Ikumi Nakamura has always loved to be scared.
“I grew up with horror from an early age,” Nakamura says Inverse with a cheerful smile. “My life has always been filled with horror.”
Video games can be brutal, tense and scary. Growing up with Capcom’s Resident Evil games, Nakamura has worked on the survival horror series The Evil Within, as well as on bayonetta and Ghostwire: Tokyo. But she believes that making games should not come close to being a horrific experience. That’s why she founded her own independent game studio UNSEEN in March 2022.
“We attach the utmost importance to the mentality of the developers we hire. We believe that communication, an open mind and having people who can work with respect for others are the first step to a healthy environment,” she says of the studio’s philosophy.
Nakamura hasn’t revealed any details about the studio’s debut project yet, but she did provide some insight into the themes.
“The new IP will feature wild and unpredictable stories with cool stylized art. If I had to describe it in a few simple words, I’d say it’s emotionally and dramatically occult, like conquering evil with evil. There is a consistent theme in my work, and that theme is ‘relationships’ and ‘death’, both topics that are close to our hearts,” she says.
“I’m happy if we can respect creativity without creating unnecessary rules,” says Nakamura. “I also think that the balance between developer freedom and responsibility is important to keep the team healthy.”
Developing games is a notoriously difficult task. Sending a game can take long hours for months or even years at a time. The industry is full of stories about stressful, toxic and even violent work environments. It is a particularly challenging field for women, many of whom report wage inequality and fewer opportunities for promotion compared to their male counterparts. In the United States, workers are beginning to speak out against these harsh conditions, and a nascent union effort within the gaming industry suggests change is taking root, albeit more slowly than many would like.
Before founding UNSEEN, Nakamura worked at some of the most prestigious video game companies in Japan, including Capcom, PlatinumGames and Tango Gameworks. (Her former mentor at all three companies, Shinji Mikami, co-creator of the Resident Evil series, once described working at Capcom as “fun hell” and “a bit like being in a prison where I was allowed to make games freely.” .”)
“The balance between developer freedom and responsibility is important to keep the team healthy.”
At E3 in June 2019, she charmed gamers around the world with her endearing personality when she was introduced as the creative director of Ghostwire: Tokyo. (“I would die for her”, said a Twitter observer. Another explained her to be “everyone’s new crush.”) Just a few months later, she left Tango Gameworks due to burnout and mental health concerns. She had worked in the studio for nine years.
In a YouTube video with Japanese gaming outlet Game*SparkNakamura spoke candidly about what motivated her to leave Tango Gameworks and Ghostwire: Tokyo.
“I started to wonder if there wasn’t a way to make games while feeling better. I made the decision to stop before it was too late,” she said. “Rather than pile things on yourself, I think running away from something better is the healthier choice.”
Nakamura didn’t know what to do next. But thanks in part to her E3 fame, she befriended a number of iconic figures in game development abroad, including: Rainbow Six Siege creative director Leroy Athanassoff and god of war director Cory Barlog.
Posing for a photo with Barlog at Santa Monica Studios headquarters, Nakamura tweeted“The work environment was so great that I almost lost control of my bladder.”
Nakamura and Cory Barlog pose as Kratos and Atreus from Santa Monica Studios God of war.
Nakamura’s travels after Tango made it clear to her that she wanted a different kind of job and work environment than the one she had experienced for nearly twenty years.
“Being allowed to visit game studios abroad gave me the opportunity to rethink what a creative environment is,” she explains. “After working in the Japanese game industry for 17 years, I wanted to create a limitless studio, a limitless work environment. I’m not very good at languages, but I’ll give it a try to see what kind of games our borderless team can make by working together.”
“While working in a large company offers stabilitymy character is insatiable.”
The game industry is full of directors with big personalities whose names are becoming synonymous with a particular genre, franchise or approach to storytelling. (Think Hideo Kojima, Todd Howard, or Amy Hennig.) But Nakamura isn’t really concerned about being the loudest person in the room.
“I enjoy working with my team because it is stimulating and educational to see ideas being created and put together in a way that I could never achieve on my own,” she explains.
Nakamura says managing both the logistical and creative sides of UNSEEN has presented a whole host of opportunities and challenges.
“Perhaps my destiny as CEO is to become desensitized to difficult situations. But even when my head is empty, there are times when I see a spark that leads to new learning opportunities. Thinking about two things at once – business management and development – I could never experience if I were working for a large company,” she says. “Although working in a large company provides stability, my character is insatiable. continue to experience and learn things until I die.”
Although much of the UNSEEN team works remotely, Nakamura has thought carefully about the design of her studio space in Tokyo, seeing it as a kind of ‘treasure chest’ for developers, artists and all kinds of creative people.
“The goal is to create an environment that belongs to a developer secret base.”
“I was aware of creating a space from a developer’s perspective,” she says. “This vision is being built in collaboration with construction workers specializing in creative craftsmanship, led by the clothing company Diesel. The goal is to create an environment that is a developer’s secret base where game developers would like to come and visit the studio. We also focus on working in a living time-space, so the nomadic theme is also intrinsic to the creation of the space.”
Nakamura says that because UNSEEN was established during the pandemic, it has been easier to take a more flexible approach to game development and strive for better work-life balance for employees.
“From a developer’s perspective, I feel like we’re always exploring elements of the work culture that could be improved. I’d like to build a flexible development environment where we can introduce things that fit the times and find out if it’s a way of working that suits us,” she says.
Inverse Fixtures profiles the most innovative and exciting people in and around the game industry for their insights into the future of the medium.
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