Itagaki: "No enseño Code Cronus o NG2 para no desmotivar al resto de desarrolladores"

Game Informer: Team Ninja games share a lot of common elements, and there’s a lot of interplay between characters. Is that something that you would like to continue, or do you have any thoughts about creating something completely separate from that universe?

Tomonobu Itagaki: I don’t know how many more games I’m going to make in my lifetime, but in the past ten years we’ve done four major franchises. Who knows—it’s been four major franchises in ten years. Who knows how long it’s going to be until the next one comes along. At that time, it will be a decision of, “Do I make a new game with the characters that we all know and love or do I make a new franchise with a totally original setting and things?” Right now, it’s kind of impossible to tell.

GI: It’s well known that you work a lot—how much of your time is spent working on peripheral projects such as Ninja Gaiden DS or Ninja Gaiden Sigma than working on current projects?

Itagaki: Currently, I’d say if my entire time working was 100 units, then one of those units would be for Ninja Gaiden Sigma, 49 would be for Ninja Gaiden DS and then 50 would be for my remaining project. I try to make it 120 whenever I can.

GI: Games like Code Cronos and Ninja Gaiden 2 have been sort of waiting in the wings for quite a while now. Do you think we’ll be hearing some announcements about those titles in 2007?

Itagaki: I’d like to show everybody some of the new stuff that we’ve been working on in the near future. The only problem with that is that when the other developers see what we’re doing, they’re going to lose all of their motivation to create any game in the same genre, because there’s no way they can beat it.

GI: Games take so long to develop now, and Team Ninja games set a pretty high standard—and people like that. Is there ever a temptation to grow the team exponentially to produce more titles?

Itagaki: There is such a thing as an appropriate size. It’s like the armed forces—you can increase the number of foot soldiers as much as you want, but if you don’t have enough commanders to lead them you’re not going to get the same amount of fighting strength. In other words, if you double the size you’re not going to double the fighting strength if there aren’t enough commanders to lead them. In that same regard, one of my biggest challenges is to start help along a new generation of directors, one of which is [Yosuke] Hayashi, who’s doing Ninja Gaiden Sigma, in order to get more commanders to get more troops.

GI: Now that Sigma’s done, how do you rate Hayahsi’s performance?

Itagaki: I think he did pretty well for a younger guy. He used the battle formation that I taught him to use, and I think he was pretty successful.

GI: What’s your general take on downloadable content? With the 360, it’s almost an expectation that games are going to have downloadable content. With DOA 4 there was talk about downloading lobbies, characters and costumes. Is that something that’s still in the works, or are you not really worried about it at this point?

Itagaki: I don’t think people would be that interested in downloading new avatars or lobbies for that particular game, just thinking about our audience. If we were going to do something, we’d want to do a new stage or a new balanced set of moves, things like that. It’s something we’d love to do, but unfortunately, as we’ve been talking about, we have finite manpower and so many projects that we’re doing. I always like to pursue that kind of thing when we can. This goes back to what I was talking about earlier with the soldiers and the commanders. I’m the only one in Team Ninja who can do the balance testing for Dead or Alive games, so if I were to try to incorporate a new move list or something like that it would probably take at least a month of just straight-out playtesting in order to get it where I wanted it. Which means every project that I’m working on would have to be put on hold for an entire month. It’s always a balancing act. I do feel bad, and I apologize to the Dead or Alive fans in that they haven’t seen anything new come out that way, but I have to take on things one at a time. To be honest, I don’t think that Dead or Alive 4 is such a bad game that it’s going to require a new move list right away, so right now my message to Dead or Alive fans would be to sit tight and something new will be coming along at some point.

GI: Your games are notoriously difficult. How do you balance making a game that appeases the hardcore user base while still remains accessible to people who may not have time to train in order to play a game?

Itagaki: I think as a result of what we do, a lot of times our games tend to be more on the difficult side. It probably just comes from a natural desire for challenge. When I play a game, I want to be challenged by it. That might not always be intentional, but I think it just kind of feeds into that desire to be challenged. I talk about this a lot, but I wouldn’t want to go into a cabbage field with a big knife or a scythe or something and just start cutting down thousands and thousands of heads of cabbage. That’s not something I would find fun. I do think there are probably some people out there who want that kind of experience when playing a game. That’s why, when it comes down to the number of enemies on-screen, I’d rather have good enemies than just a lot of enemies. That’s why I don’t buy into the philosophy of, “Look! We have a thousand heads of cabbage on screen at once, isn’t this great?!”

GI: This might be like pushing on a sore tooth, but have you seen the Dead or Alive movie? Did you have any thoughts about that?

Itagaki: I haven’t seen it. I’ve just been looking at the reactions my fans have had to the movie. I haven’t been involved whatsoever in the movie. Ever since the movie was announced, all I’ve said was that I just wanted them to make something that wouldn’t be disappointing to the fans. Looking at the reactions, some have liked it and others didn’t—I think that’s just the way it is.

GI: Was it hard to let go and allow someone else to use your characters?

Itagaki: I respect the people who are in the movie business, and they have experience doing what they do. Once again, I just wanted to make sure that it was something that wouldn’t disappoint the fans, and that was the only place that I had input. If western audiences haven’t had a chance to see it yet, I would be interested to see what they thought when it comes out. [The film will be released in the United States this June] Our art director did see the movie, and he said, “It’s not bad for what it is.” He likes movies.