Platinum’s Hideki Kamiya Criticizes AAA Game Design, People Can Be Tricked

Speaking to VGC, Legendary Game Director Hideki Kamiya and Platinum Games Boss Atsushi Inaba had a lot of enlightening things to say. We got updates regarding Hideki Kamiya’s next project “Sol Cresta” which is an upcoming Arcade Shooter by Platinum Games and a passion project for Kamiya, as well as some new “info” about when we can see Bayonetta 3.

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Throughout the interview, Kamiya-san and Inaba-san discussed a lot of things, like how certain projects came to be and what it was like working under Covid restrictions for a year now. One of the most interesting excerpts from the interview however comes from Kamiya-san when asked what it was like to work on a smaller project instead of the usual larger-scale AAA titles like Astral Chain and Bayonetta, to which Kamiya-san replied,

“Even though the scope and scale of the project is relatively smaller, it doesn’t necessarily mean you get to relax – especially with the shooting genre. With your average triple-A games you can use cut-scenes and graphics as sort of decorative parts you can use to boost the game”

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As someone who has played a handful of arcade games, I also have to agree with Kamiya-san here. Arcade games are simple concepts and balancing fun and difficulty in a game like that where the game remains addicting but also challenging can be a very hard mark to hit.

Kamiya further talks about AAA games, saying that,
“It may sound a little grimy, but with triple-A games to a certain extent you can fool people with pretty graphics, huge maps and a ton of levels… you have that ‘triple-A feel’ that you can almost trick people with.” He continues, clarifying that, “Not that anyone’s trying to trick people, but sometimes that’s something that can be done when you’re working on a larger, more expensive title.”

While AAA games can’t be generalized into a single category, what Kamiya-san brings up is certainly a very interesting topic. Especially as we are seeing the rise of many high-quality exclusives that put a majority of focus and marketing on their visuals and cinematic quality instead of pure gameplay. 

Hideki Kamiya has had a storied career up to this point working on some of the most influential games of the past few generations. Starting off with making Resident Evil 2 for the PS1, and breaking into the mainstream industry with Devil May Cry, a game that shaped the Action genre as a whole for years to come and made way for pretty much every single action game made since then.

In the interview, Kamiya-san also talked about the recent trend of hiking price of older titles and why publishers should work on preserving older games, the full interview with VGC can be found here.