Hey there! I'm Yoshinori Ono, CEO at Lasengle.
Welcome to my blog and thanks for dropping by!
The other day I made my annual visit to the Ise Grand Shrine to give thanks for the year. I know some people like to do this at the start of the new year, but I've recently gotten into the habit of doing it at the end.
I'll admit that I could've done without the rain. But there was something weirdly refreshing about giving my thanks in the middle of a cool and pleasant drizzle.
These visits are a way to reflect over all the things a have to be grateful for, and this year was no exception.
It's been a year and a half since I took the role of COO at Delightworks back in May 2021, then later CEO at Lasengle), and one year since Lasengle joined the Sony Music/Aniplex family.
I feel truly lucky to have a team who shares the same goals as me. I want to take our game dev and ops team even further in the future, and I'm always asking the team to go above and beyond. I want them to push for the impossible, as we look for ways to strengthen our connection with the players. "Thank you!" doesn't even begin to cover it, but still, thank you for being an awesome team!
We still have some way to go to fully win the hearts of all the players, but we're determined to keep working as hard as we can, to make that leap from where we've been to where we want to be.
The visit to the shrine let me reflect on our achievements and our future, and I left feeling deeply grateful for what we've achieved at Lasengle.
But that's not all.
On my way to the shrine, I somehow managed to lose my Shinkansen ticket on the train. (Yeah, rookie mistake!)
I still had the receipt, which I showed the station staff, but rules are rules. I ended up purchasing another ticket for the way back. Next time I purchase a paper ticket, I'm guarding that thing with my life!
And while it's hard to be grateful for this bit of bad luck, it did make me wonder. Maybe that extra ticket money was an offering and it'll rid me of some bad karma. Here's hoping!
Back from my travels, I was ready to head into my featured game for blog #24, Source of Madness.
Source of Madness is a dark, atmospheric side-scrolling action game.
One of its unique features is that it uses AI machine learning for enemy design. From what I could tell, frames, motion capture, joint movement and all the other animation aspects were done without any direction from a designer.
Honestly, at first glance, it's hard to tell if the enemies are human-made or AI creations. Source of Madness is full of bizarre enemies, big and small, who relentlessly swarm, slither, and squelch toward you to attack.
The enemies are a terrifying mix of legs and tentacles that move in a way which is definitely not by human design. It's hard to explain. You can sense there's a purpose there, but no idea what it could be. It's like having a weird bug that you've never seen before, keep heading straight for you, no matter how much you try to run away.
I found the controls a bit clunky but it works with the game's dark atmosphere. Source of Madness is also a roguelike and with the skill trees, there's a sense of growth and progression. The artwork is also generated using AI technology, and the collage-like effect, with its layered cutout look, is both unsettling and cohesive, creating a beautiful but ominous vibe.
Source of Madness was released in May 2022. According to news posted to the Steam bulletin board in October 2022, the developers went for proprietary AI technology in development, rather than using an outside service like Midjourney.
2022 was the year AI-generated art made a splash. New systems kept popping up from different countries, each one upgrading by the day and the pace of it all is just mind-blowing. So far in game development, the trend for AI has been to use it more on the system and programming side of things, like for enemy movement patterns. But from here on out, who knows. Using AI for art, visuals, and design aspects could become the norm.
With all these changes, it's hard to predict what game development will look like in ten or even five years' time. Who knows what kind of environment we'll be creating games in, and what games we'll be designing? I don't know the answer but I'm excited to stick around and find out!
That's my take on Source of Madness
Thanks for reading.
The next game is calling my name so gotta go--till next time!
Yoshinori X（Twitter）