interview: a Q-games-&-A with Baiyon

2026/11/09

across the summer i was working on a video about Q-GAMES, the studio led by STAR FOX's dylan cuthbert, detailing their history and position in a rapidly shifting market. as part of this i reached out to Q-GAMES' creative director, baiyon, with some questions about his work and influences. he generously responded with some very detailed, in-depth answers, and even helped clarify some details mentioned within the video upon review.

there are a variety of subjects discussed, including the intent of his latest game DREAMS OF ANOTHER, to his wider philosophies in creating art, to how cool the discs for serial experiments lain on PS1 are. some parts of the interview are quoted inside the video (voiced by friend of the show kiki), but you can read the full Q&A right here:

firstly, could you introduce yourself?

Baiyon: My name is Baiyon, and I'm a multimedia artist. I originally started as a musician and artist, making my debut in 2004 by contributing music to the documentary film MOOG. Since then, I've released my own music, run my own record label, and performed live and as a DJ in various countries. I've also collaborated with various creators on a wide range of projects.
I've worked in art, design, and fashion, and earlier in my career, I worked in manga as well.
In 2008, I collaborated with Q-Games on PixelJunk Eden. I worked on not only the music, but also the visuals and the artistic concept of the game. I continued collaborating with Q-Games on projects such as PixelJunk 4am.

I've also contributed music to games such as LittleBigPlanet 2, Suda51's The 25th Ward: The Silver Case, FOTONICA, and YIIK, as well as creating remixes of music from games including FEZ, Machinarium, Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP, Dariusburst, and Street Fighter II.

I later officially joined Q-Games as its Creative Director. I directed Eden Obscura, PixelJunk Eden 2, and Dreams of Another.
On my latest work, Dreams of Another, in addition to working on the art and sound and directing the game, I also worked on the story and dialogue as a new form of expression.

your first game, PixelJunk eden, was characterised by your artistic direction. what led you to joining this project? were you familiar with Q-Games before working with them?

Baiyon: I knew about Q-Games before we met, but we knew of each other through a mutual friend.
I actually met Dylan Cuthbert for the first time at a year-end party hosted by a local mutual friend who was a graphic designer. We talked about making a game, and I think what we were both looking for came together there. I had been working in both art and sound for a long time, and I was looking for a medium where they could come together, which I thought was video games.
It also happened to be around the time Q-Games was starting the PixelJunk series, and that's how our collaboration began with PixelJunk Eden.

your game works combine audio & graphics in a strong, harmonious fashion. what would you say are your most significant musical & visual influences?

Baiyon: I have a lot of influences, and it's difficult to narrow them down to just a few. Some that come to mind now are the Gutai group, particularly Sadamasa Motonaga, who was an important mentor to me, Shinro Ohtake, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Hiroshi Teshigahara, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Alan Watts, Ricardo Villalobos, Abbas Kiarostami, Miranda July, and many others.
What drives me isn't so much confidence in myself, but my love for the works that move me. I trust that the works I love are great, and that's a big part of what drives me to create. Sometimes the things that move me are very small, almost too subtle for anyone to notice, and you have to be able to catch them in order to receive them. This reminds me of Marcel Duchamp's idea of the inframince -- the almost imperceptible differences or gaps between things.

If you read a book and it moves you, I don't necessarily think it's only because the book itself is great. I think there's something wonderful about the fact that you were able to read it in a way that allowed you to be moved by it.
I take fragments from the things that have moved me and put them together to create something new. For me, that process is a big part of making things.

even in your first game you incorporated influences from other games, such as the trio of playable "grimp" characters echoing the party structure of MOTHER. generally speaking, how have games influenced your work?

Baiyon: Games have had a huge influence on my work. The MOTHER series is one of the works I love most. Without MOTHER, I don't think I would have ever wanted to make games in the first place. In fact, without MOTHER, I might not have known how to communicate with other people, or how to make my way through this world.

I grew up playing games, and I still play a lot of them. Sometimes I'm influenced by a particular game's visuals or mechanics, but more than anything, games as a medium have influenced the way I think about making things. I feel that because games are, in a sense, a medium that allows us to turn inward, they have helped me think about how to face the world while also maintaining my own inner world.

I think it's a great feeling to quietly hide little homages to the things that influenced you as a child in your own work. You should give it a try sometime. Being personal isn't a weakness.

following PixelJunk eden, your second contribution to a game project was for LittleBigPlanet 2's music sequencer. what was this process like, and how did you feel about the widespread use of your instruments & music within the game?

Baiyon: I met Alex Evans from Media Molecule at a party. He was looking for someone to create sounds from scratch for LittleBigPlanet 2, turn those sounds into instruments for the game, and then make original music with those instruments. Players could then use those instruments to make their own music. He asked if I was interested, and I said yes.
After that, I went to Guildford, UK, where Media Molecule is based, to learn the tools. I played various instruments and recorded them, and even went into the mountains to do field recordings and capture all kinds of sounds. I then returned to Kyoto, where I did some more recording and production to finish the work.
I think it's wonderful that things like synthesizers that allow you to make music exist as items within the game. I've always wanted to inspire someone else to create something through my own work.

In PixelJunk Eden, for example, I wanted players to feel the excitement of putting paint onto a completely blank white sheet of paper and seeing something begin to emerge. Or the moment when the snare comes in on beats two and four alongside the hi-hat and kick, and a groove starts to emerge.
So, this experience was something special for me. You're making tools for users to create with, so how could that not be fun? The various reactions I received afterwards were also a very important part of the experience for me.

as a long-time independent developer, your perspective is particularly unique. what was it like to be part of the "indie" scene during its initial boom?

Baiyon: If that's the scene you're referring to, there were certainly a lot of talented people around at the time, and many of them weren't exclusively making games. They were artists, musicians, designers, and creators working across different fields. We were all different ages and from different countries, but somehow it felt like we were all classmates. I have a lot of fond memories of the parties we had back then. I would DJ, and everyone would have a great time together. Looking back, it was a really special time. I think those relationships were an important part of what came together in the album We Are. It was a very direct expression of that connection through music.

recently, it was announced that the PlayStation Store would no longer be supported on PS3 or PSVita. the impermanence of digital distribution is a fear among game audiences. do you have any concerns regarding the longevity of digital games?

Baiyon: I do have some concerns about digital games disappearing over time. Of course, I use digital distribution myself, and I think it is a wonderful way for people to access games more easily. But at the same time, I feel that physical media has a very important role.

For me, music might be an easier way to explain it. I listen to music on Spotify, but when I find something I truly love, I often buy it on vinyl. Artists put a lot of thought into the physical release, and it allows you to experience more of the world they created.
But to be honest, there is also a very simple reason: if I don't own something, I tend to forget it. There is just too much information around us today. When I have something physically with me, it becomes part of my everyday environment, and it stays in my memory.

I also like the fact that older physical media is often something that belonged to someone else before. There is a sense that another person's time is attached to it, something that you cannot get from a brand-new object.
For example, thinking back to the days of VHS, sometimes you would rent one and find that it hadn't been rewound all the way, so the movie would start somewhere in the middle. You might wonder, "Why did someone stop watching here?" Or you might see the video get distorted with noise at a certain point, and imagine that someone watched that part many times. Those traces are something unique to physical media.
Digital data does not really age in the same way. But physical objects can be scratched, fade, and change over time. I think that the fact that they are things that grow old, just like we do, is part of what creates an emotional connection.

your social media page "GameDisc Beauty" features quite an eclectic variety of games. many of these (such as "Planet Laika" or "serial experiments lain") have gained appraisal from international audiences in recent times. can you describe the selection process for the page?

Baiyon: I usually start by finding a game I want to play. When I put the disc into the console, I naturally start paying attention to the disc itself. If I find the disc design beautiful or interesting, that's what catches my attention.
After that, I also consider whether the game itself is interesting or unique, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it is one of my favorite games. Sometimes I am more attracted to the disc than the game itself. So even if a game itself is great, if I don't find the disc design particularly interesting, I might not feature it.
I'm not deliberately avoiding well-known titles, but whenever possible, I like introducing games that many people may not have discovered yet.

Since you mentioned serial experiments lain, I think it is a very good example of what I find interesting. The game itself was already well known, but I think very few people had really focused on the disc design. What I love about it is that it doesn't try to make the disc look like something else. Instead, it uses the physical nature of the disc itself as part of the design. The fingerprint on the surface, with blood on Disc 2, feels incredibly lain to me.
More than that, I have always felt that lain itself was somehow trapped inside a single disc at the time. That same existence was duplicated into many copies and spread throughout the world, almost like a virus or a network. Looking back now, that way of existing feels strangely connected to the themes of the work itself, and there is even something slightly unsettling about it.

I think that's what I am really looking for with GameDisc Beauty. Not only beautiful designs, but physical objects that quietly carry the atmosphere and ideas of the works inside them.

video game violence has been a hotly discussed topic for many years and different games have approached the subject in numerous ways. your most recent game, Dreams of Another, subverts player expectation through an abstract narrative in which you create by shooting. what were your motivations behind this?

Baiyon: The theme of "destruction and creation" may have been something that had been inside me for a long time, looking back on it now. But I didn't simply begin by thinking, "I want to make a game with destruction and creation as its theme." I had to think much more deeply about what that theme could mean within games as a medium, and whether approaching it more abstractly could allow it to be interpreted in multiple ways.

Of course, as I've talked about in other interviews, I took the connection between point cloud technology and the idea of the game very seriously, as well as how that could be used to express something like a dream world. If those elements hadn't come together with the theme of "No Creation Without Destruction," I don't think I would have come up with this game. I was also thinking very concretely about how to make it work as a game and what kind of experience I wanted to create.
I'm someone who plays a huge number of games myself, so I'm not looking at this from the outside. As a gamer, I'm no different in that regard. For example, when I get a machine gun in a game, I might think, "Now I can take out a bunch of enemies at once. I got a really useful item."
No matter how much graphics evolve, or how much detail goes into a character's name, background, or setting, we still tend to lump all of these characters together and simply call them "enemies."

But who exactly are these "enemies"?

Why am I shooting them in the first place?

Of course, I wasn't trying to question whether the act of shooting or killing itself is right or wrong. I've played plenty of games like that myself, and I think that kind of expression is also a part of what games can be.
But precisely because it has become so natural, both for the people making games and the people playing them, I thought it might be interesting to stop for a moment and ask, "Why am I doing this right now?"

The structure of a game can be incredibly powerful -- it can make us act without ever questioning why we're doing it. That's why I felt that, as a creator, I first had to ask myself that question. And I wanted to build a structure within the game that could naturally make that question arise in the player as well.
And I wasn't trying to provide an answer to that question. Rather, I was thinking about how to leave that "?" alive in the player's mind.
That's why, in addition to the overall concept and direction, I worked on the art, sound, scenario, and dialogue. And I have to say, the whole Q-Games team put a tremendous amount of work into bringing all of those elements together.
I may seem very focused on details, but the details themselves are not the goal. Generally speaking, you might think that the more you refine a work, the more the creator's intentions become fixed. For me, it's actually the opposite. By carefully building up the details, I'm trying to open the work up.
By making the connections between the different elements of the work as rich and precise as possible, I want to create space for players to interpret things in their own way and to feel something themselves.

So I'm interested not only in what the player "does" in a game, but also in everything that can happen within the player: walking, looking, listening, simply existing in a space, and even encountering their own memories.
And I think the theme of "No Creation Without Destruction" was something I could express precisely because it was a game. Because in games, we already know what happens when we shoot a gun. I see the gun in Dreams of Another as a form of symbolism. It's not just a gun -- it's a gun as it exists within the context of games as a medium.
That's precisely why it can be surprising when shooting causes destruction, and that destruction leads to creation.
If my mother, who has hardly played any games, were to play it, I don't think she would be particularly surprised or wonder what it means.
So I wanted to borrow from the experiences that people who have played games have accumulated, and use that existing understanding to bring the structure of the game into focus.

So, if you ask me what my motivation was, I think I could sum it up in one sentence: I love games too much. And I genuinely believe in the potential of games as a medium.

Sorry, I guess I could have just said that in the first place. Haha.

what is your favourite beverage?

Baiyon: All kinds of alcohol, and tea.

do you have any additional comments?

Baiyon: If you're interested in Dreams of Another, I hope you'll give it a try on Steam or PS5. The OST is also available on major streaming platforms, so please give it a listen too.

enormous thanks to baiyon for the interview, and to Q-GAMES for assessing the contents of the video. i'd personally recommend picking up DREAMS OF ANOTHER, too, if you're anything like me and geek out over abstract themes of sentimentality & personal attachment.