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Ikumi Nakamura Introduces Her New Studio Unseen

TwiztidElf

Member
Z8gin4D.jpg
 

CamHostage

Member

Art designer, creative director of Ghostwire Tokyo, and kind of all-around voice-of-the-team formerly of Capcom/Clover, PlatinumGames, and Tango Gameworks.

 
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ParaSeoul

Member
No im pretty sure she had a lot to do with the direction of Bayonetta also and some other good clover studio games
She did the background art for Okami which is all of her contribution to clover studio and was a concept artist for bayonetta. Most shes ever done was being the lead artist for the evil within games.
 
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CamHostage

Member
Don't expect much,only reason she got attention was acting like a retard on stage...
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She did the background art for Okami which is all of her contribution to clover studio and was a concept artist for bayonetta. Most shes ever done was being the lead artist for the evil within games.

I mean, nobody has to care about Ikumi Nakamura. She doesn't have a published game director credit yet, she left her major directorial project before it launched (four years into development, with another two years to go before the game would be finished,) she had at least one other bite at the apple that didn't get picked up for producing, and most of her career was in art design rather than game creation. Nakamura could well be a flash-in-the-pan creator who ultimately never lives up to all the ink.

On the other hand, nobody needs to be a bully about it either, just because she caught some spotlight. Nakamura has been in the business for over 15 years and has worked at legendary Japanese studios for some of the most revered designers in the business. She was key art staff on a number of projects, and the great Shinji Mikami had picked her out of the art group to lead a full game development project at Tango Gameworks (he had initially pulled her into Tango immediately upon founding his own business.) And she's got enough heat in the industry right now to start up a studio, in Japan, to make horror games.

Like, okay, be mad at the press for elevating her celeb status if that's something burning a hole in your heart, but this is a good thing that a new studio is starting up with momentum in a genre in Japan that could use momentum.
 
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The most exciting news here is that we have another Japanese horror director/studio. The options have been slim to dire lately.

Resident Evil is the moneymaker.
Fatal Frame is hanging on by a thread.
Shinji Mikami is hoping Ghostwire succeeds.
Silent Hill is beyond dead.
Kojima keeps trolling everyone with Guillermo.
Sony’s Japan studio has dissolved.
 

CamHostage

Member
The most exciting news here is that we have another Japanese horror director/studio. The options have been slim to dire lately.

Resident Evil is the moneymaker.
Fatal Frame is hanging on by a thread.
Shinji Mikami is hoping Ghostwire succeeds.
Silent Hill is beyond dead.
Kojima keeps trolling everyone with Guillermo.
Sony’s Japan studio has dissolved.

I'm guessing you know this already, but as far as Sony's Japan Studio, the group there into horror ventured out and is making Slitterhead:




(BTW, we don't need to go into it since I agree anyway that J-Horror gaming needs more studios, but Japan Studio hadn't made a horror game since 2008's Siren project, and before that hadn't done much horror except the first Siren in 2003... the subgroup at Sony Japan were called Team Siren, but probably it was always a misplaced hope that Toyama and his group would make the next big horror game when they were doing Gravity Rush and probably had most hands taken up at the time of closure by the supposed RaySpace sci-fi project.) (So, hopefully this move towards independent studios forming in Japanese game development will lead to a brighter future in the wake of many major Japanese publishers dragging anchor the past few years. And hopefully, some good horror games will come out of it.)
 
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ParaSeoul

Member
I mean, nobody has to care about Ikumi Nakamura. She doesn't have a published game director credit yet, she left her major directorial project before it launched (four years into development, with another two years to go before the game would be finished,) she had at least one other bite at the apple that didn't get picked up for producing, and most of her career was in art design rather than game creation. Nakamura could well be a flash-in-the-pan creator who ultimately never lives up to all the ink.

On the other hand, nobody needs to be a bully about it either, just because she caught some spotlight. Nakamura has been in the business for over 15 years and has worked at legendary Japanese studios for some of the most revered designers in the business. She was key art staff on a number of projects, and the great Shinji Mikami had picked her out of the art group to lead a full game development project at Tango Gameworks (he had initially pulled her into Tango immediately upon founding his own business.) And she's got enough heat in the industry right now to start up a studio, in Japan, to make horror games.

Like, okay, be mad at the press for elevating her celeb status if that's something burning a hole in your heart, but this is a good thing that a new studio is starting up with momentum in a genre in Japan that could use momentum.
Didn't read but I'm sure you made some good points.
 

FingerBang

Member
Don't expect much,only reason she got attention was acting like a retard on stage.
Yeah, i have to agree with this point. She annoyed the hell out of me, but that's apparently what people want so more power to her and them. I found it odd the same people who are angry at the patriarchy and crap like that are fine with an adult woman acting like she's out of an anime. Stereotypes are basically fine sometimes.

I have no reason to be excited about her own studio though and I agree the only reason we care about her is she acting like a retard on stage.
 
I like her as a personality, but there is still much for her to prove herself as the head of a studio. Not trying to discredit the woman, but I hope her next project can be a banger, especially if it has action and horror mixed into it.
 

Castef

Banned
This will be interesting.

Nakamura is able to gather lots of media attention, yet I guess she still has to prove the ability do produce her own games.

A very atypical person in today's videogame panorama.

I'm very curious to see how this develops.
 
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Shifty1897

Member
Japan's Jade Raymond. Can't complain about another studio attempting to make horror games though, since there are so few.
 
She like a japanese Jade Raymond.

Japan's Jade Raymond.
Yup that's pretty accurate and the impression I get.

I read up on her, and, sorry to say, but her career is pretty lackluster. I would almost describe it as "failing upwards."

But I do commend her on starting her own studio; starting a business enterprise of any sort takes guts. Good luck to the team, and (as a fan of horror games myself) looking forward to anything cool and interesting they do! 👍🏾
 
Yup that's pretty accurate and the impression I get.

I read up on her, and, sorry to say, but her career is pretty lackluster. I would almost describe it as "failing upwards."

But I do commend her on starting her own studio; starting a business enterprise of any sort takes guts. Good luck to the team, and (as a fan of horror games myself) looking forward to anything cool and interesting they do! 👍🏾
I just don't see how this company is going to be successful. She left mid development of Ghostwire Tokyo due to stress then she decides to start a video game company? She couldn't handle being a creative director, so now she's going to be a owner of a company and creative director for a game that may very well decide the fate of her company? That doesn't sound like a recipe for success.
 
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I just don't see how this company is going to successful. She left mid development of Ghostwire Tokyo due to stress then she decides to start a video game company? She couldn't handle being a creative director, so now she's going to be a owner of a company and creative director for a game that may very well decide the fate of her company? That doesn't sound like a recipe for success.
100% agree with you. From an almost purely logical standpoint, this is being built on shaky ground and will likely not end well.

Still, we can wish her well, though. The gaming industry can always use more creative outlets, and more positivity in general.
 
100% agree with you. From an almost purely logical standpoint, this is being built on shaky ground and will likely not end well.

Still, we can wish her well, though. The gaming industry can always use more creative outlets, and more positivity in general.
I think the only way this works if she decides to be hands off and allows someone else to be the creative director and she handles management duties. It most likely will be a smaller studio with smaller budgets which should be easier to manage.
 
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Porcile

Member
I just don't see how this company is going to be successful. She left mid development of Ghostwire Tokyo due to stress then she decides to start a video game company? She couldn't handle being a creative director, so now she's going to be a owner of a company and creative director for a game that may very well decide the fate of her company? That doesn't sound like a recipe for success.

It is quite possibly less stressful and more fulfilling than being a suck-up at a J-company.

Good for her for going independent and doing her own thing. The Japanese games industry needs way more of that.
 

Tams

Gold Member
Anyway, that studio looks like it would be hell to work in. A few tiny windows above head height, just to make sure you are reminded that there's an outside world.

I guess they will be working on a horror game...
 

justiceiro

Marlboro: Other M
I just don't see how this company is going to be successful. She left mid development of Ghostwire Tokyo due to stress then she decides to start a video game company? She couldn't handle being a creative director, so now she's going to be a owner of a company and creative director for a game that may very well decide the fate of her company? That doesn't sound like a recipe for success.
I'm pretty sure she quit because she got pregnant at the time.

If Dr. Disrespect can have his studio, than so can she.
 
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I'm pretty sure she quit because she got pregnant at the time.
From Wikipedia:

"However, Nakamura left the project and the company mid-development in 2019 due to her declining health.[4] The stress of developer-publisher politics and the publisher's ultimate control over Ghostwire: Tokyo left her unable to sleep and struggling with daily nightmares.[1]"

EDIT: also not sure what the Dr. Disrespect comment has to do with anything. No one is saying she can't have her studio; in fact some people in this thread are celebrating it (and I did commend it myself.) But the fact remains that her track record is exceptionally weak and can reasonably make one question the potential success of this new studio.
 
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