Kamiya left Platinum Games

Just announced on his twitter that he left the company. Pretty shocking and interesting to say the least, while we'll probably never know why, I can't help but speculate. Kamiya has always been the driving creative force behind the studio since it's inception, especially with the launch of Bayonetta. He worked on W101 afterwards, and also Sol Cresta. Most notably though was his idea for Scalebound, which got him in bad water with Microsoft. And Project G.G. which will probably never see the light of day going forward.

I honestly wonder why he left. He always seemed like quite the free spirit, quitting Capcom's main department to work at Clover, only to then leave again and start Platinum. I'm curious if maybe Microsoft reached out to them again and they wanted to work with them, and Kamiya just flat out refused. Another thing to consider might be his lackluster performance in terms of sales. Platinum has been a independant company for a while now, and the only truly succesful title with his name was Bayonetta. W101 famously underperformed and had arguably one of the worst kickstarter revivals ever. While Sol Cresta wasn't a smash hit either. Wonder if maybe he was pressured into making G.G. more mainstream, and he refused.

Or he just wanted to leave, that's extremely valid too. And I hope it's that reason. Just a guy that wants to make games by himself. He's already 52 years old, so maybe he just wants to do some wacky things before he retires.

How was the news for you? What are your thoughts on it and the man himself?

Don't really care. Not feeling Platinum these days.

sad news for me considering we will never know and see how project gg will look and how will it play. the game could have been revolutionary considering there aren't any games that have ultraman vs kaiju type stuff (and even if there are then I don't know their existence of it yet)

this is coming from someone who grew up with sentai's back in my childhood

all in all I really wished kamiya made project gg before he decided to make a retirement

but in the end things dont go according to plan

let the man rest, hes already 52. let him enjoy his life

> retirement
Going by the sound of his exit post, he's going to keep on creating. Wonder if he might end up at Nintendo at some point, he always spoke highly of them after they saved Bayonetta.

Kamiya leaving PG, Mikami left Tango. We’re about at the point where we’re going to see a lot of the top tier devs exit any kind of creative role, or the industry altogether.

Videogame-making is so meticulous I can't imagine how irritating it must be to watch every part of a system be undermined by mandated rotten features. Definitely not a good sign for non-Astral Chain 2 endeavors. Since it was rather sudden I don't expect others employees to follow suit.

Infinity_Divide wrote:Kamiya leaving PG, Mikami left Tango. We’re about at the point where we’re going to see a lot of the top tier devs exit any kind of creative role, or the industry altogether.

hopefully itsuno doesnt leave/quit capcom until he concludes the dmc franchise for good

I'm flabbergasted. pretty sure its due to creative differences regarding project GG otherwise i don't see any good reason for leaving. It would be interesting to see if project gg ever comes out. I remember They said it wasn't a pure action game which has me extremely curious. The biggest bummer is that it'll be a while before any new kamiya game.

>Mikami left Tango.

I think mikami left because he couldn't make the games he wanted to make. He only made evil within because bethesda forced him too. I find it funny that his best game is which he didn't intend to make.

>itsuno doesnt leave/quit capcom until he concludes the dmc franchise for good

i would like him to make new games rather than sequels. He has worked on 3 DMC game its time to give the rein to someone new. I watched his GDC dragons dogma presentation and he mentioned that he had ideas for quite a few new games including an action game that's not DMC. I'm already disappointed that he is working on Dragon's dogma sequel.

Project GG bros...
Anyway, this whole situation made me think about how many few authorial (for lack of a better word) game directors we have left. All the big ones are either retired, only have a couple of games left in them or got corrupted along the way, and there aren't that many new young and up-and-coming directors worth noting.
Curious to see where Kamiya will end up and if he'll direct anything new at all.

> He only made evil within because bethesda forced him too.


wait what? i thought mikami wanted to make the evil within as his final bang (by final bang i mean his final game) because he saw and thought that survival horror genre werent trying to be scary at all and rather were trying to be more action focused, kinda like re5 and re6. but i dont remember bethesda forcing mikami to make the evil within..


i personally liked the game because its definitely more horror/scarier than any resident evil (except for 7) but the bugs and glitches just ruin the game for me.. 

> mikami
Pretty sure he left due to Microsoft. Mikami had a lot of ill will towards the studio from what I recall, not sure why anymore I think it had to do with his meeting with them to bring Resident Evil to Xbox but finding info on it now is just impossible.

> itsuno
Guy clearly wants to do his own jam, which is Dragon's Dogma. Kinda wish he'd go back to making wacky fighting games with a small team. I get that fighting-games are pretty much 'dead' these days outside of e-sports which sucks, but I'd love to see Powerstone 3 or CvS3 for some great couch fun.

Honestly I feel a lot of these legendary veterans would perform way better with a small studio making small genius games instead of focusing all their power on making these big titles that eventually get held back by managers and massmarket appeal. The only one that wouldn't work for probably is Itagaki, he'd spend it all on strippers.

> evil within
First I've heard about him being forced to make that title. I did hear that Bethesda kinda forced the whole "Resident Evil 4 successor" mantra upon it, which infamously backfired. But never heard him forcing to make it. Source?

> authors
Only one that's still active in the business is the OG Kojima just doing whatever the fuck he wants (smoking with his favourite actors) and maybe SUDA/grasshopper.

That pretty shocking. Hopefully everything will go well for him.

> Honestly I feel a lot of these legendary veterans would perform way better with a small studio making small genius games instead of focusing all their power on making these big titles that eventually get held back by managers and massmarket appeal.

Based on God Hand alone (which is literally what you described here) I agree with this, but as much as I'd want this, I sadly don't think something like this can happen again.

>Kamiya
Guy can't catch a break. Hopefully we can get another game or two out of him yet. Bright side, I liked Bayo 3, and Astral Chain is a god game, so I think Platinum is in pretty good hands if they can keep the live service vultures at bay.

>Itsuno
Dragon's Dogma is love, Dragon's Dogma is life. It's been his baby since the early 2000s, I'd be more than happy for Itsuno to do nothing but Dragon's Dogma for the rest of his career.

>fighting games
I get the impression Capcom has decided on making Street Fighter their only fighting game going forward. Esports etc.

I wasn't sure what the reason could possibly be, but then after I saw this particular tweet, I feel pretty damn certain it was because of Platinum going in a direction he just can't truck with.

I've been resisting the "Platinum is a live service factory now" doomerism that's been going on since the evidence so far has been literally just one game plus their frankly PR speak claiming they want to do more, but this sets off a ton of alarms in my head.

I'm still going to hold off on my Platinum doomerism for now, but the moment they announce another live service, that's it. I'll start coping, then.

Really hope whatever happens, Kamiya and Platinum both manage to make something sing. I love Platinum, they've been my favorite developer for a long time, but they have NEVER reached Kamiya highs with any of their non-Kamiya-directed projects, save Vanquish I guess (based on what people have told me), and that's a literal Mikami game lol.

Tangential: The original Bayonetta is such a weird game because it's like, the one game they've made that feels like it transcends the means by which it was created: It has some silly surface level design decisions like the minigames and insta-death QTEs, but it truly feels like a game that was created well beyond the budget and resources that Platinum has actually ever had, whereas every other Platinum game I've played has had that kind of grungy barely-any-money/resources feeling to it.

Apparently he's going the Sakurai way, making edited youtube-videos for now to share game-dev knowledge and insights. There's some humor there, like how he's portraying himself as an out of luck out of money guy while he rides around his million dollar car. One important note is that he's not allowed to work in the industry for 1 year, contractually. This is pretty basic stuff, but still interesting to see here.

I wonder how many more classic game-dev legends will go to youtube. Sakurai might be starting a trend.

It's insane that Non compete agreements are a thing. Clown world we are living in. That Lambo caught me off guard. The red colour is unsurprising but the model looks ugly. I wonder if he and Mikami went car shopping together since he also has a mercedes or ferrari i think.

It would be fun if he did a commentary on his games like bayo. It would give me immense joy to see him suffer through DMC1 DMD nightmare fight.

What's interesting is that, depending on the country, that contract cannot even be enforced. In the Netherlands every company puts it in their contract, but due to the Constitution it cannot be enforced as it overrides it. But not everyone knows that, so many hold on to it.

> car shopping
Thought the exact same thing hahaha!

> letsplay
I'd kill to see that. His Bayo letsplay was great

> car shopping
Though it looks like a prop for a show, because the car number is too lucky. "ゆ50-00('Yu rei rei - rei rei', or just 'Yu go o - o o')"?

He is a funny child-man, like always.