In a recent interview with CGWorld, Monolith Soft’s game developers and R&D engineers talked about efforts the studio is making to adapt to the needs of large-scale game development. The devs also shared some insights into how Monolith Soft’s hierarchy works, with an emphasis on a “bottom-up” form of leadership as opposed to “top-down” hierarchy.
Due to the growing man-hours and resources involved in game development, Monolith Soft is working on introducing new technology – namely procedural terrain creation and automatic asset placement using Houdini– to streamline the more menial and time-consuming aspects of development. By doing this, the studio aims to free up time and resources to invest in refining gameplay and more creative aspects of game development.
Monolith Soft’s R&D department is fairly new, and not many of its developers are versed in the new technology yet. However, according to Xenoblade Chronicles 3 lead map designer Yoichi Akizuki, implementation of new systems is progressing very smoothly from the R&D side to the development frontline thanks to the company’s culture of borderless communication. “I don’t feel any organizational borders, to the point that I sometimes forget that Hirose (R&D technical artist Mitsuhiro Hirose) isn’t part of the game development side. (laughs) We’re constantly in touch because we’re all working toward the same goal – making the game better.”
After experimenting with different approaches to implementing new technology, Monolith Soft has settled on the system of asking devs on site what they need and then having technical artists from the R&D side figure out how to achieve it.
Akizuki notes that one of Monolith Soft’s strengths is how “neatly” it works. “We follow processes, reach an agreement, leave a tangible record, and then move to the next step.” However, this formality doesn’t equal authoritativeness, as programmer Takashi Shibahara explains, “our company is not top-down, but bottom-up. Our leadership leaves things to the frontline and tries to listen to on-site feedback as much as possible. We are now in an era where the quality of a game is directly tied to how much individual ingenuity makes it into the final product. I think Monolith Soft is doing quite well in that regard.”
