Studio Profile
The Ninja Gaiden and Nioh developer enters an exciting new era
A new era dawns for Nioh and Ninja Gaiden studio Team Ninja
The advent of a new console generation represents a beginning and an ending. With the release of Nioh: Complete Edition earlier this year, Team Ninja marked PS5’s birth by bidding farewell to the series that has defined its recent past. Franchise director Fumihiko Yasuda has previously said that
Nioh’s story is over, but he’s keen to clarify that he doesn’t necessarily mean for good. “The Nioh team will continue to support the games through updates, but after that the team will take on the challenge of developing other new titles,” he tells us. “I don’t know when it will be, but I want to utilise the experience the team gains from these new titles in order to create a sequel that will surpass both Nioh and Nioh 2.”
For now, however, it’s time to move on. To quote Kenshin Himura, protagonist of Nobuhiro Watsuki’s manga Rurouni Kenshin, “New eras don’t come about because of swords, they’re created by the people who wield them.” The wielders, in this case, are Yasuda and Yosuke Hayashi, studio president and co-director of the
Nioh series, and they’re accustomed to fresh starts. After all, this was a studio that lost its sensei more than a decade ago, when founder Tomonobu Itagaki departed, having filed a lawsuit against publisher Tecmo for withheld bonuses. Several Team Ninja staff left with him, though plenty of veterans remain, including Hayashi (if ‘veteran’ is the right word for a 42-year-old who could pass for ten years younger), who was in his mid-20s when Itagaki made him project lead on
Ninja Gaiden Black in 2005.
“Many very skilled staff that have been working at Team Ninja since the studio was founded are currently leading development of titles,” Hayashi says. “A lot of talented new members join the team every year and get to work alongside these veterans. As a result, the composition of the team continues to change.” Now, at around 200 staff, the studio has “over three” development teams working at the same time. In the past, the staff count was about half that number, and the growth has had a positive effect on dynamics throughout the company. “Currently, each team is able to motivate the others in order to allow each title to achieve their true potential. I feel the overall strength of each team is dramatically increasing as a result.”
Team Ninja is in a good place, then, still growing and learning as it celebrates its 26th anniversary. The studio was founded at the beginning of 1995 with the specific purpose of developing the home versions of the Itagakidirected
Dead Or Alive arcade games, and this popular series of fighting games is still going strong to this day. But is it more of a challenge to keep innovating within the genre nowadays? “In order to utilise the know-how we accumulated from Dead Or Alive, we developed the Ninja Gaiden series, and in order to utilise the knowhow we gathered from that series we developed Nioh,” Hayashi begins. “Instead of putting all of our efforts into one genre, I think it’s vital for a game development studio to utilise your knowledge and experience by boldly taking on the challenge of developing a title in a genre that will make full use of your skills. If we are able to find a way to utilise the knowledge and experience we gained from developing Nioh in a fighting game, I would like to try challenging our team to create a very innovative fighting game.”
If Dead Or Alive laid the foundations for the studio’s subsequent growth – and continues to be its most reliable seller – it’s arguably Team Ninja’s revival of Tecmo’s Ninja Gaiden for which it’s become best known. Hayashi, a devotee of games since the Famicom era, has played a crucial role in its development over the years, though he says the studio didn’t draw much inspiration from the side-scrolling original when developing the 2004 Xbox game that rebooted and reinvigorated the series. Again, he says, it was about making best use of its acquired knowledge, this time from the Dead Or Alive games, to develop a new 3D action game. “We set out to make such a title and utilised one of our Tecmo IP, specifically the
“I WANT TO UTILISE THE EXPERIENCE
IN ORDER TO CREATE A SEQUEL THAT
WILL SURPASS BOTH NIOH AND NIOH 2”
Ninja Gaiden series, as we determined it would be the best fit,” he explains. “In regards to the shift from 2D to 3D, we felt that each type of action game required completely different elements, so we made an effort to not focus on incorporating elements from the 2D Ninja Gaiden titles when we developed the 3D titles.”
Critical acclaim followed, yet commercial success didn’t; an Xbox exclusive at the time, it sold reasonably in the west, but poorly in Japan, where Microsoft’s console continued to struggle for traction. There was a degree of inevitability about its eventual arrival on PS3, in the form of 2007’s Ninja Gaiden Sigma, by which time development of Ninja Gaiden II was well under way. At the time, Tecmo was in trouble, yet Microsoft – recognising it had something special on its hands – stepped in. “It was difficult for Tecmo to develop and release large-scale titles on [its] own,” Hayashi says. “Thanks to all of the support we received from Microsoft, we were able to safely develop the title. We are very grateful for all of the help we received.”
If the first game was brutally tough in places, the sequel – perhaps reflecting the challenges faced by the development team – ramped up the challenge still further. (Few players will forget the giant armadillo boss that detonates without warning when you deliver the killing blow; only by blocking can you withstand the devastating explosion that follows.) Beyond its focus on combat, a firm – only occasionally unfair – challenge is one element that unites Team Ninja’s games. Is that, we ask Yasuda, what sets the studio apart? “Our goal isn’t to make the games overly difficult, but instead to give the player an experience that requires them to proceed
through the game through a process of trial and error and ultimately achieve a sense of satisfaction from overcoming the challenge,” he explains. “I think this, in particular, is one of the most important aspects of our game design philosophy.”
There’s more to it than that, of course. From Ninja Gaiden to Nioh 2, there’s a throughline of responsive controls and finely-tuned enemy intelligence that also defines the studio’s work. The trick, Yasuda says, is in balancing them all, which he says “makes for a very fair experience for the player when all of these aspects come together.” A consistently high framerate is just as important as detailed graphics, then, which is why the studio’s programmers lead the development process. “They have a realistic perspective of what is needed in order to implement all of the features the project requires,” he says. “The game designers work with the programmers during the phase where everything needs to be placed in order to put together the game’s overall design. Our development style is to work on implementing all of the necessary features and content, and continuously check the balances and adjustments made to the game. We ensure that every member of the team periodically tests out the game, and the director selects different points from all of the feedback we receive during this process and prioritises them based on their importance. This is the general flow for our development process that we have come to utilise over the years.”
If it’s a well-oiled machine now, Yasuda recognises the studio still has room for improvement. “I would like to improve the accessibility of the tutorials in our titles moving forward,” he says. And it’s fair to say that the first Ninja Gaiden without Itagaki at the helm failed to live up to both the series’ and its makers’ reputation. For 2012’s Ninja Gaiden 3, Team Ninja shifted tack, bolting on an overwrought story while stripping back the challenge and mechanical depth for which the series had become renowned, seemingly in the hope of making it more accessible to a broader audience. Yet, as with previous entries, it tinkered with the formula for another version, listening to feedback and responding with Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge later the same year. If the result was an improvement, it still fell short of greatness. Yet it was far superior to 2014’s disastrous Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z, still a running joke around these parts. (The studio’s standing was tarnished only a little by association; it merely contributed “additional work”, with now-defunct Canadian studio Spark Unlimited having taken the helm.)
Regardless, there remains a great deal of affection for the series, enough that a new entry would surely be welcomed with open arms. And with development on Nioh winding down, Hayashi suggests it’s time for a comeback. “I would definitely like to consider [making] a new Ninja Gaiden title by utilising the experience and know-how our team has accumulated over the years,” he says, while acknowledging the type of game it needs to be. “I think it is vital that we develop a sequel that will please the core fans of the Ninja Gaiden series, while also incorporating recent action game trends.”
With the studio now split across distinct development teams, there will be more to come, too. The decision to split was a pragmatic one: it now has teams that specialise in larger-scale action games such as Nioh, and others that are better equipped to handle mobile and PC games.
“We’ve broken these teams into two categories,” Hayashi says. “Our goal behind this is to allow Team Ninja to continue to thrive now and into the future in the game industry and refine our competitiveness as a studio.” Yasuda offers a few more clues as to what we can expect from the studio in the coming years. “We want to gain even more experience and new knowledge through creating smartphone games and titles with a number of RPG and online elements, and actively pursue new challenges.”
Progress on that particular goal, Yasuda admits, was briefly stalled thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, though just as its games demand the player rise to new and unusual challenges, he
“I WANT TO CONTINUE TO CREATE TITLES THAT ONLY TEAM NINJA CAN PRODUCE, FOR PLAYERS ALL AROUND THE WORLD”
says the studio has quickly adapted to remote working. So what does the future hold? “The foundation for our development process will remain the same as it always has, and I want to continue to create titles that only Team Ninja can produce, for players all around the world,” he says, before dropping a few more tantalising hints. “Our team will take on new genres such as open-world titles, while also actively pursuing collaborations in order to build up the overall experience of our team and reach an even wider audience than ever before. I would also like to consider potential sequels for the Dead Or Alive and Ninja Gaiden series.” Ambitious plans, indeed, and it’s only fitting that he signs off by setting one more lofty target. “My goal is for our team to be recognised as the top action game development studio in the world.” Q