This 3rd source is a must-read if you are interested:
https://tale-of-tales.com/blog/intervie ... oshi-sato/
I have selected certain parts of this "interview" which I thought were incredibly insightful.
***
ToT: Silent Hill 2 is one of the few games that continues to be used as an example of the direction that games could take if you treat them as an artistic entertainment medium, rather than just fun toys to play with. What do you think makes that game so different? And do you feel that the games industry has evolved much in this respect since Silent Hill 2 (published in 2001)?
TS: Usually there are many people to satisfy in game development. When there’s too many cooks in the kitchen, you get products that lack focus, have no edge and are simply boring. But Silent Hill 1 became very successful and I got three awards for it. That allowed me to pursue my own creative vision. Now I realize that that was a very rare situation. But it offered me a chance to prove that a highly artistic project can sell without any particular marketing elements. I am more interested in profound artwork that remains in people’s hearts for a long time than quick money-raking products. I thought that if Silent Hill 2 remained a masterpiece for a long time, its profits would exceed major products eventually. Hit products tend to be born like this: simply as the result of someone’s creative pursuit.
*
ToT: You were a trained as a fine artist. How do you feel about the place of artists (and art) in the games industry?
TS: I was taught that only works that change the definition of the world should be called Art. I studied contemporary philosophy, literature and cultural history to fulfill that mission. Art was a very respectable thing to me. Only people who create artworks that redefine the world should be called Artists. The word was too honorable to simply call yourself an artist. That was my definition of Art and Artist: very very honorable things. Even when I entered the commercial world, I was still trying to create Art using digital interactive media.
But lately, artists are expected to be “professionals”. Their position in the industry seems to have become more that of a person who simply executes a plan. And when something goes wrong, the artists are blamed. I see this happening a lot more lately than before. And it makes me very sad.
*
ToT: Do you think there is still a chance for games to develop into a real artistic medium?
TS: Yes. If sufficient time and funding is funneled into the right person. So that there is enough time to contemplate. Brainstorming with large numbers of people may give you great ideas, but never leads to depth and perfect balance.
*
ToT: What would be the ideal situation for you to create a game?
TS: Three years of part preproduction and part development, starting small and getting bigger as the project progresses. No executives constantly changing the project, so that I can direct throughout the course of the project.
And even if I’m not in the directing position, it’s really important that everybody knows who the decision maker is and how the “chain of command” is structured. That keeps the project focused.
*
ToT: How important were technical limitations for the creation of the look and feel of Silent Hill 2?
TS: They were not important. Better technology is always welcome. The key is what you spend all the tech, energy and resources on. You need to select this carefully otherwise the product will look like some kind of carnival.
*
ToT: You recently decided to go and work for a company that produces serious games (training simulations and the like). This strikes me as an odd decision for somebody who has had such an important impact on the fictional and artistic side of the medium. Could you tell us a bit about what motivated the change?
TS: I feel that games are being standardized into only a few formats lately: FPS, RTS, MMO, 3rd Person Action and Sports. There’s a tendency to create the same games over and over with only a visual upgrade. And the only thing artists are supposed to do is “be professional” and gift wrap the same game elements with a pretty new skin.
Then I encountered serious games. Despite of the downsides -small budgets, clients to satisfy, etc- serious games allow us to convey social messages, for instance. There hasn’t been an opportunity for deep story telling yet. But even making a game about behavior changes in the context of social problems, seems a little more creative than just making more and more weapon concepts. I find it hard to like games that only provide a “kill kill kill” experience. Since serious games are in their infancy, I thought it might be a great place to seek future possibilities. I hope that very interesting things will happen down the road.
Also, small budgets sometimes make production rough. But in a way, I am enjoying the combination of providing Art Direction and getting my hands dirty doing actual art work. This sort of thing has been lost giant game production
***
According to the comments on that website this email interview was conducted in 2008!! I guess it's true.. the 7th generation console era is when the decline of the industry started to become evident, and accelerated in recent years.
All this only further cements in my mind how pathetic this "demake" is, and how antithetical it is to the philosophy behind the original game that led to its longstanding legacy. The original was truly a miracle. If only we had more people like Sato nowadays. People who wanted nothing more than to keep pushing the boundaries of video-games in being something more than just a "product" to be consumed and tossed aside in a few weeks. People who worked tirelessly to prove themselves, who believed in their vision and did all they could to see it brought to fruition. I strongly feel it is the leadership of Sato and Owaku, that compelled all the other Team Silent members to also get creative and motivated them to do their best (particularly Yamaoka - I have yet to see him top his work for SH2).
Also, it's interesting that Tsuboyama said in his tweets that as a game designed he was "not satisfied" with the original game's camera, but that was the technological limitation at the time. Whereas, Sato says "tech limitations were not important" and what matter was how you used tech. It doesn't refute what Tsuboyama said, - he was right to say that tech limitations were a thing - but I think this difference in how these two people viewed the issue at hand is quite interesting.
donate to the HQ 
