DMC4 dev avoids other games

By Tom Bramwell Published 13 December, 2007

Hasn't played God of War/Gaiden.

Devil May Cry 4 producer Hiroyuki Kobayashi thinks it's actually best that game developers keep their eyes on their own work and don't play competitors' games.

Asked for his thoughts on Ninja Gaiden and God of War by Level Up, Kobayashi said he hadn't played either. When pressed for why, he explained:

"I don't have the time to play a lot of games these days, so that certainly is a problem. But as a creator, I think it's best if you don't. If you play another game and you see something in it then you kind of can't use it anymore."

"So I think it's kind of best to keep your distance from that. Instead of other rival games, I prefer to get my inspiration from animated movies and other things like that," he said, having earlier added, "I do think that the people who make those games pay a lot of attention to what we're doing."

So what are they doing? Well, they are not struggling with the transition to PS3, he says. "As you know, we did originally plan to have this title just on PS3, but actually the development was done on a PC, not on a particular console.

"So because it's all done on the PC...it makes it very easy to move it put it on the 360 and use the power of that machine, or to put it on the PS3 and use the power of that machine, each in different ways. It's really pretty easy to do it, developing it from this PC base."

So that's good then. For more on DMC4, which is due out next February, by all means check out our first impressions and our own interview with Kobayashi. Go on - we won't stop you.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (26) Latest comment 4 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • ProdigyBE_OPM #1 4 years ago

    Hm... maybe you can learn something from other games. Knowledge is king. Even he should know that.

  • monkie_king #2 4 years ago

    I take his point, but it's pretty ironic that games developers have so little time to actually sit and play other games. I can't imagine a band or a film director that didn't immerse themselves in their contemporaries' work.

    Interesting about developing on PC then porting, too -- that suggests that they're not really exploiting the PS3 architecture, and just treating the cell as a normal CPU.

  • drxym #3 4 years ago

    Since both 360 and PS3 development is done on a PC, I don't see what point he's making by saying it was. I also expect that devs try to avoid consoles as much as possible simply because if you can test something on a PC it probably takes half the time of cross-compiling and running it on a console.

  • Triggerhappytel #4 4 years ago

    "...But as a creator, I think it's best if you don't. If you play another game and you see something in it then you kind of can't use it anymore."

    But if you don't see something used in another game before using it yourself, that makes it okay, does it? We, as the consumers, don't care. We'll still notice, and the development decisions taken to implement these features will be unknown to us.

    I can't help but feel developers might benefit from seeing what the competition has to offer.

  • dadrester #5 4 years ago

    meh! ninja gaiden is where it's at anyway.

    [edit] oh! in a fight between the tree of them Jaffe would deffo win, unless it was a girl fondling contest.
    Edited by 1 at 13/12/07 @ 13:13

  • NickJD #6 4 years ago

    I find it very hard to believe he has not played the games that are in direct competition with his own. Especially when something like Ninja Gaiden does it better.

    Seems kinda foolish to me, and probably not true.

  • peterfll #7 4 years ago

    It's his preference not to be "influenced" by other games, but love, don't make it sound like there's some science behind it as I'm sure a lot of other designers benefit from looking at what else is going on around them.

  • menage #8 4 years ago

    Team Ninja said the exact same thing about playing DMC or something else. At least they should be different.
    Edited by 1 at 13/12/07 @ 13:38

  • MrChuckles #9 4 years ago

    Of course you look at other people's games. To make sure you are ahead of them. If you see something they do and you don't, often you have to retro fit new features in, so you don't end up behind them. Obviously you try not to, but every now and then, someone else does something so well, your game will look old school in comparison. Although that is why games slip :-)

  • absolutezero #10 4 years ago

    1. DMC beats the shit out of Gaiden in everyway apart from its basic battle structure.

    2. This guy has stepped around the mine-field of Itagaki style "lol Tekken is shit compared to my breast-em-up!", im guessing he was just being diplomatic.

  • Ryze #11 4 years ago

    If he doesn't learn from other games mistakes, then prepare for broken controls!

  • Ryze #12 4 years ago

    Team Ninja better sort out the broken backwards right-stick camera in Ninja Gaiden - I guess they're too good to play other peoples games also then...

  • kangarootoo #13 4 years ago

    Not sure about all that. Reference is a core part of learning any new skill.

    Imagine studying film direction, fashion design or fine art and not basing a large part of your training on case studies?

    Yes game design is a fair amount about creativity, but in all honesty a huge chunk of it simply isn't. A big part of design is finding what works and what doesn't. You can still do this entirely by revisionist review, but why not save some time and take information from wherever you can get it.

    Relying on your own mind to come up with all the solutions is hugely inefficient. In fact the more I think about this, the more it seems like exactly the wrong thing to be doing.

    I suspect he is in fact fibbing a tiny amount. I think actually he simply hasn't got asround to playing either GoW or NG, but felt pressed to be be able to give some posh designer answer instead of just saying "I don't play games that much these days".

  • ParanoidZombie #14 4 years ago

    Did you check some recent gameplay footage on gametrailers.com? DMC4 looks good, but ninja gaiden 2 looks awesome.

  • MENTAL1ST Verified Senior Software Engineer, Picsel UK Ltd. #15 4 years ago

    I think this kind of attitude explains why many japanese games stick rigidly to franchise conventions at the expense of developing new conventions that can benefit a greater genre.

    Maybe, actually, that's just their action and survival-horror games, though, there seems to be more trend following in the likes of beat-em-ups, RPGs and casual games.

  • hulahoops #16 4 years ago

    It's just empty rhetoric in case someone accuses them of copying ideas.

    Any game designer worth their salt knows that it's worth while playing someone else's game and learning what went right and what went wrong, while game mechanics can serve as inspiration which is the fuel of innovation.

  • absolutezero #17 4 years ago

    Gaiden 2 looks like Gaiden + limbs

  • drumbaby #18 4 years ago

    That's why DMC has soul, rather than just being a clinical pastiche like Gaiden.

  • bdc #19 4 years ago

    Uh oh, alarm bells ringing. Development on PC to go towards PS3 version. That screams bad performance.

  • dudefella #20 4 years ago

    I think Itagaki (the creator of Ninja Gaiden) actually said the same thing a while back... interesting.

  • aabyssx #21 4 years ago

    Sounds hardly beliveable. I can discover a lot of elements which made their way from DMC1 into NG, and also NG elements into DMC3.

    Also game designers must be up to date with the market, so they can position their games.

    I think this is just a lame way of dodging the following "what do you think of NG this and that" questions.

  • aabyssx #22 4 years ago

    > I think Itagaki (the creator of Ninja Gaiden) actually said the same thing a while back... interesting.

    Actually Itagaki was criticizing that the enemies in DMC are just targets and not really enemies, because they rarely attack. They are just targets to execute combos. :D

  • thepiedpiper #23 4 years ago

    they're saying that because they have ripped of certain things from those games...mark my words
    Edited by 1 at 13/12/07 @ 17:21

  • 5lectro #24 4 years ago

    It's a big problem with Nintendo, imo.

    They seem completely oblivious to the evolution of videogames since the N64 days and we end up with stuff like Twilight Princess and (sorry) Mario Galaxy that copy/paste 10 year old templates.

  • riz23 #25 4 years ago

    To be honest too many people look at Game X and say that's cool I'm going to put it in my game too. If being oblivious to the oppostion means innovation not imitation then I'm all for it. Some marketing bod will no doubt bring anything important that the opposition are doing to your attention anyway.

  • Dezm0nd #26 4 years ago

    5lectro: Not a nintendo fanboy in anyway, but the mario64 template has yet to be beaten. even by Sunshine and Galaxy. I see your point about Zelda though, it needs a rethink.

  • carrotcake #27 4 years ago

    Itagaki said he did play DMC and the enemies were just sort of dancing infront of him, not attacking ruthlessly, and he thought that was kind of shit.
    Yeah, Ninja Gaiden blows away the rest of the genre for me but then I haven't played a DMC since the first one. Might try DMC4. See the latest NG2 trailer on gametrailers.com. It's so intense - the attacks look tough enough that you believe they would smash someone apart.