I've got a Cave interview sorted - help!

[brentsg]

I'd like to know if they think their monopolistic company (intentional or not, they're the biggest fanboy magnet in the industry by far now) is stifling creativity in the industry, and how they view their rivals in general.

Maybe not worded like that though.
"CAVE now owns so-and-so percent of the market share for shoot 'em ups. Do you feel..." Or something like that.

You can hardly call it a monopoly when nobody else is really even trying.

[Taylor]

I actually would like to see a lot of Develop style stuff:

• Main production team-size and composition
• Time spent in pre-production
• People and time required to port
• How much they plan to expand on the iPhone and consoles
• Strength and dependability of the arcade market
• Recent trend of lower entrance difficulty (for home market?)

Producer of the iPhone port does imply he probably isn't going to know too much about the design of the games. Though maybe you could slip in some questions like:

• Why don't they limit continues in home ports
• How do you chain the stage 4 laser with the extend in DOJ

You'll have to tell me when this goes out as I'll have to ask for it :P

[spadgy]

Thanks for all this guys - some interesting questions, and some that really are interesting. Taylor's hit the nail on the head, in regard to the direction of the questions.

The mag's audience is developers themselves, and those in the related sectors.

Hopefully this interview can give inside into how Cave approach games, their opinions on the industry, and the challenge of satisfying the hardcore as they expand into less experienced audiences, such as the iPhone market.

EDIT: Taylor - if you;re at Casino anytime soon, we can even have a little chat about this.

[neorichieb1971]

I would ask..

Do your artists, coders and designers like working with restrictive technology? Or it is a case of the technology always being enough?

[spadgy]

Reading your suggestions again, I just wanted to highlight Dragoforce, MathU, emphatic, brentsg and neorichieb1971's ideas as very interesting. There's some very interesting lines of enquiry there.

Son of a...

Are they doing the press circuit or is this a special Develop-only hook-up?

Just a Develop hook up I wangled. And yeah - I do feel a lucky sod; hopefully that makes you a Skykid feel a bit better!

[gray117]

I'd love to see as 'much behind the scenes' production gossip and working practices as possible; The nature of interaction between design/code/art across pre-production, production and finalisation. I'd love to see a stitched-together-expose on how various features are realised. Unfortunately - even if they're prepared to answer such questions - this is probably straying into feature territory, rather than interview; what have people got for you work-wise next month?

More straight forward questions interview wise -

Are cave happy to be profiled as a niche developer, or is it another production challenge to be solved?
How does that profile effect your reception domestically, and does that differ to your reception internationally?
How have production priorities changed over the years?
Who, typically proposes BL editions, and how are they realised?

[Rupert H]

Well, although it goes without saying, congratu-fucking-lations dude. Not everyday a western journalist gets to grill Cave.

I would be interested in hearing their views on why they never saw the west as a potential market until their arcade cash-cow started to be threatened. Is it desperation in the homeland or do they feel the western market has changed in recent years to accommodate their niche titles? Of course that question would need to be reworded to avoid sounding like an douche, but I'd be interested to hear their response.

I'll hopefully see you at Casino tomorrow to chat more and display some face to face envy.

[spadgy]

I'll hopefully see you at Casino tomorrow to chat more and display some face to face envy.

Be good to see you mate - it's been a while.

gray117 - a feature's possible as an extra on our magazine's website - sadly there isn't space in print. If I get enough from them I'll definately push for getting the time to pen a feature.

[Skykid]

Just a Develop hook up I wangled. And yeah - I do feel a lucky sod; hopefully that makes you a Skykid feel a bit better!

It doesn't, but I'm glad it's you doing it mate, well done indeed.
I have no idea how you managed to penetrate their defenses - trying to arrange an interview with them is about as easy 1cc'ing Futari god mode. I'd add the interview to your high score list.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

For spadgy,

Ask if Cave has any plans to license out any of their arcade shmup IPs for an Original Animation Video (OAV), anime series or full length anime film? It'd be interesting to see an OAV of any of the cool Donpachi series with background stories, character development, what leads up to the intial conflict and eventual conclusion.

I'm sure if the right animation studio were hired for such a job, it'd be awesome. Wouldn't hurt if it could be done in the traditional old-school hand drawn animation cels like how it was prevalent back in the early 1980s-1990s with OAV anime projects.

And does Cave have any plans to release any of it's arcade shmup IPs as a scaled die-cast metal model or toy (that is fully assembled & painted in-house at the factory)? Bonus points if an internal LED lighting system is implemented for that extra realism factor/effect on the running lights, navigational lights, inside the jet engine nozzles, etc + working retactable landing gear with real rubber tires would be cool as well. A limited production batch complete with individual serial numbering will sell like hotcakes regardless of the final MSRP price tag. That is a given.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[brentsg]

Well I guess now you can ask what the heck they are doing with PGM2.

[Skykid]

Well I guess now you can ask what the heck they are doing with PGM2.

Yeah, seriously.

[Tigershark]

I'm certainly no fan boy, and even pretty limited in my overall knoweldge of the genre (I just buy 'em and play 'em) but it does seem to me that CAVE are one of the very few developers that continue to exist in the 2D shooter market. Or should I say, one of the very few of any size. It would be interesting to know what their attitude is about the future of the market that appears to be dwindling (especially from an arcade point of view) given their larger market share for new development. To that end, do they see the future as developing solely for consoles (etc) or will they always develop for the arcade and port later?

[Wenchang]

Ask: "Why is Shinobu Yagawa so awesome?"

[soloista]

Please ask them in what do they hope or expect of doujin game makers to do with their own shmups.

[Leeram]

I'd be intersted to know if they intend to move to console based production, instead of arcade, and produce native HD games.
Cheers

Lee

[neorichieb1971]

Tell them a lot of people would like to see their expertise of art and animation being put into a platformer style game. Something like megaman.

[drunkninja24]

One thing I'd definitely be interested to know is how they playtest their shmups. Like, do they have an expert player on hand or something or can they figure out if things are possible to get through another way?

[Vexorg]

One thing I'd definitely be interested to know is how they playtest their shmups. Like, do they have an expert player on hand or something or can they figure out if things are possible to get through another way?

I'd be interested to meet that guy. I suspect that a lot of it is done through debugging access to skip things though; you really can't test too effectively if you have to go through four stages of bullet hell to get to a bug repro.

Anyway, my question would be this: How close to the limits of the current iPhone platform do you think that Espgaluda II has come? I've seen stuff with much less particles and no fancy patterns take a whole lot of time to get to actually perform decent on the current gen iPod Touches, much less the iPhone 3G, and even then I'm not so sure it's quite there.

[RHE]

One thing I'd definitely be interested to know is how they playtest their shmups. Like, do they have an expert player on hand or something or can they figure out if things are possible to get through another way?

I want to know that too!

[TrevHead (TVR)]

I wonder if its that player who Cave called over to play on one of their cabs for that french shmup documentry.

[Plasmo]

That guy was none other than Yusemi-SWY iirc. He probably works for CAVE.
So yes, of course they have professionals test their games first. Might still be a good question anyway so we can get 100% sure.

[Skykid]

I'd be intersted to know if they intend to move to console based production, instead of arcade, and produce native HD games.
Cheers

Lee

Haven't they already said they're making console exclusive titles?

[elvis]

I actually would like to see a lot of Develop style stuff:

• Main production team-size and composition
• Time spent in pre-production
• People and time required to port
• How much they plan to expand on the iPhone and consoles
• Strength and dependability of the arcade market
• Recent trend of lower entrance difficulty (for home market?)

These are great questions.

I think people are overlooking the "questions from a development community" part (how the games are made, what the team is like, etc), and are just asking end-user/fan questions (when are games coming out, why isn't game X on platform Y, etc). The latter aren't really appropriate questions, I feel.

I'd also really like to know about the company itself. Number of developers, size of the teams, average time spent developing their titles, ratio of time spent on different things (art, game engine, bullet pattern math, testing/debugging/tweaking, marketing, etc). Also the techy in me would love to know what sort of tools they develop with, and what hardware/software they use to help them.

I'd also like to know in general how they feel about developing games which the rest of the industry shy away from. Shooters are rooted heavily in the arcade era, and most other development studios stick with newer and more mainstream stuff. I'd like to know how Cave feel about their own presence in the market, what their relationships are with mainstream game publishers and hardware manufacturers. Questions like why the move from PS2 to XBox 360 (although the answer will probably be pretty obvious), and how they interact with Microsoft.

And also, I'd like to hear straight from the horse's mouth how their experiments with region-free gaming went. The low sales speak for themselves, but I'd like to hear about it from their point of view, and any of the challenges they found with releasing to so many regions at once.

[Jockel]

So... when is the interview, what questions are you planning to include and when can you post the answers?

[antares]

I got some more questions:

What are Cave's future plans for the iPhone? Will they release more Arcade ports or do they want to make original games? Or both?

Are they statisfied with ESP2's sales on the iPhone?

I once read (on cave-stg) that someone from Cave asked Arika if they want to port more games to the DS like Ketsui Death Label. Any news on this?

Are the programmers at Cave able to 1CC their own games? Can they reach the scores of the world record holders?

Are the developers sometimes surprised which highscores can be achieved by top players in some of their games? Are there games where they think the score limit hasn't been reached yet?

[THE]

Fellow shmupper Large conducted a very interesting interview with Cave too:
Beware, it's written in German though:
http://www.eurogamer.de/articles/espgaluda-2-interview

He even asks them about the Lolis

[neorichieb1971]

Ask Cave if they will do a fan project for shmups.com. The aliens can be us. Bloodflowers, Ghegs and the other admins can be the main ships. We can save JAPJAC for the last boss .

Even if they did that in their current next dev, just adding some names. It would be so neat.

DDP : The xenocide files. haha.

[adversity1]

why would japjac be a boss? dude is straight zako.

[TrevHead (TVR)]

Ask Cave if they will do a fan project for shmups.com. The aliens can be us. Bloodflowers, Ghegs and the other admins can be the main ships. We can save JAPJAC for the last boss .

Even if they did that in their current next dev, just adding some names. It would be so neat.

DDP : The xenocide files. haha.

sign me up for that. and the last stage where JAPJAC is themed as a shrine to all the great achievements hes done and have the baddies as pointing hands that fire empty knock off kesui cases as the player.


BTW whos Zako?


EDIT: returning to the main topic i wouldnt mind knowing abit about their design stage, what process do they go though when making their stages and just how far they go to ensure their shmups are as complex for scoring etc as they can be. Plus how much of the process is just on paper and how much is playtesting?


Ive just read that iterview these points i found to be very intresting

EurogamerIs there room to improve the shooter genre on the iPhone next?
Yukihiro MasakiYes, I think there is enough room to grow. Here at Cave we also plan to limit not only on shooters, but also to develop for other genres.

Eurogamer: 2D games are still up-to-date?
Yukihiro Masaki: This is a difficult question and I think it depends on the game. For us, as long as the players want 2D, it is up-to-date