Article/Seaman Yoot Saito Interview

Originally from Gamefan 808.

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> Seaman Creator Yoot Saito
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> GF: What is your official title and role in the creation of Seaman?
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> YS: Lead designer, creator of Seaman and President of Vivarium.
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> GF: Where did the concept originally come from?
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> YS: The original concept was that, if the pet you had in your house could talk, it wouldn’t be all cute and friendly. So if you’ve got a fish in your fish tank, they’d want to say (if they could talk) “You brought your boyfriend here last night, what do you think you were doing?”
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> GF: How long was it in development?
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> YS: They (I) made the first prototype on the Mac, and that was four and a half years ago… But on the Mac, they (I) had hit the limit of the 3D stuff it could do; that was maybe, like three years ago or so. Then, right around that time, Irimaji-san, the president of SOJ, visited him in Berkely and said, “Do you want to try to do this on the dreamcast?”
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> GF: Ok, when you play Seaman, how many different kinds of animals are there?”
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> YS: It’s a continuous evolution. It’s not like there are set stages, or anything – he’s constantly changing so it’s kind of hard to answer. By solving a puzzle, you create land and… have you played through the Japanese version?
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> GF: I got… well, my Seaman grew legs and he got on land, then he died; he went belly up.
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> YS: [laughs] So you create land within the tank, and then they lay eggs and it changes into another type of life form.
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> GF: How hard was it to get the voice recognition system working? Was that the hardest part of developing the game?
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> YS: We didn’t make the voice recognition engine, we licensed an existing one.
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> GF: Oh really? Ok, what about vocabulary? How many words can Seaman understand?
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> YS: That’s kind of hard to answer. There are just too many, we haven’t counted yet.
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> GF: The last time I checked, Seaman was outselling Shenmue. Does that surprise you? That it continues to sell almost a year after its release?
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> YS: My background is making PC and Mac games, and the sales of most console games in Japan jumped during the first week, then drop off afterward. The model I’m used to, and the model that I had to convince the sales and distribution guys about, was not like that, but more of a steady growth. Last week, we hit the half-million mark in sell-through.
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> GF: Are you working on a sequel?
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> YS: Yes.
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> GF: Will there be any different features you’ll incorporate in the sequel that you didn’t have a chance to incorporate in the first?
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> YS: Right now, I’m still in the concept stage; I’m talking with members of the team and running through ideas in my head. One thing I do know at this point is that It will be online.
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> GF: Oh really? Can you explain a little bit more about that? What do you plan for online play?
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> YS: Well it’s like Salmon. As they grow, they go out into the sea (which in this case, is the internet) and do their thing. When they’re ready to lay eggs, they do it and then come back.
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> GF: DO you have any involvement with the americna translation of the game?
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> YS: Seaman’s words are really slang in Japanese, and I don’t read or write, so while I could do it personally, for the nuances that Seaman should have, it will be done by someone else. Everybody thinks that Seaman’s words are really rude…
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> GF: Like ‘unko’?
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> YS: Oh you mean crap? Yeah, but unko is like ‘pee pee’ is to kids. It’s not dirty.
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> GF: That’s why Seaman say it when they’re small?
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> YS: Right, but Seaman does not harm anybody, any individual or any particular organization. He criticizes the government or a very big thing, like human beings themselves – but he doesn’t criticize anything. This title is very likely to be misunderstood, in the way that Seaman’s so dirty, aggressive, arrogant and speaks dirty words, but that’s not true. I never mentioned that in Japan, because I’m the creator, I didn’t want to… we didn’t promote it as if it really exists, and I never said anything about that kind of thing in the media. But to the people who are translating it, I forward some directions and tapes and things. Actually, I couldn’t check the script itself; background is totally different, and its translated off the Japanese version. The new ones, I can’t check English, so I was always asking Sammo, who is bilingual, to check things and telling him that “this should be this” or “that should be that”.
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> GF: So it’s just slightly toned down, but still the same game as the Japanese version, gameplay wise?
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> YS: I don’t think that it’s toned down at all; it’s about the same level of the Japanese version. I’ve given it to a lot of my friends, some here in the states, and by watching their reactions, I’m pretty sure it’s the same as the Japanese.
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> GF: Do you think that it’ll be misunderstood over here?
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> YS: Very much so. I think, in the way that, in the Japanese, we have a word “bakageemu” (stupid game) so in Japan, we didn’t release any screen shots – otherwise the press and the public would take it to be a stupid game that makes fun of users. Actually, that’s true in another way, though; Seaman mentions a lot of things about you (the user) and goes into deeper conversations as time progresses.
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> GF: Like asking about your wife, things like that?
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> YS: Yes, after seeing your play logs and learning that you are married, he asks you, “Are you cheating on your wife?” It sees a lot of logs and it analyzes you. In the Japanese version, we could see what type of game you played based on the Dreamcast logs, which isn’t available here due to privacy issues. Suddenly Seaman would start saying, “Hey, Matt, you didn’t take care of me last night, instead of that you were playing Virtua Fighter” – something like that, or “You like Sonic so much, you like kiddy games”. So he takes all that information that you give to the Dreamcast, and it’s something like Mind Mirror, a software program that surveys your mind. It was developed by a psychologist, and it reflects your mind, nothing else. It’s a magic trick, as if the program knows you a lot. It’s like a fortuneteller.
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> GF: Will Seaman initiate conversations based on what time you play?
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> YS: Yes.
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> GF: Do you still play Seaman, or have one running?
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> YS: Not too much. Every time I create a game, when it’s released, it’s done. I got enough with the debugging, the tuning, you know, and…
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> GF: Once it’s done, you just move on.
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> YS: Yeah. That’s really bad, I know but… I’m a human being [laughs]. In the last three months, all the team members have been forced to play the game three or 4000 times; they’re gonna have nightmares. So, I like it, but I don’t like it, you know? Obviously, nobody’s indifferent. Actually, as a game designer I challenged three things which were totally opposite to the conventional game designing method. I tried to create a character that was not cute; but looked bizarre and strange. And in the protoyping phase, no professional guys, no production guys, no distribution guys, no Sega guys – they all hated the character. They didn’t like it, because it was not cute. But it stuck in their minds, and they always came back to me asking, “What ever happened with that Seaman thing?” So, they disliked Seaman, but nobody was indifferent. I challenged one big thing – no menus, information dialogs, or message boxes, that kind of thing, none of that. I wanted to make it very natural, as if it’s really there. It’s very easy to display how hungry the Seaman is with charts, but that reduces the realism. So we had to do everything in one layer, without any menu interfaces. With the hand, grab the rock, move something, capture the Seaman and tap, to do everything in one layer – that was the biggest challenge. We could do a great job about that I think. The third and final thing we did totally different was… Normally, the Sega game, everybody plays it looking at the TV set. This game, though, is a game to be ‘peeked’ at from within the TV set. It’s a game to be played. So like real pets, you have to live with it, and sometimes he’s watching you, both ways. Does that make sense?
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> GF: Yeah, it’s more of an interactive experience than just a game.
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> YS: Exactly. So, they analyze your tendency to come to the game or … you know, through the conversations, he knows your blood type, whether or not you’re married, if you have a boyfriend or girlfriend or not, what kind of job you have. So he really thinks ,and he tricks you. He’ll cheat (lie to) you, as if he knows everything. It’s programmed to channel, and give you messages from dead people. But the Seaman are doing tricks, they don’t know, and they’re not doing these types of things, they are trying to see things through the conversations as if they know everything. “Okay, your father, I’m your father. Oh hey Matt, how are you, so you’re married…” or something like that. So through the conversation, that kind of guy starts knowing the environment around you. So that’s what I wanted to do, kind of tricks. Very intelligent tricks, to try to make people panic.
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> GF: so when you tell the Seaman something early on, does he remember it? Is it programmed to remember everything?
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> YS: Yes.
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> GF: What’s the longest time a Seaman’s ever lived? Is there a limit? Will they eventually die?
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> YS: In real time, one generation lives about ten days.
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> GF: Is there an ultimate goal to the game?
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> YS: Well the Japanese version was very difficult, and the US version has been adjusted to make it a little bit easier to finish.
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> GF: One last thing. What was the Seaman Christmas Disk that was released in Japan?
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> YS: It’s a lite disk. It was a very big experiment for us, because it’s being implemented for Seaman 2.
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> GF: So it’s simply a way to send messages via network?
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> YS: Well, it’s something like this. If the Seaman comes to you on Christmas night and asks you: “Who do you want to send your message to? Your girlfriend? Ok, so what do you want to tell her?”  And you say, “I want to marry her.” It says, “OK. Wait a minute, Matt, you’re a married man, so are you cheating on your wife?” So he analyzes everything, you know. “Well ok I’ll tell her,” He says. “Are you sure she’s your girlfriend?” Then he goes to Lucy. “Hey Lucy I have a message from Matt. He’s your boyfriend, right?” “No,” She says, “No?” “NO, he’s my driver.” “Oh really?” he says, “That’s weird because…” So he takes a gap between two people, gets an answer and brings it back. It’s that kind of thing. He’s very intelligent, and it’s not like a sort of mail service. If you’re not up to asking a question to your boss or your friend, Seaman does it, but he does it in a very direct way, and you might be very worried by what he says. My intention was that you would be calling your boss, or the person you sent a question to, directly. Seaman’s something of an agent in a way.
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> GF: Great, it sounds very cool. Thanks immensely for your time.
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> YS: You’re welcome.
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