Keiichiro Toyama / 外山圭一郎

Keiichiro Toyama is a Japanese game developer who is most famous for directing the first Silent Hill game at KCET. He then moved to SCE where he was the director behind Siren and Gravity Rush. He has since left SCE to establish his own studio, Bokeh Studios.

### Childhood

He was born in 1970, in Miyakonojo City, Kyushu, Japan. During his childhood, he was a fan of manga and the supernatural. He went ghost hunting with his friends and read books about the occult and UFOs. He was afraid of horror, though he still read the works of famous manga artists like Kazuo Umezu, Hideshi Hino, as well as the works of Daijiro Morohoshi and Ryoko Yamagishi. He was afraid he would be 'corrupted' reading horror manga but couldn't stop reading. He was also a big fan of adventure games like *Zork* and *The Tower of Druaga.*

After high school, he moved to Tokyo and became a "ronin", (like taking a gap year), and spent two years living with friends and working at a movie rental store. He wanted to experience the "freewheeling" lifestyle he'd seen in manga but soon found it wasn't quite so romantic.

### College & Early Career

He applied to art school because he hated math and in 1990 began studying film and analog video at Tokyo Zokei University. He was driven to find a way to leave a mark on the world but didn't know how until close to his graduation, when a career representative from Sega came to his school. A friend of his also applied to work in the gaming field, and that inspired him to send out applications to multiple companies.

His interview at Konami would involve creating pixel art with their Picno drawing computer; the interviewers were impressed with his work and gave him the job. It was the first company he'd applied to. He began at Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo sometime in 1994.

His first project was working on the Playstation port of *Snatcher*, and his input was minimal, "adjusting colors" and learning from his superiors. Around that time he was struck by the appearance of a 3D horror game called *Doctor Hauzer*, which had fully rendered 3D environments that allowed for multiple camera angles. It struck him with the idea that a game could involve horror and feelings of fear.

His second project was International Track & Field. The team for Track & Field wanted to use mocap to create their 3D models, and older members of the company did not know how to use this new technology. Toyama volunteered and took the lead, impressing his superiors with his work. During his time on the team, he would meet Akihiro Imamura/今村 哲裕 and Naoto Oshima/大島 直人.

After the project was finished, Toyama was called in to speak with the director of KCET's development group 6, Haruki Yukata, alongside *Track & Field*'s director Satoshi Kushibuchi. Yukata wanted to discuss their plans for their future projects, and had two to offer them: directing the next *Track & Field* title, or directing a new horror game meant to rival Capcom's *Resident Evil* success. As Kushibuchi was Toyama's superior, he had first choice, and Kushibuchi chose to stay with *Track & Field*. Toyama would later wonder if his former boss did so knowing that Toyama wanted to direct his own original project.

The game was tentatively titled 'Horror Adventure', and two Track & Field programmers, Imamura and Oshima, were assigned to the game alongside Toyama.

### Sources - Videos

#### General

* “Keiichiro Toyama, Game Creator (Silent Hill, Gravity Rush) - TOCO TOCO.”
* “Focus - Keiichiro Toyama.”

### Sources - Internet

#### General

* “Creators Keiichiro Toyama.” *Gpara.*
* "Silent Hill creator discusses how he joined the game biz and why AAA horror is ‘difficult’ to fund”. *Polygon*.
* “Bokeh Game Studio Founders Discuss Why They Left Sony's Japan Studio and Tease First Title in New Interview.” *OTAQUEST.*

#### Silent Hill series

* Silent Hill: La Peur Virtuelle Porte Son Nom.

#### Siren series

* *Entrevista a Keiichiro Toyama, director de Forbidden Siren.*
* “７夜連続！コロコロオンライン真夏のホラーゲーム徹底特集⑨ 伝説のホラーゲーム『SIREN（サイレン）』 開発者・外山圭一郎さんインタビュー.” *Coco*
* “Forbidden Siren 2 Keiichiro Toyama on Sony’s latest horror title.” Eurogamer.
* Siren 2, Dengeki Online.
* Siren Blood Curse - Sato & Toyama Interview, Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
* “ホラゲにゲームデザインの常識は通用しない!? Jホラーゲームの第一人者『零』×『SIREN』開発者が語り合うホラーの摩訶不思議（柴田誠×外山圭一郎）【ゲームの企画書第八回.” *Denfaminico Gamer.*

#### Gravity Rush series

* Gravity Rush Central Interview with Keiichiro Toyama, Eric Bailey and Naoko Sato.
* 岩泉茂. “**【CEDEC2017】「GRAVITY DAZE2」におけるシナリオ制作の秘密に迫る.”** Gamewatch, September 2017,

### Sources - Magazines

* “Interview with Keiichiro Toyama.” *Playstation Magazine*, March 1999.
* OPM Interview with Toyama and Sato
* Famitsu Interview

### Sources - Twitter

* *It won't be long before the development of Silent Hill begins, but with a history like this, will he make it in time? What will happen to the newcomer, Toyama! (continued)*

* *I will continue. I call it the Olympic team for the time being, but Mr. Satoshi Kushibuchi from Snatcher is the director. The designers are Mr. Kusibuchi, me for the second year, and Mr. Kobayashi, a newcomer. And what an unusually young team was made, with 3 programmers (only) being my sync.*

* *continuation. First time in Konami? Or, at a time close to that, motion capture was introduced into the process of the Olympic Games. At least for the first time in Tokyo development*.

* *continuation. The Olympics had a good reputation while they were being made. Visits to overseas staff have started to come in here and there. In particular, the camera work and water surface expression by Mr. Oshima (programmer Naoto Oshima, another person with the same surname and same name as Sonic's celebrity) were popular.*

* *Around the end of the development of the Olympics ... A newcomer who is assigned to the "Sexy Parodius" ported version team and silently corrects dots, and a small talk on holiday commuting. He is a strange man who carries a mobile phone that he rarely sees yet. The name is Takayoshi Sato. "I joined this company because I wanted to do CG, but ..." with a bitter smile.*

* *One day after the development of the Hyper Olympics was completed, Mr. Kushibuchi and I were called to see Mr. Haruki, who had been appointed as the department head.*

* *Next...I'm thinking. I'm thinking of two sequels to the Olympics, a winter version and a horror...bio-like one. Which one of each would you like to do?"*

* *Finally... an original, game-like game...!) ) and my heart races. (Which will Mr. Kushibuchi choose...?) I was so excited....*

* *I have been doing this for a long time, so I will continue to do the Olympics...," said Mr. Kushibuchi. At that moment, I was calm to the outside world, but inwardly I was in a state of excitement with mixed feelings of relief and joy.*

* *Now that I think about it, maybe, just maybe, they knew very well that I wanted to do something very original, so they gave it to me....*

* *Thus began the development of the new project, "Horror Adventure (tentative). Assuming that I was the design leader, the programmers were Tetsuhiro Imamura and Naoto Oshima, my classmates from the Olympics.*

* *I wondered who the director was, and Mr. Haruki said, "It's you.*

* *It started with three people, but with the addition of Takayoshi Sato, a newcomer who finished the transplant work of Sexy Parodius immediately, four people. These four people started the draft plan ...*

* *The draft plan started with... what we now call the “high concept” part. I wrote “Fear of Darkness” without hesitation, almost on my own initiative, rather than through discussion.*

* *This is because my strongest original experience of fear was at home when I was a child.... Miyakonojo City, Miyazaki Prefecture, population 130,000. This was my birthplace when my grandfather's Japanese sweets shop and my father's rice and grain grocery store lived together.*

* *The only lethal points at home now are bath water or the balcony of an apartment, but it was such a Showa period when there were dug kotatsu, pumping latrines, brazier, propane gas, oil stoves, hunting traps w and dangers (for children) everywhere.*

* *In those days, it was not unusual for the main house, bath, and toilet to be separated from each other. When I woke up in the middle of the night with a sudden urge to urinate.... When I was a toddler, I could ask my mother, who slept in the next room, to come with me, but as an elementary school student, I had to go to the bathroom by myself.*

* *I went down the stairs, ran down the corridor, opened the lid of the pumping toilet......and ran back with a desperate look on my face.... I could not even urinate without fighting the fear that gripped my heart, wondering if there was anyone standing in the corner of the confectionery factory, or if someone would step out of the darkness on the other side of the stairs.*

* *Well, that's why, for me, the best fear theme could not be anything but "darkness". And that "fear of darkness" did not exist in the blockbuster "Resident Evil". I strongly felt that it was the only way to differentiate it.*

* *And one more word...I also added the phrase "darkness of the heart". I'll get back to you on that....*

* *Continued. The first first idea I had was "darkness" and the second, rather vaguely, was an attempt to incorporate an alternative sensibility into the staging.*

* *Since I was a student, I have always been interested in music of the noise, industrial, New York punk, acoustic, trip-hop, and Japanese new wave styles. I also like the old-fashioned MUTE label....*

* *In movies, it's Lynch, Jodorowsky, Schwankmaier.... It's all nightmare stuff.*

* *In fact, such tastes were common, especially in art schools, but hardly seen in games of the time, which were usually based on B-movie action movies and the like.*

* *So, rather simply, I thought, since we know the pressure points and there is novelty, let's incorporate that.*

* *I had seen only a few horror movies before, so I didn't know what a horror movie was like.*

* *Ah. I was a little inaccurate. My weakness is "splatter". I rather loved ghosts and horror comics, and UFOs, and oparts, and conspiracies.*

* *Continued. My stance is that as long as the concept is satisfied, I don't care what method is used. The first method I thought was close to the original idea was to use a layer of pitch black on a pre-rendered screen similar to the one in the bio, and remove it with an alpha and normal map to create a pseudo-lighting. I thought that was a good idea.*

* *However, Mr. Oshima, who was in charge of drawing, suggested that point light might work... and a few days later, we received a technical sample that had never actually been seen in PS1.*

* *The first artifact is a house on a 10 meter square floor, and a very low-polygon, raw-polygon girl. That was it. However, the point light effect involved in this was inhabited by endless possibilities.*

* *The adoption of point lights means full polygons by necessity. You also get another advantage that Bio didn't have: camera work.*

* *The only reason why we have not adopted this system despite its advantages is because of the biggest problem: the bottleneck of excessive and unprocessable processing.*

* *No matter how dramatic the lighting, a character that looks like a paper mache is not worth the effort....*

* *Outside of the light attenuation, go to 0,0,0 black. You can erase the model there. Of course, there is no need to draw any distant scenery.*

* *As a result, this decision paid off tremendously in the elimination of bottlenecks and the acquisition of a unique worldview. Incidentally, at a much later date, we learned of another title that had gained success from the same approach.*

* *It's been quite a while, but I'll resume.... I believe it was around the point where you had placed Point Light as the technical core of the company, or something like that.*

* *I was discussing the worldview and storyline of the project at the same time. First of all, I imposed on myself the rule that I would never duplicate anything that was already in existence.*

* *However, I was in a situation where I was working on an original title with an overwhelming lack of experience, and I was very troubled by certain issues that were slowing down my progress in proposing a worldview.*

* *The problem is.... It is "terribly embarrassing" to make a proposal.*

* *In front of the director and the whole staff (three of them), I said, "Well, when I go to the mysterious accident site, there is a mysterious beautiful girl..."... hahaha... embarrassing... ～～～～～！！！！ And I hate the things....*

* *I thought about giving it to someone else, but then I thought, "I want it to be Hollywood royalty, after all! I thought I'd give it to someone else, but then I thought, "I want it to be Hollywood royalty, after all!*

* *In order to avoid embarrassment, we came up with the idea of finding a way to do something without directly writing the story. We came up with the idea of extracting only the conceptual parts from the existing ones and putting them at the forefront of the project....*

* *I had a hard time coming to the conclusion that "No, that's normal..." when I think about it now. At the time, I thought that a worldview was something that you had to start from the beginning with "the hero is like this and the heroine is like that..."....*

* *In this vein, we narrowed it down to a few concepts that exist in the existing horror genre, but that are new to the game world, and that are major in their own right.*

* *One is in the vein of "Lovecraft". However, in games, we can actually see several of them, and when it comes to intertwining them with the game's presentation, they are plain...*

* *So one of the things that rang a bell was not Lovecraft's work itself, but "Shadow over Innsmouth," which was aired on TBS's "Gimme a Break" and set in Japan.*

* *Well, we rejected that direction. A work in the vein of Cthulu, set in Japan... I don't remember if I thought I might make something like that sometime in the future...*

* *Then I decided to delve into the other direction that pinged me!*

* *Continued. Another thing that popped into my head was that.... Suddenly, I went back to about six years ago. When I was a student, I was living alone in Kokubunji, following the pattern of a typical person from the countryside who was inspired by Treasure Island.*

* *For 18 years until I moved to Tokyo, I had grown up with nothing but TV, manga, and video games. After entering art school, the high antennae of the people around me made me upset, and with an introductory book in hand, I struggled to fill in the gaps so that people would think I was at least a little better at music, movies, art, etc.*

* *Unlike today, however, everything is expensive and time-consuming.... I started working part-time at a local video store, Studio 924, thinking that I might be able to watch videos for free*.

* *At first, I was determined to watch all the movies in the store (but it wasn't for free!). But by the time I quit after three years, I was completely devoted to the "V&R label"... Those were the days of my youth.*

* *The store is organized by director and actor names, and among the "Cronenberg," "Sam Raimi," and "Dario Argento," there was one that was "Based on the novel by Stephen King.*

* *"A corner in the original work? That's very unusual, isn't it?" I asked the manager, who was a part-timer at the store, and he explained, "He is a best-selling author of horror films, and he sells a lot of them. I thought to myself, "All I see are boring-looking movies..." I was also interested in the director of "Carrie" and "The Shining. I thought, "They all look boring..." This was because "Carrie" and "The Shining" had been collected by the director.*

* *It was such a memory that passed through my head while searching for a world view. If it sells so much, I wondered if there might be something ... and found out that it was a genre called "modern horror", so I bought some books at a bookstore and started reading.*

* *The world was...shocking. I was struck by the overwhelming sense of immersion that was created by the mixture of the thoroughly realistic depiction of everyday life and the unspeakable surreality of the surreal and the unspoken, such as boring scenery filled with mass-produced goods, stagnant peace, and selfish people.*

* *With this worldview...it would work. ...Or perhaps it could even be a game adapted from the original novel, as if it were a movie?*

* *After all, then... no shame! I think I had a good point of view, but because I included a very evil motive in it, I had to take on a little extra trouble afterwards....*

* *A bit of a continuation. In the proposal I submitted to the director, around the scenario, I wrote something along the lines of "challenge to adapt an original novel into a game" and made some tea. The candidates were "Phantom" by Koontz, "Stinger" by McCammon, and a certain work by a certain king of horror (now that I think about it...).*

* *Director, "... and which one ...". I was narrowed down by the flow of "Oh, yes, because it's the king ...".*

* *Then I started to consider adapting a certain work into a screenplay.... Oh shoot, I thought. If I tried to be faithful, the first part of the story would be very dull. The heroine is having an adulterous affair on the spur of the moment, the ending is vague, and if you start thinking of changes, it becomes something else...*

* *Further pushback. We received information that the agent on the other side was not keen on the idea of making a game. One day, when I was at a loss for what to do, I was called by the head of the department.*

* *Director "You, go to America and persuade [King]."*

* *Oh!" I seriously made a funny voice.*

* *Continued. Let's take a short break and talk about the composition of the team since then. Shortly before that, we were joined by Mizrachi-kun, a programmer one generation below us, Naoko Sato, a designer also one generation below us, and Isao Takahashi from the CM industry.*

* *It was not until after SIREN that Naoko Sato made her mark in scenario work. At the time, she was a very active designer in charge of Enemy models and motion.*

* *Takahashi said, "I wanted to make a game after seeing Bio," and Mr. Haruki assigned him to our company, thinking he would be a perfect fit. His strong point was that he was not steeped in the theories of game creation, in a good way.*

* *At that time, the influence of the dot-picture culture was still strong in the surrounding area, and many tiling techniques were used to draw gradations in textures.*

* *Personally, I felt that it was a bit old-fashioned, to be honest (sorry to be presumptuous...). I thought that unevenness, blurring, and "shimmer" of noise would lead to a sense of vividness and atmosphere. I felt that the tiling, by itself, signaled, "Oh, it's a game.*

* *Therefore, we dared not to tell Mr. Takahashi any game-like mannerisms, which perfectly matched his own qualities, and "a scene of an uninteresting American town" was depicted with a great sense of presence.*

* *In a humble contrivance.... To make the camera work more tolerant, Oshima's idea was to combine a tree trunk model and leaf billboards to represent a roadside tree, but the leaf textures looked like a mosaic and were not good enough. I could have raised the resolution, but I was on the edge of memory....*

* *What I put in there was a simple "tilt it 45 degrees" technique. This caused a phenomenon in which the PS1's performance did not allow for beautiful completion, and the texture became wobbly and distorted... The result was a "distorted rhombus" that looked leafy from a distance.*

* *In my memory of Mr. Mizuochi.... He was in charge of character control, but at that time, motion file management was more appropriate than it is now, and the file for when a character goes down after being hit by an enemy attack had a name like "\_down.*

* *He saw this and thought, "If the coordinates go down, I'm going to give this.... As a result, a comedic motion was created: if you step off your feet in the back, you fall down in a heap. The result, of course, was adopted.*

* *I think it's been a while since "Go to the United States and persuade the King". Around the time the three younger recruits joined. Sorry for the fuzzy timeline.*

* *Mr. Haruki suddenly announced, "Let's bring in new graduates," and three people joined us. One designer and two programmers.*

* *About the new designer, Masahiro Ito. http://www.geocities.jp/nobu\_hill/index.html*

* *I have seen many newcomers every year so far, but they always seem to start out as high amateurs, near and far from the professional level.*

* *Ito-kun handed me his portfolio and said, "Let's see your work for now.*

* *Did you… draw this…?*

* *It was the only time, ever, that I was actually shown a work by a new graduate that was of a level that could be described as professional, and to be honest, I was puzzled, finding it hard to believe that the young man in front of me had drawn it.*

* *I was shocked when I saw Mr. Shinkawa's work in a magazine (even though we are the same age...), but it was not inferior to anything I had seen before.*

* *Incidentally, I have had the opportunity to see many portfolios since then, but the only ones that had a similar impact were Mr. Oga's, who participated in SIREN2, and Mr. Sawaki Takeyasu, the director of El Shaddai, which is the most current of its kind. The only newcomer in that range was Mr. Ito.*

* *I'm going to get to the heart of the matter after having praised him so much, but at the time, Mr. Ito was a man outside the norm, so it was very difficult for him to do anything.*

* *It's hard to think of it, so I'll continue with the momentum of the year-end party! It's also a matter of pulling it unnecessarily, so what happened to the story of the King's persuasion, once away from Mr. Ito's story?*

* *One day when I was told to argue, another big change.*

* *Director Haruki, to the board of directors of KCE Yokohama.*

* *Of course, it is a very confusing fact that Mr. Haruki, who has been pushing his back strongly, will leave, but it is a great promotion and I have to accept it.*

* *And it was Mr. Gozo Kitao who was newly appointed as the director. The first discussion is about what to do with the original, or the painful decision to withdraw it.*

* *Kitao: Yeah ... I understand. sure.*

* *It was so easy that it was almost disconcerting. Mr. Kitao, who does not come from a development background, has a policy of respecting on-site opinions more than enough. Thank you very much for your understanding.*

* *So, it was decided that the project would be re-steered on an original basis. It was meaningless to go to the United States for the purpose of persuading the King, but since it is also in line with E3, I decided to go because it was a big deal.*

* *The E3 trip to the United States, Atlanta, where the Olympics had just taken place. It became more meaningful than I expected ...*

* *Memories of E3 Atlanta. I heard that it was unsafe, but I was thrilled to take a walk alone ... Coca-Cola Museum was fun. Also, when the map was open on the street, it was called Katsuage, or it was a push sale of directions and I got 2 dollars w*

* *Suddenly an old tale. By the time the trajectory was corrected to the original work without the original work, something like a template was being created. At the beginning of this story, I think there was a saying that "it used to be agile", but that was exactly what happened at that time.*

* *Residential area, it keeps raining. In the darkness of jet black, the light of a flashlight floats. A strange little creature, similar to a fetus, is wriggling in the alley. The hero approaches the iron pipe with one hand and swings it down.*

* *Lying creatures. Crawling on the street awkwardly, trying to escape. The hero who slowly approaches, tramples on the hero. Silence comes for a moment, and then it mixes with the rain and a blood clot spreads ...*

* *It's the creature that was the source of the Laval Stalker, but at this time it was able to attack normally. The remnants of the first trailer. http :// www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwan7k3nOzg*

* *The original story was Daijiro Morohoshi's "Children's Time" ...? A mysterious creature kept in a storeroom. When I asked Mr. Ito, for some reason I tried to finish this cutely, so in the end I did it myself w*

* *I asked Mr. Kitao to go to the United States, and he postponed the schedule for the purpose of interviewing, so I moved to Chicago, where the US base is located. We had local staff accompany us to conduct interviews.*

* *Mr. Harry Inaba, who was in charge of the overseas division, said that there was another case, so after explaining the settings etc. in advance, I and the local staff alone left. An awkward car where you can't speak English and don't understand each other ...*

* *A church will come out, right? It was the cathedral that was taken. Because it's huge, it's not a wwww cathedral, so even if I think it's wwww, I can't understand it, so I pretend to be interviewing ...*

* *Somehow I was guided to the center of a beautiful place where sightseeing is prosperous, but when I stopped by the bookstore and flipped through the aerial photo book in Chicago, I found a very nice townscape. Desperately ask me in one word, "Ah ... that's what I'm talking about.*

* *The photos I took in Chicago at that time are reflected in the cityscape in the early part of the film. I recently unearthed some film that I thought I had lost, so I'll upload it somewhere soon. The resort area next to the lake, which I was left to my own devices, is also strongly reflected in the results.*

* *I think it was a precursor to GTA and other systems that would become mainstream in the future. I'll write more about it later!*

* *I suddenly remembered that "INCUBATOR" was one of the candidates for the title of "SILENT HILL" for a while. It was immediately rejected because I didn't know what it meant.*

* *But now I have beer and food at Famima! and I can distract myself with tweets like this. I was at my wits end in the middle of the night, hungry and lonely, on my first overseas business trip to Atlanta....*

* *I made SilentHill because I felt that there were not enough games with a realistic setting and protagonist, and then I realized that the world was full of ridiculously realistic games, so I decided to make Gravity Daze... maybe. I'm not really aware of it.*

* *I've always loved playing difficult games with no hints, and I have particularly fond memories of Outer Worlds, MIST, Return to Zork, the first Crash Bandigoo's Perfect, and, relatively recently, Braid....*

* *When I fall asleep on the kotatsu in my parents' house, I feel like "I dreamed I was a game director in Tokyo! I am the successor to a rice farmer.*

* *It was a time when young people were given a chance and I was given a challenge. I lost a little confidence as a first-time director and quit because I wanted to start over from scratch.*

* *Recently, I have come to think that my nature, which I thought was a drawback, "idea and image precedent, indecisiveness and lack of leadership," may be affirmed. From SH to SIREN to GD, I think it is characterized by being colored by many personalities and talents, not by a specific person.*

* *Speaking of entering and exiting, when I was writing the last part of SH, when Sybil is defeated and Harry is there... I was thinking of Seiya's 12 Palace Arc. Seiya was running out of power, and then Ikki came in! It was like that.*

* *When I do game scenarios, I have a habit of having them enter and exit one by one in the drama part.*

* *Moonriders is my favorite band of all time, even Gravity Daze has influenced me in many literary ways http://live.nicovideo.jp/watch/lv75624261?ref=nicotop*

* *SH was largely a random creation of my youth, but when I wrote the part where Harry monologues about not being able to distinguish between dreams and reality, I was so excited that it was like something really came down from the depths.*

* *The situation of "you realize you are in trouble, but your curiosity gets the better of you and you find yourself in a situation from which there is no turning back" has been used many times, from the last alley in SH to the departure for the lower levels of GD. I'm not sure why, but I'm fascinated. I would like someone to analyze why.*