History Franchise / SilentHill

The first four entries in the ''Silent Hill'' franchise were developed by an internal team at Konami called "Team Silent", which consisted of "outcast" staff members who had failed to work well on other projects at the studio and had planned to leave the company due to clashing with the creative vision of the studio. The project Konami wanted them to put together was an action SurvivalHorror game overtly in the vein of ''Franchise/ResidentEvil'' for the Platform/PlayStation, as [[FollowTheLeader the parent company very transparantly hoped to capitalize on the commercial success]] Creator/{{Capcom}} had seen with their zombie-shooting series. But due to the nature of the team's inception and composition, work on the game floundered, with it only progressing after Konami lost faith in the project and decided to mostly leave the team to their own devices rather than cancel the game, thanks to the title's low budget. Team Silent would use the newfound freedom to switch tracks from trying to copy ''Resident Evil''[='s=] cheesy action-horror, towards a much more slower-paced, {{psychological horror}} experience inspired by director Keiichiro Toyama's interest in the occult and the works of Creator/DavidLynch. Positive reception to early demos reinvigorated Konami's interest in the project, with the company giving Team Silent more money and personnel to finish the game, which would go on to be a global critical and commercial success; though director Keiichiro Toyama would leave Konami regardless to create the ''VideoGame/SirenGames'' franchise at Creator/SonyComputerEntertainment.

The first four entries in the ''Silent Hill'' franchise were developed by an internal team at Konami called "Team Silent", which consisted of "outcast" staff members who had failed to work well on other projects at the studio and had planned to leave the company due to clashing with the creative vision of the studio. The project Konami wanted them to put together was an action SurvivalHorror game overtly in the vein of ''Franchise/ResidentEvil'', as [[FollowTheLeader the parent company very transparantly hoped to capitalize on the commercial success]] Creator/{{Capcom}} had seen with their zombie-shooting series. But due to the nature of the team's inception and composition, work on the game floundered, with it only progressing after Konami lost faith in the project and decided to mostly leave the team to their own devices rather than cancel the game, thanks to the title's low budget. Team Silent would use the newfound freedom to switch tracks from trying to copy ''Resident Evil''[='s=] cheesy action horror, towards a much more slower-paced, psychological horror experience inspired by director Keiichiro Toyama's interest in the occult and the works of Creator/DavidLynch. Positive reception to early demos reinvigorated Konami's interest in the project, with the company giving Team Silent more money and personnel to finish the game, which would go on to be a global critical and commercial success; though director Keiichiro Toyama would leave Konami regardless to create the ''VideoGame/SirenGames'' franchise at Creator/SonyComputerEntertainment.