Forever in our hearts: Earlier today, The owner of silent hill Keiichiro Toyama, has been confirmed…

Best known as the creator of the Silent Hill, Siren, and Gravity Rush franchises, Keiichiro Toyama is a Japanese videogame director and designer who started his career in 1994 at Konami as a Graphic Designer, with the Hideo Kojima designed Snatcher being one of his very first projects. Afterwards, and whilst still at Konami, he was instrumental in creating the Silent Hill franchise, before leaving to join Sony, whereupon he created the Siren and Gravity Rush franchises. Since then, he has gone independent with his own indie game development studio – Bokeh Game Studio – and is looking to release Bokeh’s first game (Slitterhead) on 8 November 2024.

In a career spanning interview, I spoke to Keiichiro Toyama about his 30 year time within the industry, what his thoughts are in making the transition from working for a AAA publisher to essentially becoming an independent, whether he’d be open to working on new iterations of the franchises that he’s renowned for, whether he’d be open to collaborating with any of the horror greats in the games industry, and what his long-term goals are for the next 30 years… Enjoy!

Mr Toyama-san… You’re the principal creator of Silent Hill and Siren, but then you also did the Gravity Rush games which are a lot more light-hearted in comparison… So you essentially went from really dark games to really light games, which were also AAA in some sense and which had way bigger production budgets. And now you’re delving back into the horror genre again. Why the swing back to horror, and what was the reason for your change in direction?

So I left Sony after the Gravity Rush series and have gone indie with my own studio, Bokeh Game Studio. I would point the reasoning behind going back to horror as going back to my roots, because I know that horror fans are very passionate, and they have been fans of my games for a very long time. And I guess I would like to treat my fans by going back to the horror genre. It would be a stronger focal point for me to go back to horror, just to show people and those who would be interested in my return to the horror genre. I just feel as if it would be a good point to return to the genre at this stage.

There’s been a lot of layoffs in the industry, and I know that Sony Japan also closed down. At the same time however, and as we saw with Tango Gameworks, the studio that was started up by Shinji Mikami, they got closed down as well. With that said however, there was a collaboration between Suda 51 and Shinji Mikami on Shadows of the Damned, which I understand is being remastered now. But given your horror pedigree, and given the fact that Shinji Mikami also did the Evil Within series, what’s the likelihood of you collaborating with any of the horror greats in the games industry? Maybe not now, but what about in the future, and what’s the likelihood of that?

So whilst there’s nothing in the works at the moment, I think it’s largely possible that I might collaborate on something with the horror greats. I think there needs to be clarity on what I would need to do in that situation. Maybe I could do the story or the writing for that kind of game, if it’s a game, I guess. But there’s nothing going on like that right now, although I can see myself doing that in future.

In the context of Silent Hill, Konami are a big budget company that have the resources to be able to allocate big budgets towards their games. The same goes for Sony and their Gravity Rush games. What I’m trying to say is, there’s basically a sort of safety cushion, and that you’re not necessarily going to fall as a result of being associated with the bigger companies. But the idea of working for big major companies, to suddenly operating in the context of what is essentially an indie startup that doesn’t have that level of financial backing, how have you been able to make that transition? And at the same time, how has your workflow changed? And just as an example, going from Gravity Rush 1 to Gravity Rush 2, Gravity Rush 2 was way bigger in terms of scope and what was expected to happen in the game. But when you have less money to play around with, and that obviously factors into the idea of risk, but then that also means that you have less stuff that you can potentially do. In a way, as an indie operative, you’re basically in a straitjacket. Whereas before you had all this money to play around with, where you could create open worlds. But now it’s a case of, “well, I can only go down the straight and narrow”. So just from that perspective, how has working for an indie studio that doesn’t have that level of financial backing impacted upon your workflow and design principles?

So most of the games that I’ve worked on have been new IPs, even though I’ve made different franchises and stuff. But I want to note that every time I make a new IP, my resources are pretty limited, and they’re limited by the company that I’ve worked for. So in that sense, Silent Hill, Siren, and the first Gravity Rush game, I think that we were striving to achieve something new, as opposed to making a big budget videogame. So I feel the need to do that every 3, 4, or 5 years. And I keep making new games, so going individual, like going indie right now, for me, I don’t really feel limited, I feel that it suits me more. So it feels like I’ve got an advantage, because I know how to work with limited resources. And so now, and it’s not in a bad way, but I’m now actually limited. I know that I don’t have massive financial backing, by any investors, but it actually feels like I’m doing what I’m good at now, in the real environment. So it’s not that different from what I’ve done before, I’m just now in a better environment to do it.