish acts, but went on to explain how a new project is being developed, citing that the engine they’re using has been built out in a way that allows them to easily animate and attach smooth controls to the gameplay in a seamless fashion.
The hot topic as of recent popped up during the interview, better known as microtransactions, which Inaba gave his outlook on making single-player games, multiplayer games and microtransactions:
“We feel that we can add in the right pieces, whether it’s multiplayer or something else. Honestly, microtransactions are a whole different hornet’s nest to consider, and I’m not saying that that business model doesn’t have its place, but I do feel that it’s a different issue rather than whether games are multiplayer and more expansive versus a single-player story-driven action game. But, honestly, when you design games they need to be designed with those sorts of modes from the beginning. That needs to be a core piece of it. And a lot of these games that have multiplayer in them, obviously it’s just been tacked on because the publisher has felt it was necessary. So we feel that we can definitely design those sorts of games – strong multiplayer experiences and whatnot – but it has to be done from the beginning. It can’t be the core fun of the game is a single-player experience and then I’ve just added this extra mode on because that doesn’t work out really well in any game.”
The topic changed from service-type games and single/multi-player games to what has Platinum Games been up to, which Inaba replied by explaining that they want to focus on creating their own IP and the idea of self-publishing their own titles instead of relying on licensed property.
The publication site followed up the above answer by asking how would that look? And what would that process look like for the team? Inaba explained:
“Over the last year we’ve pretty much opened the company up to “Anybody can pitch a game,” and so over the last year we’ve gotten about 70 design documents from different people. And if you’re going list out the other random ideas, the scratched stuff on paper, that’s a hell of a lot more. So this year has been about us basically diluting which stuff we wanted to focus on and not focus on, and drilling down to the point where we now have two designs that we’re genuinely focused on.”
Moreover, Inaba was asked what kind of game does this fall into? We know thanks to his following answer:
“We can’t put together a AAA, $10 million-plus game, because we just don’t have that sort of cash as an independent developer. However, we don’t plan to go the indies route with just a few people on a team making a game, so it’ll be somewhere in the middle, looking at probably about 20 people on the staff making the game, so that’ll still be a healthy [size].”
Lastly, the interview closed with the publication site asking Inaba if this will change the direction for releasing big triple-A games, if Platinum Games will go the route of self-publishing titles, and if this will affect their relationship with other publishers:
“First off, we will continue to do AAA games for other publishers and that’s because, again, we don’t have the cash flow to take on the risk to only do self-published games. In order to do a AAA title with that amount of risk, you need to be with a big company, a publisher so to speak. We don’t think that us doing self-published titles, just based on the scope and scale of what they are, is going to interfere with relationships with other publishers because, again, the style and the size and scope of games that we do with them is going to be much bigger compared to this to the point where they realize we’re not really competing in the same markets.
Doing something on our own, self-publishing it, releasing it, all of that is a challenge for us, but right now everybody is incredibly motivated and working on that. So all the fans, anybody who looks at the website or reads the magazine, look forward to something cool in the future from Platinum.”
It’ll be interesting to see what Platinum Games has in store for gamers, but until we gain word on this new game or publishing act, you can keep track of Platinum games by visiting platinumgames.com.
