The likes of ‘Valve, Epic and Bungie’ are ”really good at announcing what they’re doing” so Suda-san ”wanted to learn” from them. Aiming for ‘Level-5 success’.
”To begin with, we’re a Japanese developer,” said CEO Suda51, asked why the studio is taking on so much work. It’s partly due to survival that they’re expanding the number of projects on the go, and not just because of their ambitions to grow.
”If we don’t release titles it’s really easy to be forgotten,” he commented.
”When you look at developers overseas - Valve, Epic, Bungie - all these developers let users know what they’re up to. I think they’re really good at announcing what they’re doing so I wanted to learn from them how they do it.”
”I think we grew pretty fast during Shadows of the Damned,” he admits, ”but having this size actually allows us to do more, so I definitely want to keep it at this scale.” The studio big cheese does have high goals to achieve though, and he’s eyeing Level-5.
”We look at Level-5 - still a very young company, and Hino-san is actually in my same generation. He’s the CEO of Level-5 - a creator and a designer as well as a businessman. Hopefully if we can do the same and be a unique presence like that in Japan we would be very happy,” continued Suda51, speaking of fellow Japanese dev Akihiro Hino.
Suda-san has no intention of fading into the bureaucratic background of his studio as he prefers to hold the creative reins at Grasshopper.
”I see my role as someone who injects Grasshopper style or flavour into every title we have in our studio - not just for major titles but even smaller games. It’s my job to really inject our style into every game possible. I’d like to make sure even our social games have my flavour.”
Recently Shadows of the Damned released in Japan. Solid reviews welcomed the game in the US and Europe but sales were disastrously low for the fledgling IP franchise. Are you a fan of Grasshopper Manufacture’s work, videogamer?
