Hidetaka Suehiro

Background

Born in April, 1973 as the first child of a Buddhist monk family in Osaka. Mr. Suehiro had no interest in video games in his earlier days but this changed when, during fifth and sixth grade, he would spend most of his time hanging around local arcades. Later in his life, after obtaining his Buddhist monk license, he enrolled into the Osaka University of Arts. After 4 years he finally got his major degree.

It was in his third year that his life changed. A fellow student asked him if he wanted to team up and join the game industry. At this time in life Mr. Suehiro still had not thought about giving the game industry a try, but this was the time the PS1 and the Saturn came to the market, so he was very fascinated by the idea.

Mr. Suehiro’s first work was for the game company SNK (Shin Nihon Kikaku). Here he worked on The Last Blade and The Last Blade 2 where he was in charge of adjusting the game system, writing the main storyline, and creating the main characters. When The Last Blade 2 was finished he left SNK and joined Whoopee Camp to work on a project called Tomba! 2. He joined this game very late in the production cycle. From there, Swery moved to Deep Space, where he worked on the game Extermination as a main planner. During this period, Mr. Suehiro started to plan and write a game that he really wanted to create himself. in 2002 he left the company and became the director of the game Spy Fiction in the newly started Access Games company. In 2010, Mr. Suehiro released the game he is best known for, Deadly Premonition. He became "development director" for the game Lord of Arcana (a game already mid-way into development), and the game was released in 2011. During E3 2013, it was revealed Swery was working on a Xbox ONE exclusive game titled D4 (which later received a PC port).

Mr. Suehiro commonly takes inspiration for his stories and scenarios from popular media. Deadly Premonition, for example, features overt references to the David Lynch television series Twin Peaks. Both the game and the TV series are set in quirky small towns located in the Pacific northwestern United States. Both properties also feature FBI agents with a strong love of coffee as the protagonists.

In 2016, Swery founded his own company, White Owls Inc.

Trademarks

One of his trademarks is including a character by the name of "Forrest Kaysen" in his games. Kaysen appears as a doctor in Spy Fiction, a mysterious sapling salesman in Deadly Premonition, and a detective in D4. In The Missing, in lieau of Kaysen proper, a stuffed animal simply named "F.K." appears.

Another trademark is the recurring minor presence of a bar named after himself, the "Swery '65".

Trivia

• Hidetaka Suehiro owned a cat named H. R. Giger. However, they have since passed away.
• He is a qualified Buddhist priest.