访谈原文来自：https://www.digitallydownloaded.net/2020/08/interview-on-the-making-of-seabed-the-masterpiece-about-relationships.html
Matt S: Can you start by telling me what inspired SeaBed – where did the idea for the game come from?
问：可以先说一下是什么让你们产生了创作《Seabed》的想法吗？
hide38: It all started with a four-panel yuri manga series featuring Takako and Sachiko that I drew when I had time to spare at work. I showed my manga to AKIRA, a friend in my neighbourhood who's into anime and video games, and he liked it and wanted to read more. It was that moment when I decided to put all those random episodes together into one by making SeaBed.
hide38：这一切都起始于我在工作的闲余时间中所创作的以贵呼和佐知子为主要角色的百合四格漫画系列。AKIRA是我的朋友，他住在我家附近，很喜欢动画和游戏。我把我创作的漫画给他看了。他说他很喜欢并且还想看更多。那个时候我便决定了要把漫画的零散剧情整合起来，创作出《Seabed》这部作品。
AKIRA: What I liked about hide38's manga were the character designs and unique dialogue. The manga was slice-of-life and didn't have much happening, but reading some of the episodes made me experience what seemed like wordless flashbacks, which got me curious about their untold backstories. So I casually went and asked hide38 for the details, at which point I didn't even imagine he'd turn this little chitchat into a big deal and drag me into making SeaBed with him!
AKIRA：在hide38的漫画中，我主要喜欢的是角色的设计以及她们之间独特的对话。这部漫画的剧情并没有讲什么大事，只是在描绘一些生活片段，但是在看漫画的过程中我却体会到了类似无言的往事回忆般的东西，这让我对她们背后所经历过的故事感到好奇。所以我在不经意间去跟hide38聊了聊有关这些角色的更多的细节，而我没想到这些简单的聊天竟让他产生了让我和他一起创作《Seabed》的想法。
Matt S: What was it about the video game platform that appealed to you – rather than other storytelling mediums such as the novel or film?
问：是什么吸引了你们选择以游戏的形式来进行创作而不是选择其他讲故事的方式，比如说小说和电影？
hide38: Since I was a kid, I've been a big fan of fantasy novels, video games, and anime. Before SeaBed, I'd always been trying to create video games or manga myself, but I couldn't finish any of them on account of my lack of skills or motivational issues. So I promised myself I'd complete SeaBed when I decided to make it. The reason why I chose the video game platform to tell my story was that I figured from my experience it'd be what I’ll able to handle the best. If I'd had more skill in the field of manga, SeaBed might have been a manga series instead.
hide38：我从小就非常喜欢幻想小说、游戏和动画。在创作《Seabed》之前，我一直有尝试自己去创作游戏和漫画，但是由于能力和动力的原因，我一直都没能完成一部自己的作品。所以当我决定要创作《Seabed》的时候，我便下定决心这次一定要成功。我之所以选择以游戏的形式来讲述我的故事，是因为我根据我自己的经验判断出这是最适合我的选择。如果我在漫画方面的能力更强的话，也许《Seabed》会是一部漫画作品。
AKIRA: We chose the visual novel as our storytelling medium because when we released the very first version of SeaBed, we learned it didn't require much technical skill for us to achieve the quality we wanted to. I had no skills for writing or drawing, but I thought I could contribute as a programmer and started by learning the basics of game programming. In hindsight, I was being reckless back then, but right now I'm happy from the bottom of my heart that it worked out somehow.
AKIRA：我们之所以选择以视觉小说的方式来讲述故事，是因为当我们发布《Seabed》的最初版本时，我们意识到我们不需要使用什么高深的技能就能达到我们想要的作品质量。我不擅长写作和绘画，但我觉得我可以在游戏编程上提供帮助，然后我就开始学习游戏编程方面的基础知识。回想起来，那时的我还挺冲动的，但是现在我真心为自己的付出得到了一定的回报而感到高兴。
Matt S: More mature storytelling mediums – poetry, literature, film – all have firmly established structure and “best practice” by now, but you get the sense that video games, and VNs within that, are still “writing the rules.” Did you find the visual novel format a structural challenge at all when developing SeaBed?
问：目前，像诗歌、文学、电影之类更加成熟的叙事载体，都已经有了稳固的结构和“最佳实践”，但是你们还是感觉游戏，特别是其中的子分类视觉小说，还是很适合用来叙述故事的。当创作《Seabed》时，你们是否有发现视觉小说形式的作品给你们带来了结构性上的挑战？
hide38: There were no structural challenges for me because all I had to do was write and draw. I'll admit, though, that I went through many difficult times during my writing and drawing processes... I suspect AKIRA is the better person to answer this particular question.
hide38：对我来说并没有结构性方面的挑战，因为我所需要做的只有写作和作画。不过我依然承认，在写作和作画的过程中，我遇到过不少困难……我觉得AKIRA更适合回答这个问题。
AKIRA: The biggest challenge for me as the game's director was placing the right character sprite(s), the right background graphics, the right background music, and the right sound effect according to each scene of the story. I paid most attention to not adding anything unnecessary that could be visual/auditory noise distracting the player while playing the game.
AKIRA：作为游戏的设计者，对我来说最大的挑战就是根据故事的那种感觉将正确的角色立绘、正确的背景图片、正确的背景音乐和正确的音效布置到正确的位置上。我花了大部分功夫去避免添加一些不必要的，可能在视觉或听觉上干扰到玩家的东西。
SeaBed has so many different scenes that I had to spend so much time and effort collecting and organising a significant amount of graphics and audio materials. From that experience, I'd say the visual novel as a medium would work well with stories that take place in a limited number of fixed locations, like school-life stories. While I do find it challenging to make visual novels, I also believe that the medium helps you better express each scene's nuance and atmosphere in the way you want to; Using pauses in conversation, the characters' facial expressions, sound effects to attract the player's attention, background music to make an impression of the scene in the player's mind, etc. In that sense, visual novels feel to me like movies that you could make on an extremely low budget and lengthen as much as you want. I enjoyed the whole gaming development, which made me feel like a film director.
《Seabed》有许许多多不同的场景，这导致我要花很多的时间和精力来收集并整理大量的图片和声音素材。根据这些经历，我认为视觉小说比较适合用来讲述一些发生在数量有限的固定场所的故事，比如校园生活。在我认为制作视觉小说是很有挑战性的同时，我也认为视觉小说能够帮助你更好地以你自己想要的方式表达每种感觉的微妙差别和氛围，例如使用对话中的暂停、角色的面部表情、吸引玩家注意力的音效以及让玩家留下对某个场景的印象的背景音乐等等。从这个角度来看，我感觉视觉小说就像是一部制作成本极低并且能够随心所欲增加内容的电影。我很享受整个游戏开发的过程，这让我感觉自己像个电影导演。
Matt S: Can you tell me how you arrived at the character designs for the art? Did the artist read the VN and then build a character around their impressions, or was a different creative process involved?
问：可以说一下你们是怎么决定角色的美术设计的吗？画师是否是在阅读视觉小说文本后凭借自己的印象设计角色？还是说采用了其他的方式？
hide38: I was responsible for both the writing and the character art, so there was no communication between the writer and the artist regarding character designs, yet I asked AKIRA for feedback on my art to see if the way the characters looked fitted the way they spoke in text or if there was anything wrong with the art itself. The most challenging thing was designing outfits because I wasn't good at it in the first place.
hide38：写作和角色的美术设计都是我负责的，所以在角色设计方面并没有写手和画师之间的交流。不过我还是会向AKIRA征求意见，以确保角色的外貌符合她们平时说话的风格，或者确保在美术本身上没有出现问题。最大的挑战就是衣服的设计，因为我在这方面并不擅长。
AKIRA: hide38’s four-panel manga series had already featured not just Sachiko and Takako, but Mayuko, Sanae, and Kozue, and their designs didn’t change greatly. The only noticeable change was Kozue's hairstyle: Her hair was initially very short, and we made it long so she could look cuter as a little girl.
AKIRA：hide38的四格漫画最初不仅仅只有佐知子和贵呼两个角色，还包括茧子、早苗和梢，她们的角色设计后来并没有比较大的改变。唯一明显的变化就是梢的发型：她的头发一开始是很短的，我们后来让她变成长头发，这样她作为小女孩看起来会更可爱一些。
hide38 gave birth to the characters of Narasaki and Nanae in his process of expanding the story, and he first made their character artworks based off of his imagination and then brushed them up with my feedback on them. Honestly, though, I didn't give him that much feedback because I was already a big fan of his manga (laugh)
hide38在进一步扩展故事的过程中又新创造了楢崎和七重这两个角色，他一开始根据自己的想象设计了这两个角色的外貌，并根据我的意见对她们进行了修改。不过老实说，我并没有给他那么多的建议，因为我已经是他画的漫画的狂热粉丝了(笑)。
Matt S: Do you think SeaBed could have worked as a narrative if you took a more “gamey” approach to it? Why/why not?
问：你们是否认为如果你们给《Seabed》添加更多的游戏性，它会成为一部更有叙事性的作品？为什么？
hide38: On the early stage of development, we did consider building a dialogue choice feature, but we ended up avoiding it because the more I wrote, the more easily I could imagine I wouldn’t be able to wrap the story up with such a feature. Other “gamey” ideas we had in mind were 1) that the story unfolds in one single chronological order, and the player chooses a character whose point of view they want to read the story from, or 2) a random text generator. These ideas derive from the fact that we were interested in creating a visual novel that gave you a slightly different impression when you replay it, yet in the end we decided we would make our game better by focusing on one fixed story.
hide38：在最初的创作阶段，我们确实有考虑过给游戏添加分支对话选项，但是最后我们还是没有这么做，因为随着我写的内容越来越多，我愈发感觉到如果我们给游戏添加对话选项的话，我就无法把故事讲好。我们还想到过别的能够增加游戏性的点子：(1)故事以时间顺序展开，玩家一开始从多个角色中选择一个自己感兴趣的角色，然后通过该角色的第一视角来阅读整个故事。(2)随机文本生成器。我们对创作一部当玩家每次重玩都能有不同印象的视觉小说很有兴趣，所以就想出了这些主意，但是最后我们还是觉得把注意力集中在一个固定的故事上能让我们的作品变得更好。
AKIRA: SeaBed could’ve worked as, say, an adventure game. But if SeaBed were an adventure game with dialogue choices and multiple endings, it would obscure the feelings and meanings that SeaBed the visual novel gives at the end, because SeaBed’s story doesn’t show any crystal-clear goals like ones in romance-focused visual novels or fighting games.
AKIRA：《Seabed》其实本来也可以像一部冒险游戏一样。但是如果《Seabed》是一个具有对话选项和多结局的冒险游戏的话，会淡化故事结局所带来的感受和意义。因为《Seabed》的故事并不像那些以恋爱为主要内容的视觉小说或格斗游戏一样有着清晰的目标。
I bet I would’ve given up on SeaBed if I’d had to put in any complicated feature. I was a beginner game programmer back then and simply had no room to do anything other than the minimum to make a game that actually worked.
我敢打赌如果我不得不要给《Seabed》添加一些复杂的元素的话，我一定会放弃《Seabed》的制作。毕竟我只是个游戏编程方面的新手，制作一个在最低限度上能玩的游戏就已经很不容易了，真的没有多余的精力去给游戏添加一些更复杂的东西。
Matt S: The game’s core theme (at least the way I interpreted it) was the transitory and fragile nature of memory – how easily things can be lost, and conversely how precious they are precisely because they are so fragile. How did you research and develop this theme, and were you sharing observations on reality in exploring that theme?
问：游戏的主题(至少我是这样解读的)是记忆的短暂和脆弱——回忆是多么容易被丢失以及相反地它们是多么的珍贵，因为它们如此脆弱。你们是如何探讨并发展这个主题的？可以分享一下你们在现实中有关这方面的观察吗？
hide38: Just as you mentioned, I was sharing in SeaBed my own experiences in and observations on reality. While I was writing SeaBed, I’d always jot down my thoughts or things that I found interesting, asking myself if I could use any of this for the game. The game has many different themes in it, both great and small. “Memory” is definitely a big one, and if you’ve felt something about it from playing the game, that makes me very happy. But I doubt I'd set “memory” as a theme at the beginning of my writing and then researched and developed it over time. Things happen every day, and each individual deals with them in their own way - “memory” was a theme/concept that popped up in my mind while I was describing how people in the game were dealing with their everyday stuff, or so I believe. So, if you ever felt something, even if a tiny little thing, from playing the game, then that makes me very happy.
hide38：就像你所说的那样，我在《Seabed》中就是在分享我在现实中的经历与观察。在《Seabed》的写作过程中，我总是写下我自己觉得有趣的想法和事物，并询问自己是否可以将这些东西用到游戏中去。这个游戏包含很多不同主题，既有大的也有小的。“记忆”确实是其中比较大的一个方面，如果你在玩游戏的过程中对这方面有所感受的话，那么我会感到很高兴。但我怀疑我在刚开始写作的时候就已经把“记忆”作为一个主题，并在整个过程中不断探讨并发展它。每天都会发生各种各样的事情，每个人都以自己的方式处理它们。当我在描述游戏中的角色是如何处理她们每天遇到的事情的时候，我脑海里冒出了“记忆”这个主题/概念，至少我是这么想的。所以，如果你通过玩这款游戏，感受到了什么东西，即使是那些细微的东西，我都会感到很开心。
AKIRA: We actually visited San Francisco. A southern island, too (laughs). I especially enjoyed working on the prologue because it was like looking back on memories of those trips. Besides experience and observations on reality, we were also influenced by many kinds of movies we’d watched.
AKIRA：实际上我们有去过旧金山一趟。那也是一座位于南方的岛（笑）。在做最初的剧情部分的时候，我十分享受，因为一开始的剧情就像是对那些旅行的回忆。除了现实中的经历和观察外，我们也受到了我们所看过的各种各样的电影的影响。
Matt S: Do you think we’ll get to the point that Visual Novels are respected as works of literature? Are we going to have storytellers that have the cultural resonance of Soseki, Dazai or Mishima down the track… or do we already have VNs that you think will be seen in that light?
问：你们是否认为视觉小说会被人们当作文学作品来看待？以后是否会出现能够反映出夏目漱石、太宰治或三岛由纪夫在文化上所带来的影响的故事讲述者？或者现在是否已经存在你们认为符合这一点的视觉小说？
hide38: I’m not sure because I haven’t read those classic works of literature. But I’m interested in them so I’m going to read some when I have the time.
hide38：我不确定，因为这些作家的作品我还没读过。但是我对它们感兴趣，有时间的话我会试着去读一读的。
AKIRA: I’m not sure. I don’t tend to read those kinds of books.
AKIRA：我不知道。我并不打算去读这类书籍。
Matt S: Visual Novels seem to be one of the few spaces within video games that explore yuri themes – what do you think is the appeal of the “genre” in VNs that doesn’t necessarily translate elsewhere?
问：视觉小说似乎是游戏领域中少数涉及百合题材的游戏种类之一。你们觉得在视觉小说中，百合题材具有哪些其他题材所不具备的独特魅力？
hide38: I’m sorry but I don’t have much to say about this topic, because I hardly play visual novels. One thing I can say, though, is that the biggest benefit we got from using the visual novel genre was that we were able to make the game as big as we wanted to.
hide38：很抱歉关于这个话题我回答不了什么，因为我很少接触视觉小说。不过有一点我可以说的是，视觉小说给我们带来的最大优势是我们可以随心所欲地延长游戏的流程。
AKIRA: On social media, you can find yuri illustrations posted with comments by the artists. I believe those comments make the illustrations many times better and more attractive. In yuri visual novels, the comments are replaced with sentences, music, and many other things, and I think it’s the appeal of the genre in visual novels. I know it’s not something that applies only to the yuri genre, but still.
ARIKA：在社交媒体上，你可以找到不少附带有画师自己的评论的百合插画。我觉得画师的评论让这些插画变得更具有魅力和吸引力。在百合视觉小说中，画师的评论被文本、音乐和其他别的东西所替代，我觉得这就是百合题材在视觉小说中所体现出的魅力。我知道这些东西并不仅仅对百合题材有效，但我确实是这么想的。
Matt S: Have you been surprised by how enduring SeaBed has been? It seems to me that where most video game genres are characterized by having an explosive launch and rapid drop away, it’s almost standard that the best visual novels have a modest launch but continue to be “rediscovered” for years.
问：已经过去这么久了，依然有人继续喜欢着《Seabed》这部作品，你们是否对此感到惊讶？在我看来，大多数游戏类型都是一开始很火，然后过了不久人气又迅速降下去了，但是对于最优秀的视觉小说作品来说，它们一般都是一开始没多少人气，但是过了许多年后人们依然持续不断地重新发现它们身上的优秀之处。
hide38: Yes, and I still am. I hope more people play the game.
hide38：是的，我到现在都很惊讶。我希望能有更多的人接触这部作品。
AKIRA: I'm surprised. Extremely. To be completely honest, I didn't even expect SeaBed would be accepted by anyone. We brought only 50 copies of the game to the first doujin event where we sold it. We even priced the game as low as we could because we weren’t confident that those 50 copies would sell out there. We just wanted someone to play the game. Anyone. I can’t believe how many people have now played and liked it. It’s like a dream.
AKIRA：我感到相当意外。说实话，我都完全没期望《Seabed》会被任何人所接受。第一次在同人展会上出售《Seabed》时，我们只带了50份。我们甚至还尽可能地把游戏的价格定得低一些，因为我们并没有把这50份全卖出去的信心。我们只想着让一些人能够玩这部游戏，不论玩的人是谁。我难以相信现在居然有那么多人在享受这部游戏。这简直就像一场梦。
Matt S: Aside from SeaBed (of course), what would your “canon” reading list for visual novels be? What five or six would you recommend people new to the genre start with.
问：除了《Seabed》（当然），你们的视觉小说推荐列表是怎样的？可否给那些刚接触视觉小说的人推荐个五、六部？
hide38: I've only finished two visual novels so far: -
Shisha no Yobu Yakata
Atlach=Nacha
If you've played them, you should know how much they influenced me...!
hide38：目前我只看完了两部视觉小说。
呼唤死者之馆
Atlach-Nacha
如果你有玩过它们，那么你就应该会知道它们对我的影响有多大……
AKIRA:
Steins;Gate
Fate/stay night
Higurashi When They Cry
My list isn't too interesting but I played these games in their prime. I haven't played many visual novels either, and I only know the most popular ones like above. Out of the three VNs, Fate inspired me the most and was the reason why I chose the Kirikiri engine to develop SeaBed.
AKIRA：
命运石之门
Fate/stay night
寒蝉鸣泣之时
我的推荐列表并不太有意思，但是这些游戏我在它们人气正火的时候都有玩过。我也没玩过多少视觉小说，我只知道像以上这些最有人气的作品。在这三部作品中，对我影响最大的是Fate系列，这也是为什么我选择了使用吉利吉利引擎（用于开发视觉小说游戏的工具）来开发《Seabed》。
