First reported by Japanese site GameWatch and translated by Automaton, Silent Hill producer Motoi Okamoto revealed a surprising demand placed on Silent Hill f’s scenario (or story) team: Read a ton of books.
Okamoto spoke in a lecture at Japan’s CEDEC 2026—that’s “CESA Developer’s Conference” longwise, or “Computer Entertainment Supplier’s Association Developer’s Conference” extra longwise.
In his talk, “The Art of Producing Silent Hill,” Okamoto said that he believes being well-read is an important trait for videogame producers to cultivate, and that reading the entire body of work by any game writer he collaborated with was a matter of “basic respect.”
But that drive for literacy doesn’t just stop with Okamoto. In the interest of having strong “input” for the developers, Okamoto said that, “within the team, we put pressure on each other, especially among the scenario writers, to read at least 100 to 200 books a year.”