Koji Igarashi Exiting Konami

This is very good news indeed. Konami has in my opinion seen the biggest fall of any studio the last gen of consoles in terms of the quality of their product, so this at least gives me hope that he could be on to better things. He sure wasn't getting anywhere at Konami anymore.

Mikami, Inafune, and now Igarashi. Seems like this is the story now days- prominent Japanese developers leaving their employee of many years to either join another company or start their own thing. I wonder what that means for the state of the industry in Japan- is it a sign that things aren't so hot or is it a sign of health? I'm think indie development is a good thing and great games continue to come from that part of the business. I think people also just get tired of making what their company wants to make and not give them to freedom to make what they want.

Appropriate username.

I'll happily throw money at Igarashi's inevitable Kickstarter: "Not-Castlevania Starring Bimon Selmont!"

Definitely a sign of health. The top talent behind all these fan-favorite games are ditching the Japanese corporate tradition and striking out on their own. They can work on their dream projects and the big companies will be forced to promote new talent and innovate or get left behind. Or keep making phone games for the domestic market, whatever.

Order of Ecclesia was amazing, and it's a shame Konami decided the grimdark reboot was the only possible future for Castlevania.

He wasn't ever going to be put back in charge of Castlevania again. Each Castlevania game he was working on was selling less and less, which is why the series got rebooted.

There's also no way they're going back to the classic style game either given how well LoS sold.

At the end of the day Konami wants to sell a $60 retail product with the Castlevania name on it and that's really not possible to do with the old style of Castlevania. People expect that type of game to be downloadable and/or cheap now days. Kickstarter is perfect for giving people these type of experiences as they can sell specifically to the audience that wants it, don't have to spend a bunch of money on marketing, pressing discs, etc, etc.

Well Castlevania was/is heading the same direction regardless if he stayed or not.

LoS2 is the end of the current Castlevania series and we're likely to hear about another Castlevania series starting up in the future, but chances are that it will be something different the way LoS was compared to the original series. I don't imagine that something different being a return to form though, mostly due to the fact that they want to charge $60 for it, ie make the most money possible off it.

The situation is kind of similar to that of Mega Man and Mighty No 9. Even though MN9 was hugely successful it was obvious that Capcom was never going to try/do that again with MM. They wanted that full retail priced store shelf product, whether it was a 3DS game (Legends 3) or that canceled FPS MM shooter.

Is the "work at one company for life" thing in Japan just going away?

I'm so ready for his Kickstarter!!!!

@indieslaw: It was always somewhat of a myth to begin with. Having a stable corporate salaryman job is one of the tropes that used to make up "the Japanese dream," so to speak, but even during bubble years in the 80s, Japan's economy was never that strong to facilitate such a thing for everyone who wanted in on it. To be certain, Japanese employment laws are by design meant to make it significantly more difficult for people to be fired for arbitrary reasons, but the reality has still always been that such a future has never been a completely certain thing for most anyone; at best, if you make it to a managerial position at a well-run company, chances are probably pretty good you can spend your career just working there for the duration of your working years if that's your thing, but otherwise people working at the grunt level have always still totally had stretches where they've had to go find work and change careers like the rest of us.

I don't remember the statistics off the top of my head since it's been several years since I've formally studied Japanese business and economics, but I do know that even in the best of times, people with lifelong employment have never made up a majority of the Japanese workforce. Globalization and the general economic realities that Japan is facing as a result of its 20-plus year-long post-bubble recession mean that the numbers are just lessening more and more. People who don't focus on Japan for studies or work are only beginning to notice this trend actually happening by way of people like Igarashi leaving, but this sort of thing has been happening for a long while now. On the flip side, Japan's entrepreneurial business culture traditionally languished in previous decades because the political and economical climates didn't really favor startups, but things are improving very quickly on that front, as typified by all of these veteran Japanese developers striking it out on their and often remaining successful. It's a very interesting time to be working and living in Japan right now in a lot of ways and I definitely remain curious to see how things pan out in the future.

Wonder what would happen if they all joined forces into one company ...

This is actually pretty exciting, I'd love to see what he could do unshackled from the constraints Konami put on him.

After Nanobreaker, it's tough for me to trust Igarashi on anything. That game was fucking atrocious.

Nanobreaker was only one game out of his entire library, and he had already proven himself with his 2D Castlevania entries. The guy knows how to craft compelling Metroidvania titles. And I don't know about Nanobreaker. Today is really the first I had ever looked seriously into it. Up till this news broke, the only mention I had heard of Nanobreaker anywhere was in a Game Trailers Top 10 Bloodiest Games video where it was surprisingly the #1 entry. I went to Youtube and watched some footage of it for a bit, and it honestly doesn't look like a terrible game.

@pepsiman: Wow, thank you for the thoughtful answer. I appreciate your insight. Would you suggest any resources for learning more about Japanese business culture? I just saw The Wind Rises, and I may have caught the bug.

It's interesting to see these days developers who have been working on AAA titles for many years leaving the big developer studios to make their own teams in the hopes of more independent creation.

Best of luck to him.

@basketsnake: hahaha. Nice.

Here comes a new series starring Dr. Social from Vampire: Master of Darkness. ~_^

Hopefully we'll see his new games soon. Bonus points if they're in stores.

@indieslaw: Apologies for the late reply! I've been busy with work and stuff the last few days. Anyway, I'm not super familiar with what's available in English for general consumption; most of my actual studying was done with textbooks produced for universities specifically and I read most of my actual Japanese news in Japanese anymore. I'd say that probably your best bet for keeping up to date on Japanese business and economic trends is to just follow Japan-specific news sites with English branches. The Japan Times is probably as good as it gets in terms of dedicated original English coverage on Japan, but I also know that the English branches for the Yomiuri, Asahi, and NHK should also serve you well. As with all news outlets, different organizations have different leanings, but to my knowledge, all four of those places are good about keeping the pure facts and whatnot in news pieces clean. Hope that's at least some help!

That's kind of like saying "Well, Jazz Jackrabbit sucked a dick, so I guess all of the Gears of War games must suck since Cliffy B made those games too!"

He's done Castlevania. That's the problem. He made SOTN, then rehashed it a million times on portables until he was blue in the face. Yeah, those games had their differences, but I'm being honest about it all. Konami used him as little more than a guy to continue making that one thing that people really liked over and over in a market that Nintendo owned like crazy. Konami knew the DS crowd would buy them even if they were half-assed, and luckily, they weren't.

Meanwhile, the stuff he has made OUTSIDE of Castlevania? The ones that I've played haven't been good. Nanobreaker is the top of the list; a rather dismal game with little replayability and half-assed gameplay. Otomedius Excellent? Not my cup of tea, and I remember it getting fairly middling reviews. Leedmees? *ugh*

So yeah, he makes Castlevania games, but if he's leaving Castlevania behind, I have little confidence in him doing much outside of it. I'd love to be proven wrong, but his endeavors outside of the franchise have been poor. Simple as that.

He said he's making a 2D game so it should be good.

@basketsnake:

You've seen Jiro Dreams of Sushi haven't you?

"I've decided to break out on my own to have the freedom to make the kind of games I really want to make"

Always awesome to hear that, especially from someone like Igarashi.