Feature: Child's Play: From Bokunatsu To Natsu-Mon - The Kaz Ayabe Interview

Boku No Natsuyasumi (My Summer Vacation)

NL: The early days of the PlayStation, I think, was the last great era of really experimental games because you had stuff like Jumping Flash and games like Depth — in Europe it was called Fluid — which combined dolphins and music sequencers, and Japan also had the game LSD: Dream Emulator. Especially in regards to the games coming from Japan, they were really experimental. Did that wave of experimental games give you the confidence that a game like Boku No Natsuyasumi could become a thing?

KA: Yes, it did. Before I came up with the concept for Bokunatsu I was developing games on the Super Famicom or M2, a hardware developed by Panasonic that was never released. While I was doing that, the games that came out on the Playstation were Jumping Flash, Parappa The Rapper, and a game called Taiyō no Shippo: Wild, Pure, Simple Life [English title: Tail of the Sun, created by Kazutoshi Iida]. It was a game where the protagonist is a primitive human, surviving in the wild. Anyway, there were a lot of new and innovative games. I was inspired by these games and I wanted to come up with an idea that was different and groundbreaking.

My aspirations to make something new combined with the nostalgia of collecting bugs in my relative’s yard one summer as a kid, when I was tired from work, sparked the inspiration for the Bokunatsu series. That's how it started.

NL: So you worked at the game developer K-Idea, before leaving to form Millennium Kitchen. In those days that was a fairly uncommon move, to go ‘indie’ before indie game development was a thing. Even though the Bokunatsu series was published by Sony, it still had a very independent spirit—made by a small team with a very original idea.

I have always considered myself an indie game developer.

KA: I have always considered myself an indie game developer. I knew about the development of the indie scene in the music industry. I followed the debate in the '80s about the definition of indie vs major labels. [And by that definition] I always thought I was an indie developer. I wanted to make games on a small scale and I had confidence in the idea behind Boku no Natsuyasumi. I just so happened to present my idea to Sony Computer and the project passed greenlight. So it was released by a major company but, even now, I still consider myself an indie developer. I’m still quite selfish in my game designs. [laughs]

Although there are times when I'm working with a small team where I think things might be a little easier if I did have a bigger team to work with. It does cross my mind once in a while, the downside of being indie and small.

And, by the way, the people who work with me in various studios and companies, they probably don't think of themselves as indie, but I always think of myself as an indie and I think that's how I see the game and how it came to be. The public might find it odd to hear I consider myself indie because I'm making a major game, but I'm not. Now that I think back, when I made Millennium Kitchen, I didn't want to just make games. I wanted to publish music labels and I wanted to sell T-shirts and things, so I think what we all have in common is the indie spirit.

NL: Where does the company name ‘Millennium Kitchen’ come from? You also opened a curry restaurant in Tokyo. Do you have a passion for food?

KA: Yes, I opened a curry shop by chance. It's a coincidence that my company opened a curry shop. The company name, Millennium Kitchen, was inspired by an old Japanese saying—”kamado wo tsubusu.”

Kamado is “furnace” or “kitchen” and Tsubusu means “crushed or broken.” We use this phrase when a big house, like a wealthy family, suddenly goes bankrupt. My mother's father, or my grandfather, used to supply fishing nets to the fishing industry in Otaru, Hokkaido. In the old days, there were a lot of herring in the area, and his business was making herring nets. Fishing was a very successful business in the 1920s. Around the 1950s, the herring disappeared and his business went bust—he “crushed his kitchen.” So I named my studio Millennium Kitchen in hopes that my kitchen will last a thousand years.

NL: It’s always cool knowing the inspiration behind a name. That’s a very nuanced reason behind your studio’s name.

KA: By the way, when I first started working with Sony Computer Entertainment Japan, the person in charge of the Sony Computer contract said, “Here’s another company with a weird name.” [laughs] There are a lot of Sony Computer developers with weird company names.

NL: Like NanaOn-Sha and MuuMuu?

KA: That's right.

NL: While all children love summer vacation, Japanese summers are unique in the activities that children do, and the sounds one associates with summer in Japan — the sounds of cicada and the fireworks from holidays like Obon. You mentioned that originally one of the Bokunatsu games was supposed to be released in the West, but wasn’t. Do you think it was because of these very Japanese-centric kinds of activities that Sony America and Europe never brought Bokunatsu out in the West?

KA: Yes, I think so. I thought Bokunatsu was going to be released in the West, but I remember being surprised when I learned that it wasn't. Later on, around 13 years later, we were working with Level-5 on Attack of the Friday Monsters, and the president of Level-5, Mr. Hino, told me that Bokunatsu would definitely sell in the West. And I was like, “Yeah, it would!” I still think that Sony should have released Bokunatsu back then.

NL: Did you ask Sony why they didn't release it?

KA: I was told that the Western audience wasn't interested in insect collection, or maybe they didn't think it was interesting. That was the reason. And maybe that is the case for children in the US, but there was a story about a German insect collector in my kid’s elementary school textbook. And it talked about how he was so excited when he got his first insect-collecting equipment. I remember thinking that kids in Europe must be collecting insects. I imagine that’s what all boys do. [laughs] I was very surprised.

NL: And the popularity of Pokémon in the world basically spawned from insect collecting in Japan.

For the first Bokunatsu game, and of course the subsequent games, I'm interested in knowing what sort of design philosophy led you to utilising tank controls. Between the fixed camera angles of the backgrounds and the tank controls, it was almost like the opposite side of the coin of something like Biohazard. But instead of having the fully 3D controls that something like Natsu-Mon has now, where you just push in the direction you want to go, the Bokunatsu series didn’t add it until later. Tell us how it started with the Biohazard-type controls.

KA: Well, the origin of the idea came from the first Biohazard. In Japanese, tank controls are called “rajicon” controls [Interviewer's note: radio-controlled model controls], and it was used in all the games up through Attack of the Friday Monsters. The reason we used tank controls is to create a sense of immersion, you know what I mean? The player can immerse themselves into the world and it provides the most continuity transitioning between the fixed screens. Actually, the controls should be the same as what we were doing in the [older] 2D games and now in the open world of Natsu-Mon, because the directional control is the same. The difference is that we’re splitting the movement between screens in the 2D games. And yeah, so the most important thing is the continuity between the user and the in-game movement.

NL: You might not specifically view yourself in this way, but from an aesthetic perspective Millennium Kitchen games almost have a Studio Ghibli-like quality, because what Ghibli does is really highlights the appealing aspects of Japanese rural country life. The landscapes are very distinctly Japanese, like the setting of My Neighbor Totoro. They show an aspect of Japanese life outside of the very popularised portrayals of Tokyo. It gives a real sense of rural Japan. Have you ever considered this sort of parallel?

KA: I love Ghibli Studio — Miyazaki Hayao and Takahata Isao’s work — so I think that I'm naturally influenced by their work. And when I first started making Bokunatsu, I wanted to make it in 3D, like Jumping Flash, but there weren’t any games set in the Japanese countryside that were successful at the time. There were, however, Japanese animation studios that were successful in this area so I approached Japanese animation studios to help to create that distinctly Japanese countryside feel.

The titles that I pulled inspiration from were Ghibli movies like Totoro and Whisper of the Heart. And I went to school for animation after graduating high school. I think that also affected the way I perceive aesthetics, because of my training in Japanese animation.

The titles that I pulled inspiration from were Ghibli movies like Totoro and Whisper of the Heart

NL: The cover art of the Bokunatsu series is really iconic. Even if you've never played a Bokunatsu game, I think most people who have ever been near a game shop like Sofmap or Yodobashi [Interviewer's note: Popular Japanese electronic chain stores] would recognize the clear blue skies, majestic cloud formations, and Mineko Ueda's iconic character designs. And as you mentioned in your interviews with Ray Barnholt, Sony tapped into your deep archive of cloud photos for their own Everybody’s Golf series, literally reversing the clouds of the first Bokunatsu game for Minna No Golf 3. Was this consistency and style guide always an intentional part of your vision for the series?

KA: The visual image was actually designed by Sony's design team, but I did give instructions to them, and the Bokunatsu logo was designed by me, so there's obviously my influence on the clouds on the top. But in every planning document, I always include that this is a summer simulation in a Japanese country, but if we just market it as just that, then it just becomes a kid's game, and there's no edge to it, there's no cool factor to it.

I wanted to make games that appeal to city folk, who can escape into a country game when they're playing it. So, I did want to make a game that is sensitive to those city folk aesthetics, and that's why I chose Ueda-san's design. Even within the game, the auntie's kitchen is not really a country kitchen, it's something that would appeal to the city folk, and not just kind of old, right?

My pitch to Sony was that by making it a game that appeals to the city audience, it would better match with the PlayStation's audience and user base as well. So, the accumulation of all of that probably leads to, you know, the ultimate design of a really iconic country-feel, but ‘cool.’

NL: Even before I actually started playing the games myself, I knew the series for a decade beforehand. Whenever I saw one I thought, “Oh, there's another one of those games.” It made me curious to explore, because I thought there must be something to it, because there's a bunch of them now. That's how I got into your games.

You've mentioned having ideas for a game called ‘Watashi no Fuyu Yasumi,’ basically Bokunatsu as viewed from a girl's perspective. But winter vacation in Japan is only two weeks long, as opposed to a month-long for summer vacation, so it'd be sad to be over so quickly.

KA: I don't have any current plans, but I'd like to make it given the chance. When I made Bokunatsu 3, it was set in Hokkaido [Interviewer's note: Ayabe is from Hokkaido], and Hokkaido has an interesting winter season, so I thought it'd be interesting to have a girl as the main character. One of the points of this story is that winter vacation in Hokkaido is longer than the rest of the country.

NL: How long is winter vacation in Hokkaido?

KA: It's from December 20th to January 15th.

NL: So it's about a month. That makes sense, because it's so cold.

KA: But, consequently, summer vacation is a bit shorter.

NL: I hope you get to make that game, because it would be interesting to see one of your games from a girl's perspective, which actually leads me to my next question, which is that most of your games –– surprisingly even Bokura no Kazoku [Interviewer's note: A spin-off of the Bokunatsu series, which takes place in the city, and is more of a simulation game] –– are viewed through the lens of a male character. This is interesting because, especially with Bokura no Kazoku, it seems like that would have been the perfect opportunity to use a female perspective because of the focus on raising children, which often falls to a woman. Do you stick to the male perspective primarily because you're a man and it's easier to speak from experience, or are there other practical reasons for that?

KA: Bokura no Kazoku is not specifically written from a male perspective, but I think because I am a male it ends up being that way. There are two basic main reasons why I decided to make the game this way. One was because it was around the time when my daughter was born and I was an at-home dad raising the child, and just the whole family concept was intriguing to me. I wanted to turn that experience into a game.

The other reason was the concept of having five kids, and then if those kids had five kids you immediately have 25 people in two generations, and that big family idea intrigued me. I wanted to visualise and see what would happen. My hope behind the making of the game is that it would inspire players to have more kids and everybody to have bigger families.

I had finished making Bokunatsu 2 and the producer at Sony said, “Since you succeeded in creating two hit games, for your next game, we’ll fund your next passion project. You can make something that you think might not sell well.”

NL: That’s a noble goal in Japan where the population crisis has become a national problem. Bokura no Kazoku has myriad family configurations compared to the Bokunatsu series where you only have a handful of primary characters. Because you had so many different types of characters to deal with in Bokura, is this one of the reasons why you chose to make this a simulation game, instead of an adventure game? Was it too difficult to have all these models running around the city?

KA: I had finished making Bokunatsu 2 and the producer at Sony said, “Since you succeeded in creating two hit games, for your next game, we’ll fund your next passion project. You can make something that you think might not sell well.” They did have to approve the planning document, but I had never pitched a game concept to a group of people before. For Bokunatsu, I pitched it to just one producer at Sony, and the second game was approved without a meeting. And then it became a series so there was no need to pitch the next game to Sony. But Bokura no Kazoku was the first game I had to present and get approved by a group of Sony staff. Bokura no Kazoku turned out to be a lot more work due to all the scenarios for the characters which was more work than I could honestly handle myself. [laughs] So I don’t have many good memories of working on this title.

Another memory of Bokura no Kazoku is that I went on a family trip to Hawaii around the time that we started the development, and I heard this song playing at the store when we were shopping. I wanted to use it as the opening for the game. It's a remix, I think, by DJ Sammy, a song called ‘Heaven.’ [Interviewer's note: A house music remake of Bryan Adams’ hit song of the same name.] When I got home, I reached out to Sony's licensing department to ask them to get it for the opening of the game.

It took about six months before I heard back from them. The reason why it took so long was that between when I heard the song and six months later, it turned out to be a global hit song. When I first heard it in Hawaii, it was not that big of a popular song, but it went up the charts quickly and it turned out to be a major hit song. One is that I was surprised by that, and two, I was proud to have been able to recognise a hit song in its early release stage.

NL: I know I made the Ghibli reference earlier, but your titles also remind me of Studio Chizu, which is the animation studio that made Summer Wars, Wolf Children, The Boy and the Beast, and Mirai. In every one of his movies, the director, Mamoru Hosoda, explores a different aspect of the family structure, whether it's a big family like in Summer Wars, or the single mother raising two kids in Wolf Children, or a boy and a father figure in The Boy and the Beast. Every Bokunatsu game has a focus on a different aspect of the family.

KA: Not so much lately, but I used to hang out and go drinking with Mamoru Hosoda. He used to work at Studio Ghibli and that’s around the time that we used to hang out. And the same staff that worked on the backgrounds for Bokunatsu worked on the backgrounds for Summer Wars. There are quite a few coincidences like that. Mr. Hosoda, for example, also pulls his inspiration from his own family and experiences so I think we have a lot in common.

NL: That is a stunning coincidence actually! The Bokunatsu series is so synonymous with PlayStation. You created four games and multiple ports between 2000 and 2009, spanning multiple systems — PlayStation, PS2, PSP, PS3. But since Bokunatsu 4 on PSP, there hasn't been a new game in 15 years. Does Sony own the IP completely? If you wanted to make a new one, would you have to do it on PlayStation hardware? Since Japan Studio has been shut down, does this make reviving the series harder?

I wonder if, due to the popularity of the recent games that you've made with Natsu-Mon and Shin-chan, is it possible for Bokunatsu to stage a comeback? Many people have a strong association with the series, and PlayStation for that matter. Nobody ever falls out of love with Summer Vacation. And it was originally kind of made with a nostalgic '70s and '80s theme, so you have room to move around to different eras.

KA: Right, all the games have kind of marched through time.

NL: So you could do one after the turn of the century. It seems like it's a PlayStation-specific thing, but could it ever be multi-platform? Maybe not Nintendo, but maybe PS, Steam and PC or something like that.

KA: We can't make one without Sony's permission, but it's not like we don't talk about it anymore. How should I put it? [pauses] We've been talking about reviving it for a while now and [Sony even] proposed a social game on a smartphone. I'm a consumer-hardware person, so I didn't think about making it on a smartphone or on social media.

if I find a good project or a good partner to make the game, Sony is open to making a new Bokunatsu game

But when we were discussing with Sony about a social media game, Sony’s new corporation called Forwardworks was fielding new projects to fund. They did commission a few ideas for a game but we didn’t come up with any good projects. But Bokunatsu has been a successful series and we didn’t want it to fail [due to a poor social media game]. So the project has been on hold for a while until we can find a strong idea for a sequel. It’s tabled for now, but if I find a good project or a good partner to make the game, Sony is open to making a new Bokunatsu game.

It's not like the Bokunatsu series won't come out at all from Sony. It just stopped with Bokunatsu 4 for now. I don't know the details, but I think Sony is only interested in making games that sell globally, not just titles that are popular in the Japanese market. So even if I were to pitch a Bokunatsu title for the PlayStation 4 or 5, I don’t think it would get greenlit.

NL: Do you think that’s because they closed Japan Studio and most projects are coming out of Sony Interactive Entertainment Europe and America?

KA: Yes. I don’t work at Sony so I don't know the details, but I think it's hard to make something other than something that can be sold globally. Even now, I still have a lot of friends at Sony, and we exchange a lot of information, so I can't really comment, but it's true that their focus seems to be on AAA games.

NL: Is Boku basically representative of every Japanese boy during summertime? What characteristics must a Boku convey? Is it curiosity, adventurousness, recklessness? Is there a certain characteristic that Boku, the player’s avatar, must have in your game?

KA: Boku, the main character, must be curious and be interested in a lot of different things. The same goes for the main character of Natsu-Mon. As I mentioned earlier, the setting is a rural area in Japan, so it might not be interesting if I were to make a character that is too much like a typical video game or anime character. I risk making the game too boring. By adding a distinctive character design, the game is a little more edgy and cool for everyone. I wanted to avoid risking the game feeling too boring because it’s set in the countryside.

Mineko Ueda, the character designer for Boku No Natsuyasumi, was the illustrator for the most fashionable magazine in Japan at the time called Magazine House. The characters she draws are proportionate but they look like they have longer arms and legs, like models. That kind of thing is really interesting. It fit the impression of cool and edgy character design that I was looking for.

NL: Speaking of Ueda-san, if you ever are given another opportunity to make an official Boku No Natsuyasumi 5, I assume that you'd work with her again. She's not getting any younger [Editor's note: Mineko Ueda is in her mid-70s at the time of writing], but I can’t imagine the series without her contributions.

KA: Yes, we would definitely ask her to do the designs again.

NL: Our 10-year-old son, who we introduced you at the start of the interviews, is a very typical Boku type — always climbing things, always exploring, always doing the things that little boys do. I personally love seeing this because for me that innocence and that curiosity is the most adorable thing and I never want him to lose that magic. But I know that there's going to be a point where it does start to go away and he starts growing up. Is that the core of what you tried to instil and embody in the Bokunatsu series, and not just the Bokunatsu games, but even in Attack of the Friday Monsters and Natsu-Mon? Is that the true spirit of your games — to capture the innocence of youth and preserve it through your games?

KA: [When I was young] I moved from Muroran to Rumoi [Interviewer's note: Two towns in Hokkaido] and I still remember everything from before and after that. So when I was 10 years old, it was a special time for me, so I think that's what influenced me. I don't remember it that much now but when I made the first Bokunatsu I was like, “Let's make [the character] 10 years old, let's make it that age.”

NL: It wasn't like your own son was 10 years old then, right? These memories of when you were 10 years old yourself, were very strong?

KA: Yes, I didn’t have a child yet when making the first Bokunatsu. Additionally, there’s a famous Japanese writer named Yukio Aoshima; he was the governor of Tokyo at one point. 20 years ago, he said something to me that really stuck with me. Summer is very short in Hokkaido and we were talking about how the game has a melancholy undertone, but I wasn't sure why. His advice was to accept it because you can’t escape the feelings that you picked up on when you were a child.

NL: Is it the same as why Japanese people like cherry blossoms, because they wither and die quickly? And it's important to cherish the short period of time when they bloom? Is [it] the nostalgia that Japanese people feel for the fleeting of such beauty?

KA: Right now, there are cherry blossoms all over the place. I think Japanese people like cherry blossoms because they associate cherry blossoms with festivals and eating food. That's why everyone likes cherry blossoms.

NL: That's the reason. Food wins again! [laughs]

Ayabe-san, thank you very much for the generous amount of time you’ve spent with us. Hopefully people discover the quiet pleasures of your newest game, Natsu-Mon, so that it has a bright future, and if they’re inspired to do so, to track down your other games as well. Back to the topic of Natsu-Mon, is there anything you haven't mentioned about the game yet, that you’d like to share?

KA: I'd like to say something to the players. Is it okay if I say it now?

NL: Of course, go ahead.

KA: As I said earlier, it's not just a quiet and relaxing game, but you can also climb various places and explore the jungle. So I want you to really explore the game. For example, when the fireworks go off, in other games you would just watch the fireworks go up from one angle. In this game, you can go right under the fireworks and watch them from below. Or if you look at the fireworks from above, what happens if you look at it from a place higher than the fireworks? There are a lot of different ways that you can enjoy the game. So I hope that people can explore it from many different angles.