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This is quite surprising to me as Kamiya co-founded Platinum Games, and I always considered it to be largely under his influence creatively.
I have no idea why he would leave the studio that was already largely under his control. Based on the quote at the end:
I have a sneaking suspicion he’ll pop up soon somewhere else, perhaps funded by a Chinese company.
I have to wonder if he wanted to sell Platinum Games to Tencent some time back when they were having financial troubles but he wasn’t allowed to, so he left on his own to have more financial stability for his games.
Platinum Games has a problem of putting out solid games but rarely owning the IP themselves, so by leaving Platinum, I guess Kamiya is really only leaving Wonderful 101 behind (IP wise), and I’m not sure how likely he was to revisit that anyways. (Though Platinum did jump through a few hoops to secure the rights to it, so who knows?)
This move is quite perplexing to me, honestly.
Toto asserted that he thinks Kamiya might reappear at a different studio supported by one of the Chinese tech behemoths.
Tencent?
honestly, this is a great test of this era. Tencent the investment company that throws money around the world to make more money is a far apart from that mtx game making publisher/studios. Like any venture capitals, the best investment is something you put money, does nothing and then profit. If you invest 50% in a company then have to assign half the board and have them point fingers smudge everything to gain total control, it does not make the investment sound, and it’s a money sink since non of your assigned board member needs to pull money or make a profit, they just need to be there pretending to give a fuck until the money runs dry or in some rare case, they actually succeeded then sell their bonus and move on. (no, they can’t just dispatch a Chinese over.)
As much as people don’t like to see that Tencent name, I think it would be cool for Kamiya san to have full control and make his own games. Heck, I don’t mind if it’s Tencent, Sony, MS or even freaking EA as long as Kamiya gets total creative freedom to run the company.
I wouldn’t be so trusting that all this investing money comes with no meddling.
I used to not trust that as well but it really depends on the people the runs the project. Like every other company investment company will have evaluation benchmark or metrics for different management styles. They do have control shares(with voting power), but the best ones are those you don’t need to do anything. ie. Tencent invested in Epic, not majority but sure they make 10x more than they initially invested and does not have to do anything to manage the company.
People like to think that Tencent(or any big publisher) wants to manage company like in RTS where you have to micro almost every unit just not that last bit(like auto attack when enemy in sight). But the reality is that’s a huge amount of work and paper trails everywhere for decision making. If later comes around for the finger pointing why the project/company not doing well, you are not going to get away with it. Yes, people may make stupid decision and some are ego/power tripping given that position, but the raw result will eventually leads to better management style for investing firm cause they have their own bottom lines to keep.
I wish I could have that amount of optimism.
These days, it’s simply a fact that overly monetized live service games make more money than simply selling a good finished game. It has been years already since mobile gaming surpassed the earnings of consoles and PCs combined. Tencent knows this, it’s how their publishing arm makes most of its money. It’s how they became the 2nd largest game publisher.
Frankly, I can’t see that side of their business staying uninvolved as they invest on other gaming companies. I can’t see them just being happy they don’t have to do anything, if they could pressure them into more monetization for more profits. To me it seems just a matter of time that this investment will have its cost.
