Examining the Infinite Noise of the Inner Soul: The Keiichi Yano Interview

The co-founder of iNis in Japan opens up about music, games and game design in general.
4/29/2008 2:54 PM | 0 Comments | Page 1 of 8

You'd think that two characters having a laser beam-infested guitar battle, or male cheerleaders keeping the beat and saving the stressed-out people of the world would be odd concepts for a game's design, but they're quite common for a small Japanese game developer named iNiS whose first two music game series have garnered cult followings among gamers. Both the Gitaroo Man and Ouendan (Elite Beat Agents outside of Japan) franchises have put iNiS in a small handful of developers who have evolved what we now know as the music game.

After a meal near iNiS' offices in Nakamegero that included such dishes as tripe, chicken and horse sashimi -- meals that were just as strange and delicious to an American gamer as iNiS' game concepts -- I got a chance to catch up with iNiS co-founder and game designer Keiichi Yano.

We get the history behind this boutique developer, learn the origins of Gitaroo Man and Ouendan/Elite Beat Agents, and find out what's better, Rock Band or Guitar Hero, in this extensive interview.

Crispy Gamer: I guess I wanted to start out and get the history about the company and your history in the videogame industry. I know you went to USC and were a Jazz major. Is that correct?

Keiichi Yano: I was a Jazz Studies major, and I played the saxophone.

Crispy Gamer: Was it something you just grew up with?

Yano: I've been in music since the 1st grade, and playing the saxophone since the 5th grade. So yes, I've been doing it a long time. Interestingly enough, I didn't go into USC as a Jazz major, actually; I went in as a mechanical engineering major. I love cars. [laughs] I'm either doing music or I'm building a car. [laughs] It's got to be one or another, right? Get into Mechanical Engineering and go to my Mechanical Engineering 101 class, and it f***ing kicks me in the ass. It's like the first day, and I'm like, "What the f***? I must be in the wrong class!" So I did that for about six months. I was also in the SC Jazz band, so I was kind of doing that on the side. One of the professors said, "Hey, look, we'll give you a scholarship -- why don't you just come over here?" I'm there!

Crispy Gamer: So where were you born?

Yano: I was born in Tokyo, where I lived until I was two. The first place I went was Hawaii; I stayed there until I was five and then went to L.A.

Crispy Gamer: What does iNiS mean?

Yano: It means a lot of things, actually. iNiS is an acronym and it stands for "infinite Noise of the inner Soul." So it's kind of profound. [laughs] What we really want it to say is -- if you've seen our logo, the red square, there's three circles that get bigger as they go out. infinite Noise we mean things -- creative feelings, juices, ideas -- it's all these things that people have in them. It's of the inner soul, so it's in your heart. The logo stands for -- the small one might be one person's idea, but when you let it out it starts to reverberate and harmonize with other things and it gets bigger. The idea is the company starts with a very good idea and has it reverberate across.