Cave Interview is out! [UPDATE - no need to download now!]

[spadgy]

So - the Cave interview I did is out.

I know some of you may be disappointed that it isn't packed with news about shmups and arcade plans, but I had to consider my audience. Personally I'm gutted there isn't more on the tech they use. They were very secretive!

Still, I hope it provides some new insight into Cave and it's future plans. And there's a couple of nuggets in there I'll let you uncover for yourselves!

In the end the respondents for this interview were (initially I was lead to believe it would just be Ikeda):

Game Development Department ESPGALUDA II Developer
Tsuneki Ikeda
Mobile Contents Department iPhone Project Producer
Yukihiro Masaki
Mobile Contents Department iPhone Project Director
Mamoru Furukawa

Thanks so much to those of you helped out!

Cave refused to allow a picture of Ikeda to be published, and would not let me know who answered which question!

EDIT: No need to download the issue now - you can read the interview online here.

[njiska]

Hmm, kind of a weird restriction to bar a head shot from being published. Still glad to see this has finally made it out.

[Observer]

Nice interview, pity it doesn't speak much about upcoming ports or something like that.

There was one thing that kind of concerned/worried me:

With regards to game design itself, although 2D scrolling shooters are still the mainstream in Japan, overseas we see top-down arena shooters with multi-directional shots, or full 3D FPS and TPS games, as the mainstream, and we think it may be important to tailor our games towards that direction.

This is either a big "UH OH", a massive "we're fucked" or maybe something interesting might actually come out. Not so sure though, look how Silent Hill ended catering to "that direction" (to the West).

Next Cave game will have health bars, inertia and will be a multi-directional hori where your weapons barely do any damage. And you can save in the middle of the level so if you fail a pattern just quickload and do it again.

[njiska]

Nice interview, pity it doesn't speak much about upcoming ports or something like that.

There was one thing that kind of concerned/worried me:

With regards to game design itself, although 2D scrolling shooters are still the mainstream in Japan, overseas we see top-down arena shooters with multi-directional shots, or full 3D FPS and TPS games, as the mainstream, and we think it may be important to tailor our games towards that direction.

This is either a big "UH OH", a massive "we're fucked" or maybe something interesting might actually come out. Not so sure though, look how Silent Hill ended catering to "that direction" (to the West).

Next Cave game will have health bars, inertia and will be a multi-directional hori where your weapons barely do any damage. And you can save in the middle of the level so if you fail a pattern just quickload and do it again.

Next up CAVE makes a EuroShmup!!

[dan76]

Thanks Spadgy - interesting read. Once an for all this article should end the whole "is slowdown intentional, duh" arguments that occasionally surface around these parts.

[bcass]

"Bullet heaven"? Is this a deliberate perversion of the "bullet hell" phrase or is this how they have always referred to their games?

[alastair jack]

Bullet heaven sounds better.

[ncp]

Cave refused to allow a picture of Ikeda to be published, and would not let me know who answered which question

Any indication of why?

Also, the bit about them not being niche is pretty funny to me. I realize no company wants to describe themselves as such, due to the sort of negative connotation it has in a business sense, being perceived as "narrow-minded" or whatever, but it's pretty hard to deny it at this point, with something like 90%-ish of their games being the same genre, and not being particularly known for their non-shooters (shoutout to Princess Debut, holla)

[bcass]

Bullet heaven sounds better.

Heaven sounds too polite Japanese. I prefer Hell.

[Schrodinger's cat]

Interesting read. Thanks for this!

"Shooters are indeed prolific, but we don’t think there are a lot of authentic shooters out there, just yet. I can't say why it's so popular among people making shooters, however they serve as a sort of introduction to programming, and this may be one reason."

What they're really saying: most of these other iphone shooter developers are fucking noobs who can't make a proper game.

[AraraSPAMWitch]

Cool stuff, dude! I really don't care about the iPhone stuff, but you managed to stick in some pretty interesting questions. Glad I read it!

[bcass]

they serve as a sort of introduction to programming

I think that's the important bit actually. Sure, Cave have turned it into an art form, but apart from the bullet patterns, there's not much behind the rest of the programming, at least not by modern programming standards. The most difficult element would be the emulated slowdown, which even they can't get right, which is doubly puzzling given that they admit that not all the slowdown was hardware-induced.

[Schrodinger's cat]

@ bcass

I'm not a programmer so I don't know much at all about the development for these games, but "they serve as a sort of introduction to programming" coupled with the "we don’t think there are a lot of authentic shooters out there, just yet" statement just seems like a pretty subtle jab at other developers to me, which was all that I was getting at. They might not have meant the quote to come off that way, but it read like an insult to me. /shrug

[EPS21]

Cave refused to allow a picture of Ikeda to be published, and would not let me know who answered which question

Any indication of why?

Also, the bit about them not being niche is pretty funny to me. I realize no company wants to describe themselves as such, due to the sort of negative connotation it has in a business sense, being perceived as "narrow-minded" or whatever, but it's pretty hard to deny it at this point, with something like 90%-ish of their games being the same genre, and not being particularly known for their non-shooters (shoutout to Princess Debut, holla)

I find it odd how Ikeda, akin to being Cave's poster boy showing up at all the Cave-fests and even being plastered all over Ketsui DS, suddenly becomes shy for this publication.

[alastair jack]

I wouldn't want my name/picture on a page with iphone written all over it either.

[MrPopo]

@ bcass

I'm not a programmer so I don't know much at all about the development for these games, but "they serve as a sort of introduction to programming" coupled with the "we don’t think there are a lot of authentic shooters out there, just yet" statement just seems like a pretty subtle jab at other developers to me, which was all that I was getting at. They might not have meant the quote to come off that way, but it read like an insult to me. /shrug

I'd probably consider it a case of "easy to learn, hard to master". I remember once taking a course on DirectX back in Junior High and after a week's intro to the libraries people were crafting their own shmups in under a week. Granted, the complexity was on the level of Galaga, but the general "lots of dudes shoot at your one dude" is pretty easy to produce. Mechanics-wise there isn't much going on, just a move velocity and hitboxes. Platformers are far more complex when you think about it. What I picked up from that quote was that Cave knows that making a fun and challenging shmup that keeps people coming back again and again until they create forums devoted to the genre is much harder.

[Plopboy]

I think the easy to develop comment is a fair, as mentioned above, they are fairly straight forward at a basic level. The skill comes from effective use of smoke and mirrors to give the impression of everything happening all at once whilst maintaining fluid control.

In my experience Tetris is one of the easiest games to learn to program.

Anyway great article, I read to print version last night. To be fair I was quite surprised to a Cave interview.

[emphatic]

There probably wasn't any fresh photos of his latest crazy hair style or he was worried his hair would take up too much picture real estate and getting cropped.

Nice article!

[Mills]

Cave just hiding in a cave, what a letdown.

[Taylor]

They just made a 3D game on minimal spec hardware, included online multiplayer in Deathsmiles, and made an MMO for Atlus. They've done more complicated things than 2D vectors ffs.

[infamas]

Quote from article:

"Mainly known for its seminal work Dodonpachi..."

Their first shooter was Donpachi, not Dodonpachi

[gray117]

nice... although I nearly threw up when scrolling past train-to-game and skillset ...

[Ghegs]

Quote from article:

"Mainly known for its seminal work Dodonpachi..."

Their first shooter was Donpachi, not Dodonpachi

Yes, that's right. But that's not what seminal means. It means, according to dictionary.com:

1. pertaining to, containing, or consisting of semen.

Er, let's take a look at another definition...

4. highly original and influencing the development of future events

Yeah, that's better.

[ncp]

There probably wasn't any fresh photos of his latest crazy hair style or he was worried his hair would take up too much picture real estate and getting cropped.

Nice article!

I'm pretty sure you're thinking of Makoto Asada.

[emphatic]

There probably wasn't any fresh photos of his latest crazy hair style or he was worried his hair would take up too much picture real estate and getting cropped.

Nice article!

I'm pretty sure you're thinking of Makoto Asada.

I'm pretty sure you're right.

[RHE]

Yes, that's right. But that's not what seminal means. It means, according to dictionary.com:

1. pertaining to, containing, or consisting of semen.

Er, let's take a look at another definition...

4. highly original and influencing the development of future events

Yeah, that's better.

So, looks like R-Type is seminal by definition 1 and 4. Good to know.

Kudos to Spadgy for asking about the slowdowns in CAVE games btw! That's pretty nerdy of you.

[ex.machina]

Half of the interview is taking about iPhone games. I hope that's not what they are going to focus on in the future. Is anyone seriously interested in playing Cave games on an iPhone?

[lgb]

With regards to game design itself, although 2D scrolling shooters are still the mainstream in Japan, overseas we see top-down arena shooters with multi-directional shots, or full 3D FPS and TPS games, as the mainstream, and we think it may be important to tailor our games towards that direction.

sorry I don't know business speak, I read this as "CAVE might do a FPS/TPS" and fainted

Cave refused to allow a picture of Ikeda to be published, and would not let me know who answered which question

Any indication of why?

Could have something to do with that CAVE-STG incident some years back.

4. highly original and influencing the development of future events

I think DonPachi still qualifies there too; DoDonPachi just did a better job... which was because of DonPachi's original influence, no?

[ncp]

Could have something to do with that CAVE-STG incident some years back.

I doubt Mihara getting angry over a "stolen" picture had anything to do with it. He doesn't even work for Cave...

[brentsg]

Half of the interview is taking about iPhone games. I hope that's not what they are going to focus on in the future. Is anyone seriously interested in playing Cave games on an iPhone?

Galuda II is quite well done and well worth the $9 or whatever it costs.

Sure, I don't want these as a primary medium but I was floored at how fun it was (is).