Thread by @frozenpandaman

At Hisashi Nogami's GDC session! "'Splatoon' and 'Splatoon 2': How to Invent a Stylish Franchise with Global Appeal." Starts in 15 minutes. Will be livetweeting a bit. #GDC18

Starting now!

Introduced himself as Hisashi Nogami for the Squid Research Lab, then re-introduced himself as from Nintendo. Nogami joined Nintendo in 1994 and worked as artist for the NES and Yoshi's Island.

After discussing ideas for half a year, his team came up with a prototype: cubes that could shoot black and white ink, which came to be known as tofu. Linking together multiple Wii Us, they held team battles and tried to cover as much of the ground with their team's ink.

This became the game's core mechanic. They explored ways to leverage the Wii U's unique features like motion control and the GamePad. While his team didn't set out to create a shooting game from the start, it involved into this.

With a new world, you need new characters. The characters in Splatoon are squids that can transform into humans. People are often surprised when hesring this, so why is this?

The first prototype was with rabbits. They're both black and white, and also highly territorial. Their neutral colors would also contrast well with bright ink colors. But why would they shoot or hide in ink? There was a disconnect between the idea and mechanics.

To help solidify direction, Mr. Sakaguchi helped identify the core mechanics with shooting, swimming in ink, etc. There were all sorts of character design ideas. But when they discovered a core idea of "moving quickly through ink as swimming," the idea of a squid stood out.

The E3 2014 trailer was put together by Mr. Amano which showed off the key points of the game: gameplay, sound, artstyle. After this, individual team members proposed their own ideas to help flesh our the world, and it began to take shape. Weapons, fashion, graffiti...

Ideas such as popular music that squid kids listen to during battle helped prop up the world, and made it more convincing by creating content not directly related to the game's core concepts.

To give an analogy: they created a container, then tossed balls into it, filling it up. You may think this is unique to Splatoon, but Nintendo has long relied on this sort of method.

There were a number of challenges to prepare it for release as a new IP. How popular would it be? etc. Releasing stages, weapons, modes, as time went on would help people become intricately familiar with all parts. Balance adjustments were also key to keeping players engaged.

Here is data following launch from players around the world. Games were released 2 years apart but shown together on the graph. There's also a slide showing player bumps during Splatfests that I missed. 😁

They hope Splatfests help flesh our the world and make family and friends engage in "seriously silly" debates, such as Ketchup vs. Mayo.

The Switch's core "mobile console" idea fit Splatoon's concept well, but it came w/challenges, e.g. to adapt the game to this new hardware. One hurdle was screen layout, another was player base (they didn't know how Switch would sell).

They wanted to curate an experience for both new and veteran players with Splatoon 2.

Still taking notes & pics but putting this on pause for now... will catch up when the talk ends! Typing fast on mobile is hard!

I'm back! (albeit at a bit slower pace)

Re: the last slide/picture, they believe the value of the game came, at least in part, from adapting to continuously-changing content. So this continued in Splatoon 2 as well.

The single player campaign, or "Hero Mode," serves as a training mode for new players to help them to become familiar with controls, but also to delve into the world and helps them learn and love the characters. Salmon Run helped continue this in a new way in Splatoon 2 as well.

Multiplayer, single player, and Salmon Run are separate but part of the same game cycle: skills learned in each mode will transfer and rewards from one can be used in others. The young squid who comes to the city to play in Turf War battles also has a part time job (Salmon Run)…

...and is secretly the hero in single player as well. This helps players feel the game revolves around them and is *their* experience. They aim for Splatoon to be not just a game one plays to completion, once, but a dyanamic experience that grows and changes over time.

They hope people think of the two games as parts of a connected whole. Two years passed in our real world, so this is reflected in the Splatoon world as well. Just as IRL, the fashion and music trends have changed, etc.

In the Octo Expansion, Nogami says they will explore things they didn't have time/ability to do the 1st time around—Octolings will join the Inkling world! It is designed for the player who wants to explore the world on an even deeper level.

And of course free updates to multiplayer will still continue.

They hadn't originally planned on changing the game so much over time, but were driven to do so by the overwhelming response & support from fans. For example, fans latched on to Squid Sisters way more than imagined!

There's tons of fanart, and 5k+ people came to live Squid Sisters concert last month. It may seem a bit strange, but as developers, this made them so happy seeing this success. It was like kids they raised grow up and succeed in the world on their own.

Time passing in our world passed in the Splatoon world as well, and player feedback was taken into account, e.g. the influence of the final Splatoon 1 Splatfest on the Splatoon 2 story. The world & characters, like Off The Hook, will also continue to evolve and expand.

Nogami says he enjoyed playing games himself as a kid, but some of his best memories are from discussing games and game worlds with friends. In his mind, fanart and attending events go hand-in-hand with enjoying games like this.

The Splatoon Koshien tournament held in 9 locations across Japan saw many teams of gamers, but also children, and even families. One team was four moms, while another had a grandmother-mother-daughter trio. They were so happy to see this range of ages and social backgrounds.

Recently, there have been international tournaments as well, such as in the European Championship, which was held across 9 countries. There are also many grassroots tournaments which are great to see.

As a developer, Nogami says there is nothing more rewarding than seeing people of ALL sorts playing their game. It's an honor to hear that people think it has the ability to be played competitively; his hands still sweat when he sees high level players in such intense battles!

For Nogami and the Splatoon team, their goal is to allow as many people as possible from across the world to enjoy the game. They want to do everything they can to enable this.

Nogami grew up surrounded by and, in part, raised by, the culture around games. He believes that he himself will keep being influenced by games as a whole, of all sorts, including games that WE may have made or will go on to make!l.

Nogami's hope is to continue creating both inspiring videogames and the experiences that extend beyond them, and to show people how great this medium can be.

Thank you so much.

He then signed game copies, etc. & took pics with fans! I was too excited and forgot to ask him to do the "2" or "Octo" poses w/ me, but was still amazing to meet him & say how much the game means to me. 😁 Here's @hasegaw (IkaLog creator) with him after the talk, too.

The end!

(I see @Termina64 in this pic :P )

I got Splatoon 2 digitally (couldn't really get a physical NA copy right at release while in Japan this summer…) but I brought along my Splatoon 1 box which he doodled a squid on. 😊😁 Yay!!

Also – the full talk should be available on the GDC Vault at some point soon!

oh god, typo in the first real tweet. *from, not for, lol. I apologize for any weird phrasing or typos throughout the rest of this, too – I was having to take notes & tweet quickly! 😵