The Last and Final Word: Kenta Cho
Kenta Cho is a Japanese independent videogame developer. He became wildly popular and is considered influential for releases such as rRootage, TUMIKI Fighters and Torus Trooper. In fact, TUMIKI Fighters became so popular that a game called Blast Works (which was directly based on it) was released for the Wii.
What is your age?
39.
What is your location?
I’m living in a Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. It is about 30 minutes ride from Tokyo on the train.
What are your development tool(s) of choice?
Recently I have less spare time for developing games, so I tend to choose development tools that can create small games in a short time.
Mainly I’ve been using ActionScript to create flash games and posting them to Wonderfl. Wonderfl is a good site to post and find small flash games and you can also check the source code of the games. Today, the time needed to create a game has become much longer than before. Indie games have also become bigger and it is difficult to find a small game on the internet. Since small games are easy to develop and make it easy to understand the source code, it can help people who want to know how a game is created.
I want everybody to know the fun of developing a game. If game development becomes easier, more people can enjoy game development. So I think it is important to find ways to create a small game in a short time period. I’ve been trying many development environments that can create games in a joyful way.
Recently I’ve been trying CoffeeScript for developing browser games. I like the Python and Ruby mixed syntax of this language and have tested it to see whether it works well for creating HTML5 games.
What do you do for a living?
I’ve been working in an electronics’ company as a researcher of computer science.
Would you like to tell me a little bit about how you became interested and got into game development?
When I got my first PC, if we wanted to play a game, we had to develop the game ourselves. It was about 30 years ago and there were few commercially-released games. The BASIC language was a required course for all the people who owned a personal computer, and most people who created their own games. I was one of those people.
What are your goals and aspirations as a game developer?
At some future time, I want to create a shmup that has an infinite number of game levels and that can be played forever and a day. For many years, I sought a more effective way to create game levels procedurally. Now I’m trying to learn how I can generate barrage and appearance patterns of enemies which qualities that are good enough for playing against.
It can be very difficult to generate high-quality level design at the same level as created by a human level designer, but if we can find a good evaluation approach for each generated level, we can sort out high quality levels from many levels that are randomly generated.
What inspires you to keep creating videogames?
I still have many ideas for new game mechanisms and I want to implement as many of these as I can.
You (and other developers such as Ikiki) have large followings in English speaking countries. Did you ever expect your games to reach such a vast audience?
When I released my games on the web initially, I didn’t have any plans to release them worldwide. But one time, someone who played my game ‘Masashikun Hi!’ sent me an English version of the manual for this game. After that, I started to create English pages for my games. I got many responses for my games from all over the world and saw the value of releasing my games in English.
Your game, Tumiki Fighters, was re-made as a game called Blast Works for the Wii. Did you have any input into Blast Works?
No. I didn’t participate in the development of Blast Works.
Your wikipedia entry says that you decided to accept no money for the rights to re-make Tumiki Fighters. Why did you make this decision?
I want all people to use my games and their sources freely. Using an idea from my game for commercial use is no exception. So I released most of my games under the modified BSD license.
How much time do you get to spend on game development?
Recently, I spend several hours per a week.
Do you still have more shmups to make or are you trying to concentrate on other genres?
Of course I still like shmups and create shmups (even now). Currently I have 3 concepts for new games. One is a shmup, while the other two are other genres. I’d like to implement these as soon as possible but it may take a while before I can release them.
Do you think you would enjoy game development if it were your profession (that is, if it was the way that you earnt your money to live) or do you think it would drain the fun out of the game development process, due to the amount of time spent on it?
The kinds of games I make would have a hard time with sales and marketing. So for people who enjoy thinking of new game mechanisms, it would be a good choice to create a game as an amateur game developer. Of course, it is difficult for an amateur to create a massive game, so there are good part and bad parts for each choice.
Do you get time to play other games from the independent gaming community?
What have been some influences on your own work in more recent times?
What have been some influences on your own work in more recent times?
Yes, everyday I check IndieGames.com and seek out unique games. My favorites are unique ASCII character based games, Altcode, Netpack, super low-resolution game TinyHack,
games that have a unique player character Tetromino Act and The I of it and cellular automaton game, Conway’s Inferno.
As a developer who has an interest in procedural level generation, Forget-Me-Not is an extremely interesting game that has randomly generated game levels and realizes the large number of variations and the enjoyable qualities all at once in its level design.
How do you approach the development process - do you do things in a very specific order or do you concentrate on whatever aspect of the game that you feel like working on at the time?
When I try to create a new game, I place importance on creating a prototype of the game in the short term. It is very fun to think about a new game mechanism in my head but that is not enough to test whether a player is going to have fun, playing that game. It is very easy to create a game that is unique but not fun, so testing a game with a prototype is very important to create a unique and enjoyable game, even if you are creating a very small game.
What do you find the most enjoyable and most tedious parts of the game development process?
After prototyping, if the game works as I imagined in my head, it is a happy moment in the game development process. Of course, this is a rare case. In many cases, a prototype is terribly boring despite that it was very fun when I was playing it in my head. It is very hard to make a game a little more interesting by trying out various improvements, but I am also able enjoy this work.
