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daisuke and the linda: an adventure in interview form
(tim rogers meets bandai/cyber2connect's daisuke uchiyama)
05192003
As E3 2003 was winding down, as it looked like things couldn't possibly become more or less exciting, Daisuke Uchiyama, producer of the .hack series of games for PlayStation2, was privileged enough to meet me, Tim Rogers, at the meeting room in the Bandai booth. He showed up just as Bandai PR expert and all-around nice person Linda Shannon was presenting Fulbright scholar Chris Kohler with several signed pieces of Bandai memorabilia.
I was sipping a bottle of water when Mr. Uchiyama came in. He was dressed in khakis and a T-shirt you can only get in Japan. In coordination with this year's Japanese fashion tradition, he wore a white sweatband on his right wrist. I beheld his keen fashion sense with wonder, and felt the wind knock halfway out of me. This guy -- he had an aura. It wasn't just the aura of a cool guy, or the aura of sexiness (both of which I'm not ashamed to admit he possessed) -- it was the aura of something I had felt long ago. Like some kind of warrior returned to a battlefield, I was sensing a sensational sensation, and it was the sensation of punk rock. This guy -- he was a punk-rocker, whether he looked like one or not.
For the sake of posterity and his in-progress nonfiction novel on Japanese videogames, Chris Kohler asked Mr. Uchiyama a few questions about .hack. I figured it was only right to let Chris Kohler get his concerns out of the way before I found a way to pop the punkish question that had been nagging me. To keep from busting out some words and maybe embarrassing myself, I videotaped a bit of the interview. You may watch it by clicking here.
I've been told that we here at insert credit lack the time resources to subtitle this video. I must apologize here, for the first and last time. Either way, whether you understand him or not, whether you can see through the, uh, grainy censorship filter my digital camera applies to everything, it's nice to hear someone's voice, isn't it? It lets you know a little something about them. It keeps the words a mystery, yet tells you plenty about the person himself.
Okay, so I'm just too lazy to translate all of this. And I can't hear the audio very well. I could hear it well when I originally heard it, so rather than type up a full script, I'll simply give you a little background.
.hack (that's "Dot-hack") is a massively-multiplayer-role-playing game that you play offline. The story of the game centers on the offline and online relationships of its game-addicted players. In concept alone, without even playing the game, a careful student of games such as I was last year is able to determine that this is a work of brilliance.
While Uchiyama himself no doubt notices the small places where the game does not fully succeed in terms of execution, a mention of the concept and ambition alone -- the story spans four games, a DVD-only animated series from the producers of Evangelion, and a television series I can not stop watching when I'm home in Tokyo -- can make even the most jaded gamer see this team's genius.
Young and not yet an "industry veteran" like your Shigeru Miyamotos and Hideo Kojimas, Uchiyama is one of a young tribe of post-Resident Evil risk-taking game designers that are pulling the perhaps-stagnating Japanese games industry in a new and fresh direction. That his game is an RPG about people playing an RPG always made me wonder what he thought of Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear Solid 2. At the conclusion of Chris Kohler's interview, I found a window to ask him.
He had just presented Chris Kohler with a signed .hack mouse pad. The thing was wrapped in plastic. Uchiyama touched it with his four fingertips.
"Don't use it, please," he said, maybe joking. Then, he repeated his anthem of the last ten minutes: "I should really be going. Sorry for such a short interview."
This is where I saw my window. I had planned out a question to ask him. It was a good one. It was a way to jump in and say something, to get this guy to want to talk to me from the start.
That question is lost to time. I failed at saying whatever it is I'd wanted to say. Instead of saying anything at all, I merely muttered a line of a song:
"Dobu neee-zumi -- mitai ni . . . utsukushiku nari~ta~ii . . ."
("I look like a sewer rat . . . I want to be beautiful.")
Uchiyama looked at me, and said, and I quote:
"Linda Linda."
I flushed red. Had I been singing The Blue Hearts' "Linda Linda" to myself, in the middle of a meeting room containing people I hardly knew? If the situation had turned out as something requiring someone to blame someone else, I'd blame Linda Shannon, for having the first name "Linda."
"You like The Blue Hearts?" he asked me.
"Yeah," I said. I was scrounging through my Nokia laptop bag. In time, I came up with a CD. It was The Blue Hearts Super Tribute, hot off the Japanese CD-presses, bought fresh at the Kinokuniya bookstore in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles. Uchiyama took the CD case and looked it over. He'd planned to buy it, he said.
"That's my friend's band," I said, I think pointing at the band name "LINK" on the track listing.
"Really?"
"Yeah."
"You like punk rock?" Uchiyama asked me.
"I love it."
"Well, I love punk rock, too," he said, pointing his thumb at his chest. This isn't something you often see Japanese people do. Normally, they point their fingers at their noses. Was he being intentional in his chest-pointing when he declared his love of punk rock?
"What bands do you like?"
After a moment of thought, Uchiyama declared, "I still like The Blue Hearts most of all."
"Rock on," I said. I think.
So me and Uchiyama talked a little bit about punk rock. How Japanese punk rock seems to be going downhill these days. Husking Bee can rock it well, we agreed. Japanese punk rock in English is becoming something of a joke. Lyrics do matter. Yeah, it is funny that groups like Softball started out in English and now publish entire albums in Japanese, which you can buy at your typical Tokyo department store.
I told him about my band, and he liked the name: Large Prime Numbers. He asked if he could come to one of our shows, and I told him about how my problem finding a bassist had turned suddenly into a problem finding a guitarist. He laughed at the explanation, which does not need to be recounted here. I then assured him, "It's true," which made him laugh so hard he ended up crouched in the corner of the room. After he fired off a signature on a .hack game disc, I managed to convince Uchiyama to help me make a video. We here at insert credit proudly call it
THE SCOOP OF THE CENTURY.
All other gaming websites can tremble with fear beneath what occurs when you click the above link.
We apologize only that Chris Kohler disrupts the -- shall we say -- "harmony" of the whole scene very slightly. If life were a song, one can put it, Chris Kohler might not have all the lyrics down. Which is okay. Mr. Uchiyama's unexpected enthusiasm more than makes up for it, and vaults him to the top of my list of "Game designers to watch." If this video is any indication, Daisuke Uchiyama will travel far, kill many dragons, and save many princesses named Linda before his career is over.
As a closing, Chris Kohler asked Uchiyama one last question, and I was lucky enough to record it. See here.
Yes, Chris Kohler is asking Uchiyama if he saw Hideo Kojima at E3. Much to our surprise -- we were asking this to nearly everyone, as a joke -- Uchiyama had seen Kojima. In fact, he'd gotten drunk with Kojima, at the Sony party, the night before!
[This author will ignore the possibility that Uchiyama was, perhaps, messing with us]
This prompted me to deliver what might be the greatest quote of E3 2003:
"Yappari Kojima GETto shitanda nee?"
("You really Got Kojima, didn't you?")
During the midst of this tomfoolery, I thought of insert credit, and so I decided to ask Uchiyama a few general questions.
When asked what games he liked at E3, he said he hadn't played anything. In fact, he hadn't played any games seriously since Metal Gear Solid 2 on PlayStation2. He enjoyed the Metal Gear Solid 3 trailer, and that was about it. In fact -- and he told me this confidently -- he kind of doesn't play games at all too much anymore. It's not that he's coming to hate them or anything, he says -- it's just that he finds it hard to play one game for an extended period of time. Now, games are his work. He enjoys making them, probably as much as he used to enjoy playing them. When he was young, he'd play Zelda and Dragon Quest all the time. Now, however, his own games are his life.
"Much like a young novelist, in gaining experience, eventually stops reading the works of his peers, the young game designer plays just enough to learn what he likes. That sort of thing?" I asked him.
"Yeah, pretty much," he said.
After admitting that he, too, finds Metal Gear Solid 2's story a work of postmodern literature, Uchiyama listened to my game proposal -- Punkuest -- and nodded maybe-interestedly. After saying something about my potential as a scenario-writer, he invited me to go out drinking with him when I'm back in Tokyo. I forgot to mention that I've never tasted alcohol. He gave me his business card, and I gave him mine.
Chris Kohler was busy exchanging business cards and other assorted professionalisms with The Linda when the to-go-out-drinking invitation was given. Uchiyama pointed at him.
"You can bring your friend, too."
I need to meet more game producers/designers/artists. They're fun people, from what I've seen so far.
tim rogers shall sing with shinji mikami some time
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