Inspirational Kenji Eno Interview

1Up.com has recently posted an interview with Kenji Eno, a Japanese creator who made extremely creative and bizarre games in the 90's. I have to be honest - before reading the article I didn't know much about Mr. Eno. The interview is quite long, clocking in at 10 pages but is worth a read.

When Eno starts talking about his past and the risks that he took to creatively do what he wanted to do it is inspiring. He talks about the realities of the game business and running an independent studio:

KE: Actually, I had first formed an independent game development company called EIM [in 1989,] several years before Warp. Since the beginning of my career, I had wanted to create original games, and so I went independent in order to do that. But after a while, even if I was making original games, I was forced to put licensed characters in the titles. And that was pretty tough on me, and I got mentally unstable at a point.

This was my own thing, and the company had money and all that, but I couldn't stand creating games that I didn't want to create. And, also, I had to tell my people that making character games is cool, and that licensed characters are cool, so we should create them, but I myself wasn't convinced of that -- and yet, I had to convince them of that. So I closed EIM. Toward the end, there was a period where I wouldn't even go to my office because I was so upset.

On constantly moving toward the future:

KE: Not really. I have no interest in my own past -- like, what I did in the past, what sold, how much, and so on. And the same goes for other people; I have no interest in what other people did in the past. So, like, instead of working on something I did in the past, I would rather be working on something new. I want to move forward. You have a short life; you're going to die someday. So I don't want to waste my time looking back on something I did in the past. But if I get into a really critical situation where I'm forced to do that in order to make a living, I might do that. But until a critical situation comes up, I'm not interested in looking back. Life is short! There's no time to look back!

This type of uncompromising creative is unusual and the interview is great. It's clear that Eno understands the business aspect of the game industry and has managed to work within the system to create much of what he and his teams wanted to create. It takes a person who is willing to take a lot of risks, both financially and career wise, is a leader, and has talent to pull off what he has been able to accomplish.

Kudos to Shane Bettenhausen and James Mielke at 1Up who put the interview together.