

How we sold a couple hundred million dollars of software in Japan - agavin
http://all-things-andy-gavin.com/2012/01/11/crash-goes-to-japan-part-1/

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patio11
_It roughly translated into ‘the sound of the guitar mixed with the tree
imagery is too nostalgic-sounding’. I’m still scratching my head on that one._

A really good translator might have written that as "Your artistic choices are
dated", which is probably what the original author meant to convey. The word
invariably translated as "nostalgic" is natuskashii (懐かしい) and it conveys an
impression of times-gone-by, which is sometimes not a good thing.

(I once read a delightfully poisonous review of UI decisions by our senior
engineer, beginning with "The new interface to the web app reminds me of my
childhood experience working with mainframe terminals, except without the
complex functionality.")

~~~
agavin
Haha. Ken Kutaragi complained of Crash in the very early days that the "trees
should wave their branches at you, giving the nostalgia of childhood." Or
something like that. At the time we found it merely puzzling.

~~~
Natsu
Natsukashii is one of those Japanese concepts that you just have to learn
along with the language, a lot like itadakimasu or the various forms of
yoroshiku onegai shimasu. It's not so hard to understand once you understand
the feeling they're supposed to convey.

I usually end up mentally un-translating them because the translations end up
sounding unnatural in English. Unusual uses of words like "nostalgia" and
certain other bits of "translationese" make it easy to spot translations and
identify the source language and not just for Japanese. For example, unnatural
sounding uses of the word "illiberal" usually indicate statements translated
from Chinese.

------
Uhhrrr
>More problematic was the seemingly simple fact that when a big block of text
comes up on the screen the game effectively needs to pause so the player can
read it. You can’t just “hit pause” but need a separate state. This simple
feature caused a lot of bugs. A lot. But we stomped them out eventually.

I would love to hear more of the gory details here.

~~~
agavin
Well pause in video games is actually kinda complicated. By the jak period I
had a pause mask (64 bits) that could pause all sorts of independant parts of
the game separately. Particles, Camera movement, texture cycling, light
changes, enemies, etc.

Sometimes you just want to free the characters in place (and usually enemies
and the like) but don't want the whole screen going motionless. For example in
Crash, when Aku came out, I wouldn't want to pause the fruit from flying to
the score. That would look odd. The Aku pause is to give the player a
breather, not just to pause.

Also, the real pause brings up the pause menu, which you certainly don't want
with Aku.

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pheon
wow andy gavin on HN would never have expected that.

whats your current thoughts on the "gaming market" these days, so much has
changed since the console under the TV ruled the earth. e.g. if you were to
start all over what/where/how would you spend your time?

~~~
agavin
I've been on HN for over a year :-)

Starting out is hard now in console gaming, except "maybe" x-box live or
something. You'd have to start on iPhone, Android or the like where the costs
are lower.

~~~
pheon
over a year cool and thanks for the response! Mr Cerney on here too? aint
spoken to him in ages :)

Yup yet I remember when ppl were complaining how PS2/Xbox games x10 game
budgets and all hell was breaking loose with the industry doomed. These days
iphone/android have technical constraints on par if not more so xbox/ps2 thus
making a highly polished game on a phone hell of alot cheaper than AAA console
title but still not something you can do in your basement.

Guess my question is what type of game would you start out with? AAA level
phone game with 80H+ of gameplay and 10 levels will cost a lot to develop and
no one will play past the first level, or pay more than $5 for - IMHO ofcourse
:)

~~~
agavin
Probably focus on something simple with very addictive gameplay.

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gcb
calling a title heavily produced by Sony an oddball in Japan is weird.

But takes little away from the feat anyway

~~~
agavin
This was the first American title that was heavily produced by Japan. Before
us, Tetris was the only external game that had sold really well. Across all
consoles/machines!

