“Management Needs To Protect Creators;” Ex-NetEase Developer From Ouka Launches New Studio

A video game industry veteran speaks out on its current state, as he announces the launch of his new studio.

Kenji Ozawa has been in the industry for at least three years, starting out in Bandai Namco. As he explained in this interview with Automaton last year, he uprooted to Guangzhou, China, as he correctly predicted that China’s game industry was about to pick up steam.

It was in this capacity that he joined NetEase and was made co-director of Ouka Studios, alongside Ryosuke Yoshida. Ouka was a hybrid studio that had offices in China and Japan, and as Ozawa knew some Chinese, he was in an ideal position to work with the Chinese developers. Ouka’s first and only project was Visions of Mana, the first game in the franchise in 14 years.

Before Visions of Mana even got released, NetEase decided to close down the hybrid studio. Yoshida went to join Square Enix, but Ozawa seems to have made interesting new moves of his own.

As reported by Automaton today, Ozawa has founded a new studio of his own, called Studio Sasanqua. Sasanqua seems to be funded by Ozawa himself, so this isn’t going to be as big an endeavor out the gate as Hideki Kamiya’s CLOVERS.

Automaton talked to Ozawa about his new studio. It seems his initial plan is to make smaller scale projects on Unreal Engine, hopefully to move on up to full scale PC and console games in the future.

But Ozawa’s reasoning for launching his own studio should give the whole industry pause. As he’s explained, in his experience working in video games in Japan and China, he saw multiple cases where management would not take responsibility for games.

As he explains it, even when it’s management that makes decisions that could lead to profits or losses, whenever they make mistakes the developers are the ones who are punished.

And so, Ozawa asserts his conviction that “management needs to protect creators.” Ozawa says that he intends to take responsibility if he makes mistakes running Studio Sasanqua, to set an example for others to follow.

Indeed, Ozawa didn’t name NetEase in particular, even if he was personally affected by their management’s decisions. And that may be because he correctly identifies this as a problem in the video game industry around the world.

Ozawa may not necessarily be lacking in work, as he’s already made a name for himself. Studio Sasanqua is entering a Japanese industry that is increasing its number of new studios founded by veteran developers, including Dragami Games, UNSEEN Studio, and Itagaki Games Co. Ltd.

There’s a cottage industry of studios that do outsource work in Japan as well, but these studios are taking bets on their own visions and talents to make console and PC games. Many of them are completely original games, and if they were made with the same conviction as Ozawa has, they may yet be the future of Japanese games.