Grasshopper Manufacture, now independent of Netease Games as of the beginning of October, has been seeking to define what its trajectory will be without the benefit of that financial backing. Suda51, the studio’s founder, sat down with a number of Japanese outlets to discuss the future of the company, how plans have changed since it went independent, and the future of its No More Heroes series.
According to Suda51, one of the biggest shifts that will occur as a result of this independence and lack of financial backing is in the scale of the games the studio will be capable of developing. Under NetEase, the company had promised to develop three large games within 10 years, with February’s Romeo Is a Dead Man being one of these. These plans will have to be adapted, he explains in an interview with 4Gamer. “That was a plan we made based on a promise given to NetEase at the time, so that will have to change,” he said, adding, “As an independent studio it’s now possible to take on various jobs. I want to not just work on my own titles, but also on various interesting IPs.” Speaking to Famitsu in a separate interview, he even mentions two series he’d love to work with: Mobile Suit Gundam and Marvel’s Deadpool.
Suda51 admits that it’s a difficult time to become independent. The company handled promotion and the release of Romeo Is a Dead Man in-house, even though it had initially been planned as a NetEase work. Speaking to 4Gamer, he says promoting the title was a challenge for the studio because of how the industry has evolved in recent years. “Raising awareness for a game is really difficult,” he admits. “That’s because compared to the old promotion, PR and marketing cycle, this era is completely different. Before, it was a challenge over how many TV commercials you could do, how much you were advertising in magazines or online. But that’s not the case anymore.” To counter the challenges of advertising in the modern era, the studio hopes to take advantage of the Grasshopper brand to some extent. “We’ve been a studio for around 30 years, and our name has even become recognizable overseas to a point, and I’ve realized that there has to be a way we can use that and make more use of our brand power.”
As it looks to the future, the company is examining platforms, including Roblox, as a way to allow it to experiment with ideas, and it’s actively recruiting new members to the team. Earlier this year, to mark the release of Romeo Is a Dead Man, the company held a demo event in Shibuya PARCO, a department store in Tokyo, where it proudly announced that another new game would be releasing this year. While that hasn’t come to fruition, Suda51 is insisting this unknown game will be released next year.
In his conversation with Famitsu, he was more specific about what he wanted to create next. “I have a few ideas of what to make next, but one thing I’m thinking about is a game I made while I was still at Human, called Moonlight Syndrome. That was the game that started my career, and from there I made The Silver Case, Flower, Sun and Rain and Killer7. I really want to channel that idea once again if I can. I think No More Heroes has given many people the impression of Grasshopper as a bright and flashy action game studio, but I want to return to the side of the studio that specializes in the dark, serious, and chaotic ideas that we worked on until Killer7.”
Notably, Moonlight Syndrome, released by Human Entertainment in 1997 for PlayStation, has yet to be officially released overseas. At the very least Suda hopes to make this work an international release at last. And perhaps a return to No More Heroes is also in the cards. Speaking about Marvelous, which owns the No More Heroes IP, he said the company is “very aware [that next year is the 20th anniversary of No More Heroes], so I’d love for us to do something to mark the occasion. I’m hoping to do something special, so please look forward to it. Travis Touchdown is definitely coming back!”
Based on these interviews, it seems that the now-independent Grasshopper Manufacture is a studio that wishes to look back, as well as look to the future. While its plans have changed since it first signed with NetEase, it wants to at least stick to the intent it previously had, if not at quite the same scale, while creating things that fans of the studio will enjoy.
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