CyberConnect2 President Hiroshi Matsuyama Talks About Their New Strategy, And Upcoming Project Tidbits

Famitsu held an interview with CyberConnect2 president Hiroshi Matsuyama, talking about their C5 project, as well the three new announced game concepts: Fuga, Tokyo Ogre Gate, and Cecile. You can read more about the project in our previous report.

Here are the highlights:

• CyberConnect2’s new strategy stems from a shift from a ‘game based’ to an ‘IP based’ company. In this day and age, it is hard for a single game to change the entire game industry, and trends have shifted towards people buying things based on known IPs. Entertainment needs to be IP-based, including things such as multimedia efforts, rather than simply game-based.

• CyberConnect2 has mainly developed outsourced games with long development times, and while this line of production will continue, the C5 project is a way to provide self-published titles with a smaller scale and a shorter dev cycle. They have 3 big projects, plus these three smaller projects at the moment.

• The increasing popularity of downloadable games meant that the company could put out titles with no shipping costs or overstocking issues, and could release games worldwide at the same time.

• CyberConnect2 have around 200 staff at the moment, but Matsuyama expects the company to have 300 staff in the next two years, including at their newer Montreal studio.

• The C5 project actually started last year, with around 100 in-house game proposals being submitted. From these, 10 were chosen, which were then honed down to just 3 remaining. A promise has been made to the staff that their name will definitely be highlighted in media, as it is common for the name of the game director to overwhelm that of the person who submitted the idea. This increased motivation.

• Project Venom’s development has been halted, due to two reasons: Firstly, the MOBA-style gameplay did not fit the new scheme of development; secondly, the person in charge of Project Venom is working on another big project. CyberConnect2 will evaluate continuing Project Venom development after that unnamed project is completed.

Fuga:

• Fuga is set in the ‘Little Tail Bronx’ universe, in an area close to that of Solatorobo: Red the Hunter. However, it is set quite a bit further in the past than that game.

• The game is an action strategy RPG that focuses on 11 orphans who find a tank laying dormant under the village, which used to house ruins. The gameplay has management simulation aspects, where the characters need to be assigned to different roles, with some shooting and roguelike elements to the gameplay as well.

• Attention has been given to the ‘feelings’ of the characters, who the developers want to feel lifelike. Things such as characters not obeying orders, or sickness and depression may happen.

Tokyo Ogre Gate:

• The game is a ‘high speed parkour slashing action’ game, set in a fantasy world that is inspired by post-WWI Japan.

• The main character, Towako, speeds up as she slashes through enemies. The faster she’s going, the higher her damage output is. The game will shift from sidescrolling, to front scrolling and back scrolling at times, showing off CyberConnect2’s well-known dynamic scene changes.

• The project is popular with the staff because it is very try-hard edgy in the way they love. The kanji for Tokyo is even that of ‘sword’ and ‘evil’.

• The characters in Cecile are four sisters who hate each other, and fight to take each others’ hearts. It is a 2.5D sidecrolling action game, and the main character Cecile fights with an umbrella with unique animations.

• This project was sent in by a young developer, and Matsuyama wants to put them and other young developers in the spotlight with these sort of projects.

Fuga, Tokyo Ogre Gate, and Cecile currently do not have release dates or platforms.