What's the difference between Japanese and Western developers?

"The main difference, if we were to really simplify things, is it seems that Western games tend to focus a lot on realism in animation."

-- Motohide Eshiro, producer, DmC One of the challenges of shifting the Devil May Cry series to a Western developer -- Cambridge, England-based Ninja Theory (Enslaved) -- is that the team had to adapt to a different sort of play style, or "control feel", in the words of Eshiro, than Western developers typically embrace. "The main difference, if we were to really simplify things, is it seems that Western games tend to focus a lot on realism in animation," says Eshiro (pictured). "So that, if you're walking along and you stop, you should go through a natural and proper stop animation, which tends to look very good. But, when we're talking about something like Devil May Cry, the concept has always been letting the user do what they want when they want -- cancel things in mid-motion and suddenly turn on a dime, this sort of thing." Adds U.S. producer, Alex Jones, who had a hand in selecting the developer, Ninja Theory "had shown just enough capacity for combat that we felt bringing in a booster shot of some of the CJ [Capcom Japan] experience of 25 years of making fighting games would get it over the hurdle completely." The full DmC interview with Jones and Eshiro is live now on Gamasutra.