Hi to everyone out there. Welcome to the Silent Hill: Shattered Memories blog.

My name is Tomm Hulett, and I’m the Producer on Shattered Memories. I guess I’m your host here on the blog as well, but I’m going to include some special guests from Climax from time to time, and we’ll see what other surprises I can arrange for you. There’s a lot to be excited about in Silent Hill these days, and I’m glad to provide little tastes of what’s to come.

(Another thing I’m going to do is completely ape off Edgar Wright’s blog and try to include a little picture per update. It won’t be daily (or necessarily interesting) but it’s something.)

As Producer, I have to do a lot of different jobs on the project. For example, when a new version of the game is ready, Climax will send it to me and I’ll play through, then send back comments. These can be anything from things I really like, to questions about how something will be polished or updated, to elements I’d like to see changed. That’s really the most fun part of the job, because it’s a blast to watch a video game develop throughout the project. It’s especially exciting when the voices go in and characters start talking, the story develops, and so on. I’m going to be watching a few cutscenes this afternoon, in fact.

I also get to do fun exciting things like paperwork. It’s a dirty job but somebody’s got to do it (or Climax won’t get paid, and that wouldn’t result in a very good game now would it?). I also communicate with all the other departments here at Konami to get various things done, or to give them materials they need. (For example, Marketing and PR thought to do an online blog for the game… and here we are!)

It’s kind of fun.

So today, I’ve just finished the text for the game’s manual. I’ve always loved game manuals for reasons I don’t understand. A lot of times as a kid I’d go with a friend to buy a new NES game, and since it was his, he got first turn and I was left reading the manual. That could have something to do with it. I still read the manual whenever I get a new game, but a good manual is something of a lost art, so it’s not quite as much fun as it used to be. Whenever I’m in charge of a game I try to do something interesting for the manual for the 8 people out there who still read them. Some of you may have played Contra 4 on Nintendo DS – for that manual I tried to recapture the “classic” feel of Konami’s NES booklets, which were written pretty irreverently and in some cases irrelevantly; completely changing or inventing story elements not present in the game itself. I even got a little help from our Customer Support group in tracking down the exact font Konami used to use.

For Shattered Memories, I took a more subtle approach to the manual. Writing manuals for horror games is tricky because you can’t reveal too much information about the game. The player needs to be surprised by all the different little things when they are playing. I had several different ideas of what to do for this manual, but in the end I settled on a less blatant option. Some people may not even notice it, but hopefully fans of the original game can appreciate the direction I took.

That’s all the time we have today. I hope you enjoyed the first blog of many! Oh right, I promised you a picture:

Silent Hill is a mysterious place; maybe all of this will make sense one day!
-Tomm

source: SHSM Blog – Welcome to the Silent Hill: Shattered Memories Blog | 06/01/2009