IGN has published an informative interview with the legendary game designer Hideki Kamiya and Clovers President and CEO Kento Koyama to talk about their new independent studio Clovers which is hard at work on a new entry in the beloved Okami franchise in collaboration with Capcom. IGN asked the pair about leaving Platinum Games and about their new studio Clovers which is currently recruiting for additional employees.
IGN: Tell us about the founding of Clovers.
Kamiya: I left my former company, PlatinumGames, on October 12, 2023. There were all kinds of restrictions placed on me for the following year, which meant that I couldn’t create games [as reported by IGN in a previous interview]. Now that the year has passed, I have finally been appointed as the studio head of Clovers. I’ll be developing games at this new company with Koyama as president and CEO.
Koyama: Kamiya was under a year-long non-compete agreement. We wanted to have a clean slate when making games, even at Clovers, so we waited until this restriction was over and Kamiya had entered the company before officially going active.
IGN: How many people are working at Clovers at the moment?
Kamiya: The company has bases in Tokyo and Osaka. People from those two cities came to Clovers, and so we started locations in both at the same time. We began in small rental offices, but now they’re so full that they can’t even fit everyone. We’re now working on moving to real offices. The move to the Osaka office is scheduled for February 2025, while the Tokyo office move is slated for spring 2025.
Koyama: We’re thinking of adding new employees together with these moves.
Kamiya: We already have people who say they would like to work at Clovers, so we need to put a system in place to hire some of them. We imagine that hiring is going to become even more active now that we’ve officially announced Clovers’ foundation [in fact, a guide to career applications is now available on the official Clovers website]. The vision that Koyama and I have in mind is to aim for the company to grow to around 70 people in the future.
IGN: What did you think when you heard that Mr Kamiya would be leaving PlatinumGames?
Koyama: I felt that his leaving was a loss for the game industry. Had his games not been fun, perhaps I wouldn’t have thought about it. We can look back on it and laugh now, but at the time, Kamiya looked unusually serious.
Kamiya: It’s not as if I was feeling sad about my own future. I felt bad for the company’s staff I would be leaving behind by exiting the company and my team, and by leaving my positions as game director and vice president. This may sound conceited, but I was in a position where I shouldered quite a lot at PlatinumGames. From my perspective, I left the company based on my own convictions as a creator, but I’m sure that others also saw it as a selfish act. I felt very sorry about that.
Speaking of which, this is part of one thing that concerns me for the next Nintendo console: parallelely to Nintendo itself, Platinum and Ubisoft were some of the developers who give the best support to Switch: the two Mario Rabbids, Astral Chain, Bayonetta Origins and Bayonetta 3 (ending aside) were all games I loved a lot on the console, but given what became of the two and all the key figures behind those games, it will be a bit of an hard blow for the next console to not have their support anymore. I think we can only hope that even thought they’re no longer in Ubisoft and Platinum, Soliani and Kamiya will still bring their next projects on the new console.
Ubisoft was never a “supporter” of any gaming console, the only time they took a risk (in case of Nintendo) was ZombiU and didn’t payout… but they are like any other game maker company.. going for profit. Platinum is a different story. They have a good relationship with N. Since they are paying for some Platinum project’s. But I wouldn’t be surprised if N would try to buy Platinum (or Clovers) in time
They still made (or better SOLIANI has made) two really worthy exclusives for Switch. They aren’t “supporters” in the strong sense of the term, but Soliani still made two games I loved, and it’s sad we won’t see anymore from him. I can only hope that whatever he’s making with his new team now, it also comes on the next Nintendo console.
They had an entire crossover with Mario and Rabbids
Non-compete clauses need to die in the fiery pits of whatever Hell they came from. Although, on the plus side, it gives guys like Kamiya a chance to brainstorm & build something great while they wait for the ncc to lift.