“Fast, frenetic and fun.” These are the three words that, according to Jamie Smith, define animations AstroBotthe highest-rated video game so far in 2024. These are also the three words that this digital artisan wrote in the style guide that the animators of the Japanese team Team Asobi use to bring their video games to life, including this colorful and endearing adventure. for PlayStation 5 which, for a week, has won the hearts of millions of players around the world.
“We want our games to have a lot of energy, to surprise and to be full of humor, because if the player laughs a very deep connection is created,” he explains to The Vanguard This British developer has lived in Tokyo for sixteen years. “It is also characteristic that there is no type of language, so everything is explained visually and through animations.”
Fast, frenetic and fun: These three words define our animations
In AstroBotthe player controls the small robot that for a few years has fulfilled the role of semi-official mascot of Sony’s video game division. On his third adventure after Astro Bot Rescue Mission (2018) and Astro’s Playroom (2020), your mission is to recover the pieces of your spaceship and rescue your three hundred robotic companions scattered throughout the galaxy. It is a nice platform game, for all audiences and without great narrative pretensions, but solid as a rock in terms of playability.
Beyond the quality of the game in question – in this newspaper it received a well-deserved five stars – one of the reasons why it has been so well received by critics and the gaming community is because of the fact that it does not resemble in no way to the great blockbusters, such as god of war either The Last of Uswith which Sony has been feeding its console for the last few years. “What differentiates AstroBot is that everything is done by hand, we do not use any type of automation or motion capture technologies, everything falls on the creativity and style of the animators. “It is creativity made into a video game,” says Smith.
Image from the video game ‘Astro Bot’
Life and professional career
From the United Kingdom to Japan
Born in Stoke-on-Trent, an English city located forty-five kilometers south of Manchester, Smith felt a great attraction for video games and, more specifically, Japanese ones, from a very young age. During the interview via videoconference, the developer, who answers our questions from his home in the central Shibuya neighborhood, notices a console that adorns one of the shelves of a server. “I see you have a Neo-Geo behind you!” –he exclaims when he sees this Japanese machine from the nineties–, “I had one when I was little, in fact, I was the only one in the neighborhood who had it, since I loved Japanese games,” he adds.
After studying at the University of Liverpool, where he learned from some members of the iconic – and now defunct – British developer Psygnosis, he began his career in the video game industry at the small studio Atomic Planet. There he worked on a compilation of games from the franchise. Mega Manone of the most representative characters of the Japanese video game of the eighties and nineties. “It’s ironic that I worked on that game years before I ended up living in Japan,” he says. Two years later, he moved to the studio specializing in strategy titles Pivotal Games, which worked for the important publisher Eidos. “I remember those days when we were a handful of geeks working in a room.”
Image from the video game ‘Astro Bot’
His big professional leap came in 2008, when he decided to move to Japan to work at Grasshopper Manufacture, the studio led by the iconoclastic designer Suda51. “That was the first time I worked with someone so creative and wild, there were no limits.” During his time at this company, he contributed to cult games such as Shadows of the Damned, Lollipop Chainsaw either Killer is Dead. But it didn’t end there, since, after four years, in 2013 he took another important leap by signing for Team ICO, the defunct and praised team led by the Japanese designer Fumito Ueda.
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“My knowledge about the world of animation increased exponentially in Team ICO,” he explains, while remembering the years in which he was part of the team responsible for the exceptional The Last Guardian. His job consisted of animating the creature Trico and, more specifically, the protagonist boy. “I learned how to create consistent characters in a consistent world, I was able to understand physics at a very deep level, so that the animations felt right.”
Image of the video game ‘The Last Guardian’ for PlayStation 4
After delivering to the world that work of art called The Last GuardianTeam ICO’s close relationship with Sony’s Japan Studio allowed Smith to take his next leap into the industry. It was then that he started working for this team founded in the mid-nineties and focused on producing games with a marked Japanese character for PlayStation. A studio that, to the regret of many recalcitrant Japanese video game fans, was closed by Sony itself in 2021 with the aim of promoting other productions closer to Western taste. That was the last stop for this animator before becoming, in 2020, one of the founding members of Team Asobi, the last stronghold of that powerful factory of eccentric, brilliant and deeply Japanese games, which was once the Japan Studio. .
During the interview, I notice that Smith does not feel too comfortable when I ask him about everything that happened with the Japan Studio, nor when I ask him if Team Asobi is in charge of maintaining that Japanese spirit within the current PlayStation. He is not responsible for the business decision to close the studio, so I decide not to dwell on it. Despite this, I am interested in knowing where that personal fascination with Japanese video games comes from, an attraction that led him to leave his country to move to a completely different culture.
“Working in the Japanese industry has been like fulfilling a dream,” he responds. “At Team Asobi there is so much creativity, everything is so colorful and so fun, and this is because Japanese games are the heart of the studio.” Okay, but what makes Japanese games special? I ask. After thinking about it for a few seconds, Smith responds: “One of the things I value most about Japanese games is the control system, since it is much more based on immediacy and interaction, it is much more active, it promotes constant interaction. I love those precise controls, that continuous and fluid gameplay.” Now yes, we have an answer.
With a clearly British external appearance, Jamie Smith has a difficult time passing himself off as Japanese, but, nevertheless, he works in one of the development studios that most defends the DNA of this country’s video game. AstroBot It is the result of the joint work of a team of around 65 professionals, most of them Japanese, who form Team Asobi, a studio whose leadership falls to another Westerner such as the developer of French origin, Nicolas Doucet. “Asobi,” by the way, is a term derived from the Japanese word meaning game or fun.
One of the walls of the Team Asobi studio in Tokyo
One of the things I value most about Japanese games is the control system, since it is much more based on immediacy and interaction
Smith directs the studio’s animation department, a team made up of eight professionals that has worked for three and a half years with the aim of bringing to life the most playful robots that the interactive medium has ever given. For this project the animation team has multiplied by four, since when they worked on Astro’s Playroom There were only two people in charge of this facet. “If you’ve played the previous Astro games, you’ll notice an evolution in the animation style,” he says. “Team Asobi’s animation style is very family friendly“We want it to have a lot of humor and energy, but also to connect with players of all ages, from children to adults, and from players to novice players to veterans.”
Indeed, when you play AstroBot It’s hard to contain your smile when you see the protagonist and his colleagues moving frantically around the stage. Despite not speaking and having little more than two eyes to express emotions, his movements are reminiscent of those of classic animated films. And, of course, the anime Japanese is another big influence. “Many animators have extensive experience working on anime and I think it shows,” says Smith. “You could say that there is a mix between the quality of Western animation and the expressiveness of animesomething that gives it a unique style.”
Another of the most celebrated characteristics of AstroBot It is the way it pays tribute to the history of video games in general, and the three decades of Sony consoles specifically. Through one hundred and fifty robots that are dressed as famous characters in the history of PlayStation, the player has fun identifying these winks and remembering their adventures through unique and tremendously fun animations.
The cameos of other video game characters are one of the most applauded features of ‘Astro Bot’
If the cameos made the team laugh, we knew they worked
“To create the cameo animations we started by thinking of ideas, then we passed them on to our colleague in charge of the concept artToshihiko Nakai, who drew those little stories or gags with a very manga style. Later, we animators were in charge of building these unique actions and, finally, every two weeks we showed them to the team and saw their reactions. If they laughed and shouted we knew they were working and, if not, we needed to review them, give them more humor and energy.”
During the interview it is inevitable to share our favorite cameos and, curiously, we both agree that those of the characters from resident Evil They are especially fun. Which is Jamie Smith’s favorite cameo, though? “For obvious reasons, it’s Trico and the boy [los protagonistas de The Last Guardian]since I worked on the original game. The versions of both characters that can be seen in Astro Bot are very authentic, very correct, they have small details that I knew from working on the game. In fact, other animators on the team worked on a variety of franchises that appear as cameos, such as Ape Escapeeither Gravity Rush, Demon’s Souls, Knackthat is, many of these representations are made by people who worked on the original games.”
Playing a few minutes is enough to perceive the love and dedication that Team Asobi has put into AstroBot. This interview with Jamie Smith occurs a few hours before the reviews are published and the game goes on sale, so the final question is mandatory. Were you able to sleep tonight? “The truth is, not much. We’ve been working on this for three and a half years and finally people will be able to play it. It’s very exciting and I’m a little nervous, but at the same time, I’m confident that you’re going to like it.”
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