OR: Diving a bit back into the past here, for both Working Designs and then GAIJINWORKS, y’all have always done creative advertising. It’s been a hallmark. Looking at Exile: Wicked Phenomenon, a photograph of a hand-crafted diorama of the final boss and –I think Sadler- was combined with time exposure smoke effects, and [was] not only just used as the main advertisement for the game but for the game’s cover art. It was pretty revolutionary for 1993 –
VI: I copied it.
*laughter*
That’s from Masaya – there’s a company called Masaya NCS in Japan – I mean, I didn’t copy that exact thing, but that technique, that diorama technique, they were doing that in Japanese magazines at the time. And I got the Japanese magazines in the mail, and so I was super impressed with that sort of diorama look and I wanted to take [it] to an extreme. Because all the Japanese dioramas were always kind of light and fluffy and ‘Heeeey, yeah, we all loooove each other! There’s flowers!’ and I wanted to do something dark and creepy, and it turned out awesome.
The guy that did that actually did the practical effects, [did the] worm things for Tremors [II]. [The] Tremors movie, those worm things that come out of the ground? When they’re small, he did those. So he had some special effects experience, and he was actually one of our voice actors we used for Working Designs. And so he said ‘Yeah, I’ll give it a shot’. He did a fantastic job. That ad, when we got a survey back from the magazine, where they rated the ads in the magazine, that was listed as the most-remembered ad from the magazine.
OR: Do you still have the diorama?
VI: I don’t. No, no, it was giant. It was three by three, three foot by three foot. So it was too much to store. It’s one of those things [where] I wish I still had it now, but at the time, I was ‘I don’t know where to store that’. *laughs* You know, it’s like, ‘What are we going to do with that?’ So, honestly, I don’t even know where it is. Keith [Lack] might still have it, the guy that made it. I don’t know who has it.
OR: That’s what you did back in ‘93. Nowadays, with Summon Night 5, it’s the first time in recent memory that I can recall a game company saying ‘Tell you what, why don’t y’all help set the price for this unreleased game by seeing how many times you retweet our advertisement?’
VI: Yeah, ‘cause we really need exposure. We’re still really small and you can’t believe how many people will e-mail still -we get emails all the time- [and be] like, ‘Oh, I missed that pre-sale program, I didn’t know you guys were the new version of Working Designs, I had no idea you were there, blah blah blah’. So we needed to get the awareness up, and it’s like well, ‘how can we do that and still reward the fans at the same time?’ And so I was like, ‘we’ll just let them set the price.’ And people were like ‘Well, that’s really a kinda cynical thing to do, you obviously are going to do it for 29.95, and that’s the price you want, and you’re just, you’re just making people retweet for nothing.’
It’s like ‘No! Really, if people tweet enough to get it to $28.95, we will release it for $28.95.’ It finished at $30.99, $30.95, or whatever it is. That’s kind of a crappy retail price. *laughs* I mean, if we really intend to not go by what the outcome was, we would have said ‘You know, we’ll give you a dollar off more. We’re going to do it for 29.95. No! We’re going to release it for what people voted it for. They voted for $30.99, [so] that’s what we’ll put it up for.’
So it wasn’t a scheme just to get retweets with no sort of real outcome. The outcome’s real. We’re stuck at kind [of] a not good price point. It’s kinda a weird price. People are like ‘What the heck? Why is it 30.99/30.95?’ But that’s what people voted for! That’s what they said they wanted, that’s the number of retweets we got. That’s the price we’re putting [it] out [for]. We’ll probably do it again. And hopefully we’ll have more awareness by that point so we can get the price even lower.
OR: So, should we expect something like this for Class Of Heroes 3?
VI: I’d like to, we’ll see, yeah. Absolutely. Once we get these games shipped -that’s the trial too, getting the physical stuff done, hopefully that will be resolved shortly- once we get those shipped, we should be doing the poll for the physical version of Class Of Heroes 3 and if we can get the numbers we need for that, we will be doing a physical version as well [of that].
OR: Do you have a release date for Summon Night 5 yet?
VI: We wanted it [to be] this month [OR Note: This interview took place in November], but we got hung up for over three weeks with a technical issue that had nothing to do with the game. It held it up to the point where no, it’s not coming out – the physical version isn’t coming out until the earliest at the end of December – but we’re hoping to get the digital version approved and on the [PlayStation Network] Store – because everyone who bought the physical version got a digital copy – so we can at least send the digital copies out so you can at least play the digital copies and wait for the physical copy to show up. That’s the plan.
OR: Summon Night 5, much like Class Of Heroes 2, had a physical release as well as a digital release. The physical release was capped at exactly the number of copies that were pre-sold through the GAIJINWORKS website. After which, it was only available on the PlayStation Network. Why did GAIJINWORKS decide to go ahead and create physical works of this physical game for the PSP?
VI: Because fans wanted it! I wanted it too! I wanted to have a physical copy to stick on my shelf. Digital’s okay for convenience, but I’m still [a] hardcore collector. I want a physical copy of the games that I play. I can count on one hand the number of digital games I’ve personally bought on consoles. Steam’s a different matter.
But for consoles, yeah, I want physical copies. I want to hold them in my hand, I want the manual, I want to feel the manual, I want pack-ins, I want a poster, I want all the cool stuff that makes getting that new game an experience. Opening it up. And Summon Night 5 – the physical version – is next level stuff too, because when people get that, there’s one thing that we haven’t shown or talked about that a lot of people will be freaked out [about] when it shows up, they’ll be excited about [it].
OR: Any chance you can give us a tease on what it is?
VI: No. *laughs* No, nooooo, noooo. I want this to be a total surprise when it shows up. People are going to be, I think, really impressed. I shouldn’t talk it up too much, because maybe they’ll be like ‘That sucks’, but it’s something that I don’t think any other publisher has done.
Actually, there’s two things -nah, I’m not gonna tell you.
There’s two things with the game that no other publisher to my knowledge has done – ever. And so once they get the game, especially – one will be obvious without opening the game – and the other one, you’ll have to open the game package to see what it is. And so, people who are collecting/not opening will not be able to see what the second thing is. *laughs*
But it’s cool. I think people will dig it. And I’m pretty sure that other publishers will copy it once they see what we’ve done.
OR: This game is being released digitally for the Vita –
VI: Yes. Well, it’s [for the] Vita through the PSP compatibility.
OR: Is there any chance we can see a physical copy of come out for the Vita?
VI: No, because [it’s] PSP emulation so you can’t put it on a cartridge. I don’t think there’s a way – the emulation is totally separate from the Vita mode, and I think the cartridge only works in Vita mode. So I don’t think it’s possible, technically.
More on Class of Heroes 3 and Monkeypaw Games on Page 3
