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?)
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 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.
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.
Yeah, as you mentioned, it’s quite a split interns of mobile vs console/pc market. And we have games that fails(just look at recent EA/MS games that tried to push mtx/battle pass) because there simply isn’t enough time in the world’s console/pc game population to commit to 2+ more pass/weekly event games. I play only rocket league + whatever single player games and only dip into other multiplayer short term. So guess what kind of game I don’t spend money on or even trying when it’s F2P?
Your assumption is based on once you switch to live service model you will make more money, however that’s not true. You can only do live service model when you have enough player retention, player that keep coming back because you have enough new content to play, and that player base with carefully done monetization makes you money(player willing to spend money is proportional to the player base and social impact). Look at Halo Infinity, such a big IP that fails spectaulary, and if you are investment company, you willing to push the same self destruction button?
We are talking about people that handling billions of fund and try to make their career looks good, not worse.
Would they push for monetization once they hit jackpoy and have good candidate that can make the transition? Sure. Is that something you can see from Kamiya’s past games? I don’t think so. So if it is Tencent give money to Kamiya and let him do his stuff, I am sure that they trust him enough to make quality games that turns profit.
We are talking about people that handling billions of fund and try to make their career looks good, not worse.
Yeah, and it's because I see what investors do that I cannot trust their good sense. They make stupid mistakes out of not understanding the market, or callously profitable but ultimately destructive decisions for short term gain all the time, and it only got worse in recent years. If investors thought long term and were easily satisfied, we wouldn't see nearly as many companies declining in quality as we do. A chief concern for them is always making a greater profit than before, and there is only so far that can be pushed without negative effects to the customers.
Too many live service games are not viable? That definitely doesn't stop their publishing arm, and again, I see no reason why they would be so separate in stances. They know how to make that work best, after all. I agree with you that it wouldn't be wise, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't do it.
Thankfully, so far Tencent hasn't done that yet. But people also had a lot of hope for Embracer Group reviving neglected studios, only for it to fall apart and close a bunch of them. I wouldn't put that much hope on financial interests swooping in and saving the day. It's not what they do.
hope for Embracer Group reviving neglected studios
I am not quite into that accquisition sub-culture but remember when there were a lot of acquisitions that seems semi-malicious? They resulted in key figures departure, sequels flop hard, and projects eventually stopped existing. My personal take on Embracer is that they wanted to buy existing IPs that they can do the following:
license out IP to people studio that wants to do remaster(ie. like recent Quake 1/2 remaster by Bethesda license to Nightdive ) or prequel/sequel/reboot
restructure companies they have and make new ones, these company have experienced creative leads/devs that can push new IPs they wanted to do
sell on good old games, humble bundles to milk some left over values.
sometimes owning old IPs comes with some perk like Hollywood run out of ideas and then start making game movies.
