Welcome to 2025!
From DiG’s desk—and garden, since I often write these walking outside.
2024 was a year of growth and momentum, laying the foundation for what’s ahead. We built strong teams and fast-tracked our shift to true indie development. Now, as we dive into 2025, the excitement is undeniable.
We want to ship three tiny games in 2025—a challenge, but one we’re ready to tackle. I’ve never heard of anyone doing what we are. I’ll take that as a greenlight!
This newsletter drops on January 1st, so I’ll spare you a design deep dive. Here’s a fun read instead!
How Do Japanese and Western Developers Design Differently?
In a 2017 interview, Jordan Amaro, a designer who began his career at Ubisoft but spent most of his professional life in major Japanese studios like Konami and Capcom, and who now works at Nintendo, highlights some key contrasts:
There are several Japanese approaches. […] When I look at the way game design was done at Kojima Productions, the way it’s done at Capcom and Nintendo, the way I feel it’s being done at Platinum Games or From Software, I feel there’s a lot more importance and focus given to game mechanics over world, setting, story, message […]
I’m stereotyping, but in the West, scope, visuals, and features are the main attraction. For example, when we used to have Kojima Productions L.A.—we had an office in Los Angeles—we would get proposals for new games, pitches. It always started with: ‘This is the world you’re in. This is the experience I’m going to give you.’ And gameplay was relegated to page 5 or 6 or 10. It was always about who you’re playing, who is the character, what’s going on, but not the ‘how,’ how am I playing this?
In Japan, a pitch is a page, maybe two. The first page you write what the game is about and how you play it. And the second page, maybe you need an illustration. We don’t care about who, or what the story is, what the game world is, all of this doesn’t really matter.
Amaro mentions that Portal exemplifies a more Japanese design approach. I agree. It’s a game about player agency: what the player does, their mechanical interactions, and how they enact their will upon the world.
Player Agency First
In Japan, it’s all about what happens when you take the controller in your hands.
A looser concept, the one-page pitch, also frees the game to be what it wants to be. It lets you discover its identity as you build it, until the game sings to you.
What really matters the most is the form: what I can do as an agent, meaning somebody who acts and produces an effect in the context of a game, and understanding how the game reacts, and how all this can be interesting. There’s a focus on that.
Other companies will, from the start, be thinking about: How will people perceive this? What are the aesthetics of the game? What’s the world, who is the character, is there a story, what is that story? How do we make that into a product?
Interestingly enough, Ubisoft’s Three Cs model—camera, character, and controls—follows this mechanics-first idea closely. Stripped of their usual game fluff, these elements are foundational for player agency.
Who to Design For?
Amaro also touches on a more controversial aspect of Japanese design philosophy:
In Japan, there’s a sense of, ‘We’re making this thing for you, and this is how we think this thing is better enjoyed.’
This is why, in Splatoon, the maps rotate every couple of hours. And the modes change. ‘I bought this game. Why can’t I just enjoy this game the way I want?’ That’s not how we think here. Yes, you did buy the game. But we made this game. And we’re pretty confident about how this game should be enjoyed. If you stick with us, and if you get past your initial resistance, you’re going to have the time of your life with this game. You’re really going to love it.
You think you know what you want. But we know what you will want once you understand it.
There has to be some effort from the player to play ball with the developer, just like in a restaurant where there is a course menu. You enter the restaurant, and this is the course today. It’s displayed outside the restaurant. When you enter the restaurant, you know what you’re going to eat. Once you’re inside, if you want to eat something different, that’s not how it works.
How do we square that with the product iteration > user feedback > product iteration loop?
Perhaps the answer lies in maintaining a clear vision of the core idea—believing in its worth while refining the edges that detract, rather than compromise, its essence.
It reminds me of this quote from Arctic Eggs:
Pandering resembles erosion: grand ideas, like towering mountains, erode into accessible but diminished forms.
Initially, these ideas—pure and monumental—become mountains through expression, enabling others to perceive them.
Yet, as demands for broader accessibility grow, like relentless rain, they sculpt the peaks into gentler hills and, eventually, valleys and canyons.
This erosion, while making the mountains more accessible, strips away the beautifully rigid peaks.
At the canyon’s base, the view spans wide, offering superficial understanding without deeper engagement.
Avoid Comparisons
When a design discussion takes place, you usually don’t refer to other developers’ games. You talk about your game, and in very specific contexts and situations.
In Japan, the pride about the craft is very high.
You almost never hear another game being mentioned, whether it is a Japanese game or a Western game, during any design discussions.
That’s contrary to the West. When I was in the West, I heard about other games on a weekly or daily basis.
It’s easy to fall into derivative work if you’re always referencing someone else’s art.
But that’s what humans do—we’re always copying each other, consciously or not. You’re a mixed hotpot of ideas, trying to catch the (hopefully) best ones.
I refer to others’ work as the map of what’s explored. I read the map to avoid what probably doesn’t work for my design.
Thinking in negatives is efficient (a topic for a coming-soon post).
Further Amaro Reading
Amaro did a Q&A with GMTK’s Mark Brown. There’s an idea applicable beyond level design:
Everybody has different ways of working. There is no method, find the one that suits you, it will be the right one.
The quality and speed of what is produced is the only criteria.
If stuck, go back to the basics: what are my actions, what effects do they carry, how does the game react through the elements I’ve picked for this sequence? And in the middle of this: what is an interesting situation to play? Once you implement that situation (the problem to solve), then it’s only a matter of presenting it well to the player.
The Q&A, from 7+ years ago, ends with a prediction:
What will game design look like in the future?
A lot more bad games will get made.
I’d love to hear your thoughts! Share them on Discord.
Cheers to a wonderful 2025!
DiG
