One of the creatures in 'Seaman.' Image: Sega
Japan and eccentric video game developers go together like Japan and eccentric everything, but typically the conversation begins and ends with people like Hideo Kojima and Suda51, developers who have gone out of their way to present larger than life personalities and games that reflect that. While never shying away from unique and challenging game design, Yoot Saito has quietly and passionately been developing games since 1994, when he directed the SimCity spinoff SimTower.Over the last 20 years Saito has put out some of the most inventive and unique video games the industry has seen with his company Vivarium. These range from three spiritual successors to SimTower (Yoot Tower, The Tower SP and The Tower DS), the Gamecube's insane pinball/real-time-strategy mash-up Odama, the Nintendo DS airport simulator Aero Porter and most notoriously the Dreamcast's life simulator Seaman.Seaman was an incredible gamble for Sega's fledgling system. Requiring a microphone to play, the game tasked you with taking care of a fish with a human head (and the capacity for speech) in a virtual aquarium. We go in-depth in our new show Abandonware, but Saito was kind enough to respond to our questions via-email about Seaman, the recent passing of his friend Satoru Iwata at Nintendo, and the gaming industry at large.MOTHERBOARD: What was the overall inspiration for Seaman?
Yoot Saito: I created the idea over lunch with colleagues. At the time there was a game where you took care of tropical fish for the Mac, but I didn't want to do that strictly. I wanted to pursue realism, which of course costs more and requires more patience from the user. It would be way more interesting if the fish went to you and said, "Who is the girl you brought here yesterday?" All of the important concepts came at that lunch meeting. I still have the original sketches.How did you develop the tech? What was the development process like?
Originally I did try developing it for the Mac, but it was too costly so I ended up developing it with Sega's hardware, which eventually became the Dreamcast. Sega provided us with the latest in voice recognition software and offered us any tech we needed and access to sound libraries. We developed everything from scratch, including the AI structure, the Seaman character, his fake history, the conversation system, music, everything.
There was an old kit called Sea Monkeys in the 70s, I was a big fan and I wanted to pay homage with the name Seaman. When I signed the contract with Sega the American lawyer told me there was some unintentional humour.Why do you think this game still resonates with people?
There has never been anything like it. There is no precedent. Whenever I create a game it can't be like anything else. If there's nothing else like it then people can't take the idea. It's getting harder and harder to convince people to take chances on interesting games, though. With Seaman, Sega paid for everything. Now it's all smartphone games and you need to prove users and profits over design.What do video games mean to you?
Games are a mirror that reflects one's self. The more a game reflects the character of the players, the better the game. They remind me of sandboxes as a child. I'd love to know what Will Wright would have say about that question. He created Sim City and is one of my best friends.What video games have excited you recently?
I haven't played anything recently. I retired about five years ago, but when Mr Iwata [CEO of Nintendo, who died in July] passed away I decided I had to come out of retirement and make a few more games I knew he always wanted to see.
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Yoot Saito: I created the idea over lunch with colleagues. At the time there was a game where you took care of tropical fish for the Mac, but I didn't want to do that strictly. I wanted to pursue realism, which of course costs more and requires more patience from the user. It would be way more interesting if the fish went to you and said, "Who is the girl you brought here yesterday?" All of the important concepts came at that lunch meeting. I still have the original sketches.How did you develop the tech? What was the development process like?
Originally I did try developing it for the Mac, but it was too costly so I ended up developing it with Sega's hardware, which eventually became the Dreamcast. Sega provided us with the latest in voice recognition software and offered us any tech we needed and access to sound libraries. We developed everything from scratch, including the AI structure, the Seaman character, his fake history, the conversation system, music, everything.
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The first prototype was not great, however. The voice recognition wasn't working and the development staff started to think it was a failure. I believed in it, though. We exhibited the game two months before release in an aquarium, trying to gauge how regular people would interact. It seemed impossible to be able to guess responses, though. We expected simple responses, but people would answer in more complicated ways.I really understood that the technology was the generic, unfinished thing. We needed to apply wisdom. I changed the response method. If the user said things that the Seaman didn't understand too many times, Seaman says "You talk too much. I don't understand. Explain briefly!" instead of "What? Can you say that again?" When Seaman didn't understand words he wouldn't be polite like most AI, he would get angry. That was the way we trained the user to speak clearly and that's why Seaman is kind of a jerk.People from Microsoft and IBM visited after they saw how successful the tech was. I told them simply, "We disciplined the user instead of changing the software." They didn't understand and thought I was joking, but I truly believe that if the technology is lacking, the creator needs to compensate for it.Why the name "Seaman"? You had to know there was some comedy there."We expected simple responses, but people would answer in more complicated ways."
There was an old kit called Sea Monkeys in the 70s, I was a big fan and I wanted to pay homage with the name Seaman. When I signed the contract with Sega the American lawyer told me there was some unintentional humour.
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There has never been anything like it. There is no precedent. Whenever I create a game it can't be like anything else. If there's nothing else like it then people can't take the idea. It's getting harder and harder to convince people to take chances on interesting games, though. With Seaman, Sega paid for everything. Now it's all smartphone games and you need to prove users and profits over design.What do video games mean to you?
Games are a mirror that reflects one's self. The more a game reflects the character of the players, the better the game. They remind me of sandboxes as a child. I'd love to know what Will Wright would have say about that question. He created Sim City and is one of my best friends.What video games have excited you recently?
I haven't played anything recently. I retired about five years ago, but when Mr Iwata [CEO of Nintendo, who died in July] passed away I decided I had to come out of retirement and make a few more games I knew he always wanted to see.
While information on those forthcoming games is scant at best, you can read Mr. Saito's touching tribute to Saturo Iwata, translated from his blog right here. You can also see how we fared with Seaman on the first episode of Abandonware."Whenever I create a game it can't be like anything else."