Making video games isn’t easy, and there are many different paths that you can take in order to make them. You can start a studio and make your own title, then publish it on your own. Or, you can prove yourselves to a developer and show you can make a game for them, and they’ll give you a title to make under their supervision. There is no “right or wrong” way to do it, as long as you do it. But for some people, the desire to have total freedom is a must. Such is the case with Platinum Games.
You know Platinum Games from titles like Bayonetta, Nier: Automata, and many more, and they’ve happily made those games for years. But recently, they’ve stated many times that they want to start making their own titles and self-publish them. GameIndustry International talked with studio heads Hideki Kamiya and Atsushi Inaba about this. For Kamiya, it’s about the desire to have control:
“Wanting to create our own content and our own IP… Even when I was making the first Bayonetta, there were some frustrations that were occurring between not funding it ourselves and being controlled in certain areas by other companies. We have the confidence and the selfish desire to make something that is ours and control it 100 per cent – we’ve had that for a long time.”
Platinum Games has had some bumps in the road with their developments, including having a major title, Scalebound, canceled by Microsoft, which near destroyed the studio. But according to Inaba, this wasn’t what made them have the desire to go the self-publishing route:
“It’s not been one individual event, it’s been all of them collected together,” said Inaba. “You definitely realise if you’re a creator and you want to give the director all the control, if he really wants to be able to make something 100 percent free, the only way you can do it is this way. Because there are strings attached – no matter what – if you’re going to do it on somebody else’s dime.”
For now, they are working with publishers on games, including Nintendo on Bayonetta 3. And they said they’re more than willing to keep doing work like this, but the desire to make their own titles is a bit stronger.
