Iwata: One of the topics I’d like to ask you about today is why “PES” became “PES”. Just now, you said quite casually that you were ‘familiar with football’. To me, it seems as though “PES” has grown into a brand that holds a large place among the football games that are released, and that through its process of growth, football games themselves have changed drastically.

I’m interested to know what happened there, what sort of things you overcame, and what led to the establishment of the “PES” series brand that we have today.

Enomoto: According to the producer of “PES”, Shingo Takatsuka4, “The offense and defence in football games are like those in fighting games.” He says, “In short, the difference is that you steal the ball from each other instead of trading punches.”

Enomoto: Yes. He was incredibly skilled at striking that balance. Just as with fighting games, I think it’s the pattern of offense and defence.

Iwata: It’s true that offense and defence are integrated in both football and combat. Things that can cause great damage to your opponent also tend to create holes in your defence. For that reason, how you read each other and what tactics you use becomes key.

Enomoto: Right. Another point is that, in previous football games, structurally, the ball and the athlete stuck together. In other words, when the ball came near the athlete, it would naturally be drawn to the athlete’s feet. Our objective, then, was how to separate the athlete and the ball.

Iwata: Then you’re saying that the first game to separate the athlete and the ball, and to deeply integrate strategy in offense and defence, was “PES”?

Enomoto: Yes, that’s how it started.

That’s really interesting. I’ve never associated football games with fighting games, but if you look at football as a combat sport, reading the other side’s offense and defence really is the same as it would be in a fighting game. ‘If my opponent comes at me this way, I’ll kick it that way’, that sort of thing…

Enomoto: Yes. He was incredibly skilled at striking that balance. Just as with fighting games, I think it’s the pattern of offense and defence.

Iwata: It’s true that offense and defence are integrated in both football and combat. Things that can cause great damage to your opponent also tend to create holes in your defence. For that reason, how you read each other and what tactics you use becomes key.

Enomoto: Right. Another point is that, in previous football games, structurally, the ball and the athlete stuck together. In other words, when the ball came near the athlete, it would naturally be drawn to the athlete’s feet. Our objective, then, was how to separate the athlete and the ball.

Iwata: Then you’re saying that the first game to separate the athlete and the ball, and to deeply integrate strategy in offense and defence, was “PES”?

Enomoto: Yes, that’s how it started.

Iwata: In a football match, you have to have eleven team members moving around. However, in a game, you can only control one athlete directly, so the rest have to be moved by AI. Does that mean the creation of the AI is at the heart of football games?

Enomoto: Yes. Fundamentally, the AI is an absolute necessity. Honestly, I think computer AIs today are still far from their ideal form in all current video games throughout the world.

Iwata:
It’s true that, while the rendering on graphics is now so good they might as well be photographs, AI still has quite a ways to go in comparison.
Enomoto:
That’s why people tell us that it’s more fun to play against other people. Actually, in “PES”, the AI is basically geared towards defence. It’s a football game: if players get sent-off one after another and it turns into a match of 10 against 8, it won’t be football anymore. So first of all, the balance of how to mount an offense without letting them destroy the defence is important.

One other thing that’s important with AIs is the animation of the athletes. We have a motion capture studio at the company, and we’ve taken captures of the development staff’s movements, to use for the motions for the techniques.

Iwata: Really?! That’s incredible. I got the impression that you’d used professional football players’ movements.

Enomoto: We have asked J. League (Japanese football league) members and professionals for help before, but we can’t have them do things that are too dangerous over and over again, and we can’t do retakes the way we’d like to.

Iwata: True. For a professional, their body is their capital: they’ve got to take extremely good care of it.

Iwata: As football games continued to evolve, “PES 2008 – Pro Evolution Soccer”9 was produced for the Wii console. I think it must have been a big challenge to take football games, in which the focus was on the control of the player who had the ball, and think about how to change them.

So “PES 2008” was a new innovation, and I think it created a new trend. What are your thoughts on that, Enomoto-san?

Enomoto: What triggered that was our dissatisfaction with the AI for “PES” at the time. We made a list of all the things you couldn’t do in the previous “PES” games, and made that our new evolutionary form, the one to aim for. That’s where it began.

Iwata: In a sense, it laid down a gauntlet to the conventional “PES”. Even though it was getting better year after year, you must have felt somewhere that, if you didn’t do this, there was a wall you wouldn’t be able to overcome.

Enomoto: Right. With the AI we had then, even if you imagined wanting to get off a pass to an ideal place, there wasn’t a player there.

Iwata: In football games before “PES 2008”, if you fired off a pass into open field, it was very unlikely that an athlete would come running to get it.

Enomoto: Sometimes an AI athlete would be there, just by chance, but it wouldn’t have happened on purpose. It was difficult to tackle the problem with existing controllers, too.

Iwata: And just when you were thinking that, the Wii Remote made its appearance, and you had something that would let you indicate any place you wanted on the screen.

I bet it was probably quite a battle to get your developers to change direction, though. After all, they had their own track records and were used to the old way.

Enomoto: It was very hard. They asked me, “Are you disowning the previous games, then?” But that absolutely was not the case; I thought that the evolution of “PES” might involve a new path, one that broke with convention. It was encountering the Wii input devices that enabled me to imagine it.

Iwata: So, because you felt that you could build a new control system if you had Wii, you thought, “I know this will have a positive influence on the future of ‘PES'”, and “It’s worth a try”.

Enomoto: That’s right.

Iwata: What was your first impression of the Nintendo 3DS system, Enomoto-san?

Enomoto: When I first saw it, I thought, “What in the world is this thing?!” I’d never seen a 3D effect that didn’t involve special glasses, so I was startled; I thought, “Huh? They can really do this?”

As you’d expect, I think sports broadcasts are very well suited to 3D. I think I got a good chance in being able to see how “PES” would look if I recreated it on this.

Iwata: By having that perception of depth, it’s probable that projected images will acquire more of a feeling of space. We were really interested to hear what would happen when we showed this to everyone on the “PES” team.

Enomoto: Before now, when we structured football games, the only way to add a feeling of perspective was to change the size of the shadows. 3D goes beyond that form of expression.

Iwata: Does that mean that, while you were startled, you also immediately felt how well it would work with football games, sensed its appealing elements?

Enomoto: Exactly.

Iwata: When the pictures actually began to move in 3D, what sort of response did you and the people on your team feel?

Enomoto: The truth is, there was a blind spot: originally, in order to make the game system for “PES” perform smoother, we hadn’t drawn the turf on the pitch to be seen on a 3D Screen. Adjusting that for the Nintendo 3DS system was quite a challenge.

Iwata: You mean, you needed power in places you hadn’t expected. To begin with, moving 22 players on a portable game device must have been quite a challenge.

Enomoto: Right. After we overcame that, it started to look really good.

Iwata: When you saw it in 3D and now could sense depth, was there something that you, the people making the game, found interesting?

Enomoto: In this game, you can enjoy 3D football from five perspectives, and you can also set it to a first-person perspective, which is very close to the athletes’ line of sight.

It feels as though you’re standing on the field; I think the sense of tension you’re able to feel around you is something the 3D made possible.

Iwata: So you have the usual perspective, where you have a bird’s-eye view of the whole game, but as a new challenge, on Nintendo 3DS, there’s also a perspective where you yourself are on the field.

Enomoto: That’s correct. From that first-person perspective, when the athletes clash on the field, it feels far more real than it ever has before. Football is a fierce sport, you know; bodies collide.

Of course, to be honest, when we put in a first-person perspective camera, to make use of the 3D, effects we hadn’t seen coming were produced as a result.

Iwata: When you changed the location of the camera and expressed the action that way, it changed the way you saw things, even the things you’d made in the usual way.

Enomoto: Yes. It was our first experience making games on Nintendo 3DS, so I think there were parts that we didn’t understand.

Iwata: I’m sure there are a lot of discoveries being made one after another at this point, just as there were when people started developing with the polygon system.

Nintendo 3DS is still right at the starting line; as it becomes popular as a platform, I think more things will become possible in the process.

Enomoto: I think that, just as polygons developed, by continuing to make games for Nintendo 3DS, we’ll begin to see new possibilities.

Iwata: This is something to really think about, more so when making series: it’s important to live up to regular players’ expectations, but on the other hand, that narrows the range, and it may make it harder for new players to get in. The more of a track record a series acquires, the bigger that concern becomes. How did you strike a balance for “PES” on Nintendo 3DS?

Enomoto: First, “PES” is a skill-based game. That’s one of the reasons our dedicated fans stick with us, but it does create a difference in ability between them and first-time players.

On Nintendo 3DS, though, both sides can enjoy playing with completely different perspectives and sensations that they’ve never experienced before. I think this will lessen the importance of skills.

Iwata: So you made the game with two ways to play: one that would utilise the skills of returning players, and one that was only possible because of the new Nintendo 3DS.

Enomoto: That’s right. That really is a topic of concern when making a sequel. It’s something we’re constantly discussing at the company: how do you make both extremities coexist?

Iwata: In a sense, watching things from a slightly removed position, the way you do, just may become one of the most important roles.

Enomoto: The people creating the game hands-on are seeing how important the thing they’re making at present really is, but someone needs to look farther than that. Unless there’s a person whose job is to think, “The present exists for the sake of the future”, there’ll be trouble every year.

Iwata: In some cases, a certain decision one year can be the first step towards producing amazing results the next year, or perhaps the year after that.

Enomoto: That’s right. The more of an expert you become, the less you want to change.

Iwata: I think that’s the same with creators and players alike. People are very reluctant to lose what they’ve gained. On the other hand, unless you deny some part of what you’re doing now, you’ll never produce new things, and you’ll never surprise the players. It’s a struggle every time.

Enomoto: It’s a question of how to dispel anxiety, really. When I want to try something new, I experiment with several staff members and make sure I get rid of their uneasiness.

Iwata: In order to get rid of uneasiness, you have to show them proof.

Enomoto: Yes. If I do that, no one will be able to deny it. If I don’t, there’s sure to be opposition, making it hard to persuade more than 100 people.

Iwata: In general, it’s normal for a successful team to have an aversion to change. That’s what makes it so hard to keep changing. But if you don’t keep changing, you won’t be able to express everything that happens in a stadium, or get closer to real football, which is itself changing from moment to moment, and you won’t be able to create more football game players. I think that conviction is what has put your work where it is today.

Iwata: So when everyone plays the game you’ve created, you’d like them to feel the same surprise you felt when you first saw the Nintendo 3DS system.

Enomoto: Right. By and large, “PES” fans tend to really love football, and many of them actually play themselves. We created the game in such a way that even those fans would be able to experience new things when playing it. First of all, then, I’d love for them to see it.

For the new players, I think there have conventionally been places that made them feel the operation skills required for football games were too difficult. This time, though, we’ve put in a competition function that utilises StreetPass. So they can play a lot on their own, strengthen their team, and enjoy StreetPass matches.

Iwata: Players who aren’t good at playing against other people can choose to make their team stronger on their own, then take on other people via StreetPass. By the way, which do the long-term “PES” fans do more, play alone or against other people?

Enomoto: I think more of them play alone. For example, with other multiplayer or online games, the main goal is to play for your own satisfaction, where there are no clear winners or losers. Unlike other games, when you play against people in football games there will be a winner and a loser whether you like it or not.

Iwata: In other games, you’ve concentrated on a certain part and are satisfied with it, so you may not mind letting other people have other victories, but in “PES”, the only index of evaluation is whether you’ve won or lost.

Enomoto: That’s right. People who aren’t good at playing against other people have a hard time winning. That’s why we prepared another way of playing; where you can strengthen your team by playing against the computer, then win in StreetPass.

Iwata: You mean that you’ve opened the door in a different way for people who love football but haven’t played football games before, and are waiting for them to come in.

Enomoto: Even as we strive for the ultimate football game, we keep trying new ways to get football fans interested in playing our game.

Iwata: It seems contradictory to say that you want people who’ve mastered “PES” to be even more satisfied with this, and also that you want to attract new players. But both really can be done.

Enomoto: That’s right. In that sense, I think diversity is really important. I thought we had to have both realism and diversity.

Iwata: Only, if you made it truly “real”, normal people wouldn’t be able to play anymore.

Enomoto: Well, that’s very true. For example, if “real” means “matches in football games will actually last more than 90 minutes”, then it’s not possible. (laughs)

Iwata: No one would be able to concentrate that long. (laughs) That’s why video games need to make players feel reality, but at the same time include elements that let them think “Hey, I’m awesome!” Adjusting things so that the impression players get from a game match is comparable to that from a 90-minute football match is really that part that requires techniques from masters of the craft.

Enomoto: It really does. There’s no point in creating a game that only pro football players can play.

Iwata: On the other hand, if pro football athletes tell you, “This isn’t football”, you’ve lost.

Enomoto: Right. I still find it very encouraging that people who play football professionally play “PES”.

Iwata: With us working together on Nintendo 3DS, we’d like to offer a brand new form of excitement to both first-time players and fans of the series. So we don’t want people to miss out on this experience, right? Thank you very much for your time today.

Enomoto: Thank you.

Full interview here