To talk about Shinji Mikami is to refer to one of the greatest geniuses of Japanese video games. We owe him the Resident Evil installments that cemented the Survival Horror genre, being the spearhead of a successful career at Capcom or PlatinumGames. In 2010, Mikami decided to start from scratch (with what he had learned) by building Tango Gameworks, giving us games like The Evil Within, Ghostwire: Tokyo and producing the successful Hi-Fi Rush… Until 2023 Why leave everything again to start over? new? According to his words, He considered leaving Tango eight years after saying goodbye.
In a podcast interview for the YouTube channel of ByKing, which you can see below, a Shinji Mikami fully integrated into the creation of new projects at the head of Kamuy, his new studio, spoke for the first time about the reasons why he decided to take a step back and start again. The story told in short: despite being the founder of Tango, he actually he felt like any other employee
The gist: for years Mikami saw himself trapped in the Horror video game genre and wanted to produce smaller scale, but more original games. Something that, as he will explain, he could only do through a new studio because in Tango, despite being the producer of each game, he considered himself one more and even stated that he was only CEO for half a year.
“I was only the CEO [de Tango Gameworks] for six months. I think many people had the impression that I was the representative of the company, but the truth is that my responsibility was practically that of just another employee. “Usually my name came with the title of producer, but I wasn’t an executive or anything like that.”
To put ourselves in context, and as the creative himself explained, the beginnings of Tango were very uphill and Bethesda (technically ZeniMax Media) supported them and encouraged them. And this is where things gain nuance: as he explains, Tango Gameworks is not the name of a company, but rather the name of a department, since the company is ZeniMax Asia KK
So, Why did you stay in Tango for so long? As he explains, he chose to stay because he felt responsible for the ongoing projects, which caused him to extend his departure until shortly after the launch of Hi-Fi Rush, his latest contribution to Bethesda. Thus, and after a period of one year from his departure, (as is tradition in Japan) he began to build Kamuy and, through this new company, shape his next works.
In fact, Mikami does not give clear clues about what he is doing, but it is definitely not another triple-A survival horror: his idea is to offer smaller-scale games that provide opportunities for young creators both to give free rein to their ideas and to gain experience, offering something that – we are not going to deny – the video game industry has been crying out for some time: not so big games developed in shorter cycles so that there is a good flow between new projects.
Many things can be said about Shinji Mikami, and practically all of them are good. But if there is one thing that has become clear since Capcom gave him great opportunities, it is that he is a visionary capable of being years ahead of what is happening in the world of video games and even setting the standards. And although he has not specified what he is working on since Kamuy, his philosophy and his master touch are already enough for us to follow them closely. For everything else, We will let ourselves be surprised.
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