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Mizuguchi On Why Japan's Designers Are Going Indie
simoniker writes "Q Entertainment's Tetsuya Mizuguchi, creator of Rez and Lumines, has been discussing why he set up his own company as part of a wider Gamasutra interview, interesting because many major Japanese creators (such as Yuji Naka and Hironobu Sakaguchi) are leaving the big companies to form their own independent outfits. He explained: 'I don't know about everyone, but from just my case, I felt like I didn't have freedom. I was in Sega. At the time, I don't know now, but at the time, that was a big client for me, and I had a studio called UGA, United Game Artists. And I had seventy people. I had many visions, like to make casual games. Not big stuff, but small games. Not Lumines, but many other ideas. If I made a presentation to Sega executives about this kind of thing, and if they said no, that's over. That's it.'"
1. Smaller companies don't have to feed such a big beast, they can take risks and do those interesting and fun ideas on the side. 2. If the gameplay is fun and interesting, bigger companies want to cash up on it (as well as the small company growing in side to make sequels and spinoffs) 3. Those companies grow, making fun games based off that gameplay style until the fun starts to dry up. 4. People split off and form small companies again in order to create a fun and unique gameplay experience. 5. Go back to 1 I personally love this cycle. It not only helps prevent stagnation, but also the 'wheel of games' allows interesting gameplay and fun mechanics to be utilized by high-budget companies at some point, while always leaving a fresh amount of interesting small games.