The future’s owl-shaped

Hidetaka ‘Swery’ Suehiro opens the door for Deadly Premonition 2

CHANCES AREN’T THINGS YOU CAN SEARCH FOR. THEY JUST POP UP.

07Cult Japanese writer and videogame director Swery – real name Hidetaka Suehiro – has made a career out of putting new, creative ideas ahead of execution. His love it/hate it PlayStation 3 classic Deadly Premonition has divided gamers since release (if you haven’t played it, you should).

“The world always needs new things,” says Swery as we discuss his new studio (White Owls), game design, and the rise of VR. “‘Ideas’ bridge the gap between the technology and the production,” he continues. “Some ideas can be traditional, and others revolutionary. But I don’t think things will be getting any harder than they’ve always been. The one thing I can say is: with the evolution of AI, computers may begin to take over the job of producing ‘mundane ideas’ and ‘the sort of ideas that the masses seek.’ Therefore, it’s important that we treasure ‘ideas with a human dimension,’ the kind that AI would never be able to think up.”

His secret project is a VR game, but for Swery just being in VR doesn’t make it ‘new’. “I feel like the VR experiences that simply let you experience a small idea in a realistic way or just give you a 360-degree view of something that was originally on a flat screen are an evolution of expression and experience, but still have yet to fully utilise the true power of VR.”

Swery explains: “In Japan a certain cell phone company created this robot named Pepper. When I first heard about how the robot works, I thought: “Wow, the age of robots is finally here!” It made me so excited. But in the end, Pepper became nothing more than a ‘customer-attracting panda’ who sits in restaurants and phone stores and lets curious customers take pictures of him. I think it turned out this way because ideas and monetisation still have yet to catch up with the technology, and I feel the same way about VR.”

COFFEE MAKER

We can expect news on White Owl’s first games very soon, but in the meantime we need to know, will there be a Deadly Premonition 2? “I’m prepared to return to that town and that world whenever the chance arises. But chances aren’t things you can search for. They just pop up randomly in your morning coffee.” Follow Swery at whiteowls.co.jp for future news and releases.