During the Game Awards, we found out that Hideki Kamiya has been brought back by Capcom to make a new Ōkami game. However, as it turns out, there’s a lot going on behind the scenes at PlatinumGames.
Kamiya has revealed new information about CLOVERS Inc. over the weekend. As it turns out, this isn’t the return of Clover Studio in Capcom. Instead, it’s a new independent game company established just last October. Kamiya is Studio Head, Executive Director, and Game Designer, and Kento Koyama is President and CEO.
We had some difficulty finding out about Koyama, but his MobyGames profile credits him on PlatinumGames’ title World of Demons. This Crunchyroll interview names him as that game’s lead designer and co-director. So Koyama may simply one of many Japanese game industry veterans whose work has mostly gone out of the public eye.
And then, in a new interview, Kamiya let everything out about what led to his exit. This interview was with Japanese game magazine Den-fami Nico and translated on ResetEra by user vestan. We’ll share our summary and commentary below.
Apparently, everything stems from 2020, when facing issues with capital funding, PlatinumGames took an investment from Chinese conglomerate TenCent. At the time, the man in charge was Kenichi Sato, and he claimed at the time that this investment would not affect the company’s independence. Two years later, Sato stepped down, with Atsushi Inaba taking over the position.
Inaba co-founded PlatinumGames with Kamiya and Shinji Mikami, and all three also had a history in Clover Studio and Capcom. Inaba was CEO of Clover Studio, and so these Capcom/Clover/PlatinumGames staff have been used with him being in charge for decades. Inaba was CEO and producer for the original Ōkami.
Kamiya shared a lot of indicting claims about Inaba. Even before becoming president, Inaba pushed for PlatinumGames to shift into live-service titles immediately. In fact, they did have one such title in the works for TenCent, but it was eventually cancelled.
The one live service project they did release, action RPG Babylon’s Fall, was a monumental failure for them and publisher Square Enix. Now, the straw that broke the camel’s back for Kamiya was Inaba’s push to make Project G.G. live service.
For those who don’t remember, Project G.G. was an announced game that seemed to hint at being an Ultraman like action game. We reported in 2022 on Kamiya claiming that PlatinumGames had to become a publisher because this title was at such a huge scale.
Getting back to the interview, Kamiya says he tried to work things out on Project G.G.’s direction for three months, but couldn’t come to a compromise eventually. He also admitted that he wasn’t happy with how Project G.G. was shaping up.
He then repeated what he had said nearly the same time last year, on why he left PlatinumGames. To quote vestan’s translation here:
“That’s right. This is purely my personal opinion, but I thought, “If I continue working here, my artistic spirit will die.” As a result, I thought that I should not release a work that I cannot take responsibility for to the users.
However, I don’t think this is a matter of “which is better or worse.” I can understand the way PlatinumGames is as a company and its logic, and I was in the position of vice president myself, but as an individual named Hideki Kamiya, I was unable to embrace that way of thinking.”
But Kamiya also admits to feeling guilt over leaving the company, when he hadn’t done so where it would be in a strong position, as well as feeling he could no longer be PlatinumGames’ “muscle” to complement Inaba’s role as the studio’s “brain.”
There’s a lot that will be said in the future about PlatinumGames and CLOVERS in the future. What we want to point out here is that this is only the latest shakeup in the Japanese game industry as a whole.
There aren’t that many independent game studios in Japan, as most smaller studios, like Micronics, do outsource work for bigger game companies. CLOVERS is in the same position as Ikumi Nakamura’s UNSEEN, or Soleil Ltd, all originally founded by industry veterans who left bigger studios. We have also seen some industry veterans go back to working with bigger studios, such as Hironobu Sakaguchi and Yu Suzuki.
So, as much as it seems that the situation in PlatinumGames was untenable, Kamiya certainly took on some huge risks to go independent. But we certainly respect his desire to stick by his values and desire to express himself with his games. We wish the best for Kamiya and the rest of the people at CLOVERS.
