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Already, Square-Enix has driven off Mistwalker founder Hironobu Sakaguchi, creator of Final Fantasy and the upcoming Xbox 360 RPGs Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey, and Yasumi Matsuno, director of titles like Final Fantasy Tactics and Final Fantasy XII. Sakaguchi said he can't even look back at his employment at the company without thinking of it as a troubled time. Matsuno was driven crazy to the point that he left midway through the development of Final Fantasy XII and has been barely heard from since (though he did pop up to say he's ¯interested in working with the Nintendo Wii). It's amazing to think that these guys are driving their most talented people insane while promoting character designers like Tetsuya Nomura to premiere directing roles.Outside of Square-Enix, late last year it was announced that Capcom's Clover Studio would be shutting down because three of its biggest members, Shinji Mikami (creator of Resident Evil and God Hand), Atsushi Inaba (producer of Viewtiful Joe and Okami), and Hideki Kamiya (director of Devil May Cry and Okami), had left to form their own company called Seeds. Before that, Mikami felt that he "couldn't invent new things within Capcom's big organization." He even stepped down from managing his own production studio to join Clover, a team dedicated to creating new and original experiences (though more than half of their output ended up involving Viewtiful Joe spin-offs). Shortly before Clover was dissolved by Capcom, Inaba gave an interview in which he was asked about the company being reinvigorated and making good games again. Inaba answered that with the way Capcom had been restructuring its teams and moving its staff around he wasn't sure if people would still feel the same way about them in the next few years, especially since the games being released now had been in the works for years before.
Also at Capcom, Yoshiki Okamoto, credited with creating Street Fighter and also overseeing production on Resident Evil, left to form Game Republic because of differing views on the future direction of Capcom and constraints he felt in his current position.
Head of Sonic Team Yuji Naka left SEGA to form Prope, another company established to create new intellectual properties. Before that, Rez and Space Channel 5 creator Tetsuya Mizuguchi left the company to form Q Entertainment, saying he couldn't explore the ideas he wanted to at SEGA anymore. Shortly after leaving, Mizuguchi even said that Japanese companies "aren't looking for new challenges, and they can't find a new way to do things." After trying to change things at SEGA himself to no avail, Mizuguchi left primarily because of this attitude.
At Nintendo, Masahiro Sakurai, who created Kirby and directed the Super Smash. Bros. series, left the company because he felt he couldn't create the games that he wanted to. He worked with Mizuguchi's Q Entertainment to develop Meteos for the Nintendo DS before Nintendo convinced him to come back to direct Smash Bros. Brawl for the Wii. I imagine Legend of Zelda director Eiji Aonuma is in a similar position considering the multiple times he's said that he's wanted to work on titles outside of Zelda, yet he keeps getting reeled back in to take on the next installment. If Zelda's any indication, he's clearly got ideas; unfortunately and for whatever reason, he hasn't been able to fully flesh them out with this franchise, and yet he can't seem to get a role doing anything else.
Considering that Japan has traditionally been where I've looked to for creative ideas and titles, I can't help but be a little concerned when I continue to hear that more people are leaving their jobs for more freedom. It's just as worrying when, in the face of Nintendo's Touch Generations successes, more and more people comment about a Japan that's becoming increasingly reluctant to embrace new games and ideas.
We all know it's hard to get new projects green lit for development, and we've also heard how large publishers such as Ubi Soft say that new iterations of franchises like Splinter Cell helped pave the way for more risky and creative projects such as Beyond Good and Evil. To offset the cost of developing Killer7, Capcom developed the Dynasty Warriors-inspired Devil Kings because, while Killer7 might sell well, they wanted to make something they "knew would sell" in Japan. Now I'm not going to cry fowl if for every Dynasty Warriors clone we get a Killer7, but the fact that there's been a steady stream of talented people leaving their companies leaves me worried.
Being creative and able to explore their ideas is what made these developers successful in the first place, so it's really a tragedy that so many of them are having such a difficult time doing what put them, and many times their company, on the map. On one hand, it may be liberating for the industry to have these people out there and working for themselves, but it does leave me wondering about the direction their respective publishers are heading in and the constrained state of their work environment. Even looking at this as just a simple fan of videogames, I can't see my favorite franchises and publishers staying as such without room to grow, and without people willing to take them into new territories. The worst thing that can happen would be to get more cases like that of Panzer Dragoon director Yukio Futatsugi, who was taken in by Microsoft to direct Phantom Dust and then left to waste away checking deliverables to see if they're okay, which he's still doing today.
That would truly be a shame.
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