A portion of a Gamasutra interview with producer Katsuya Eguchi and co-director Aya Kyogoku...
GS: I was particularly interested at the end of your talk, at the idea that having a diverse team can help to create a game that appeals to a lot of people. I was wondering if you could talk about how you saw that play out with Animal Crossing: New Leaf.
Katsuya Eguchi: I think one reason that it's necessary to have diversity in the development team is -- not just for Animal Crossing: New Leaf, but Animal Crossing as a series -- we started off with the approach that this is a different kind of living space that people can move into and spend time in. So in that sense, we needed to make sure that there was something in there that anybody could find interesting or relevant to them. I think it was very important to have diverse teams so we can provide a diversity of content that people can relate to.
As it's been several years since we started creating Animal Crossing games, as the years go by, there are developers that have been there for awhile, and they're obviously a little bit older, and we get new developers that join us and they're a little bit younger. On top of that, there are more female developers that have joined the team. At this point, I think the work environment is set up so that it's gotten a lot easier to create a diverse development team.
As there are a lot of features involved in Animal Crossing games, and even in the real world there's been a change in society, in that there are a lot of smart devices available. For the younger crowd, that's kind of their default device. For someone like me, it's difficult to understand that. To have new members join the team who can show us, teach us, and make us realize how we can shape and style the game so it's easier for people are used to using smart devices, that's certainly been a real benefit for our development team.
Likewise, there are people who are very adept and experienced in using game devices, and there are others who are not. For a gamer to make a game and have it make sense for them, that explanation may not make a lot of sense for people who aren't used to it. In that sense, again, it's great to have a diverse team comprising people who play games and people who don't.
GS: Of course the games we play together bring us closer together, but the way the game brought couples or friends closer together was a bit different than what we usually see in games. Can you talk about how your hopes for the game played out in terms of that?
AK: As I mentioned in the presentation yesterday, communication is really the axis that Animal Crossing revolves around -- and it's not just communication, but also improving communication. In that sense, it's improving the communication with your family and friends, between couples, or even between coworkers. We really wanted to have Animal Crossing be like a catalyst: through Animal Crossing, people can really establish and build relationships and communication. This is the goal we created Animal Crossing with, so to hear that this has been the case makes me really happy.
KE: As I mentioned earlier, you get to see parts of the other person that you don't sometimes get to see. Like I mentioned, you get to see "this person's organized" or "this person's a mess," but I think you get to find out how welcoming or service-oriented a person is -- like, what things are there to welcome a visitor when they come to town? Or in a couples situation, what kind of surprise they've prepared for their significant other.
I feel that there are many things in this game that have the potential to express those kinds of feelings, and it provides a lot of opportunity to get to know that other person, to foster communication. In that sense, I think it provides a different way than bringing people closer together than other games, perhaps.
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