At the end of last year, on the stage of The Game Awards show where Japanese games swept many of the awards, one of the biggest announcements surrounded the outspoken creator Hideki Kamiya. To the rousing crescendo of the orchestra and cheers of the crowd, we were given insight into what the man had been putting together following his sudden departure from Platinum Games in 2023: a brand new studio, and a collaboration with Capcom on an all-new Okami game.

It’s undoubtedly exciting news. Okami endures in pop culture because there’s no experience quite like it. The paintbrush mechanics and animalistic movements and combat feel fresh, even before we discuss the way the game references calligraphy and classic Japanese art in its visual inspirations. It helps that it’s also a lot of fun. The smaller scale of the DS pseudo-sequel and lack of accessibility outside of the handheld have hindered that game’s ability to impress beyond its release despite its strong efforts, but that only emphasizes just how impressive the output of the old Clover Studios was in creating such a generation-defining game.

That being said, we shouldn’t forget this was the work of a studio, not one man. In spite of the framing of this new game’s unveiling, a certain trigger-happy visionary is not the all-encompassing sole bearer of a decades-old legacy.

This isn’t a problem exclusive to the medium of games, but it’s arguably a more pronounced issue considering the scope of the work necessary to bring an idea to life. We as humans have a tendency to credit our most inspiring and influential works to a single name: the auteur. It’s easier for the mind to process a work we love as the singular vision of an impossibly-talented singular creative. When we think to the best creators of history, going back decades or more, in any medium, it’s human tendency to credit a single person. To the winner go the spoils, in a sense.

We think of Akira Kurosawa as a singular film director, but rarely of the people who joined him behind the camera to bring his vision to the screen. To go back further, you credit the likes of a Mozart and forget that his symphonies became popular because of how they soared in concert halls because the delicate hand of an orchestra brought them to life. It’s a team effort, to put it simply.

Even if we know it’s wrong, we do it to make the concept of its existence manageable. The sheer scale of games, even of the era of Okami where teams were made of 50-100 people, are harder to credit to a single visionary due to the work necessary to bring them into existence. Even for film, the tendency to hail a work as the vision of a single director over the team of actors and behind-the-camera staff handling lighting or creating props erases work, but when everything is built on a computer from zero and the skills necessary to ensure a game doesn’t fall apart at the seams requires a huge array of technical expertise across disciplines, there’s no medium where the statement how an idea means nothing without the people to turn it into something tangible could be more accurate.

How do we avoid erasing other developers in our gratitude of these talents? Okami is credited to Kamiya, but he was far from the only incredibly talented developer on that game. It took over a decade to be recognized for work on other titles, but former Tango Gameworks and Platinum Games developer and founder of UNSEEN, Ikumi Nakamura, was also key member of the team. Many of the Clover team that worked on Okami would become key figures at Platinum Games or other studios, showcasing how crucial they were by bringing their talent to other teams across the industry even without their name in lights. While I certainly wouldn’t argue that a director’s influence is minimal nor unworthy of praise, credit is not shared, and it’s easy to get lost in a name and avoid closer analysis until things begin to fall apart.

Moreso than the West, where the credit is more often assigned to a studio as opposed to an individual (an issue in itself by removing even the symbol of an individual for the coldness of a faceless entity), Japanese gaming is often defined in the eyes of many by ‘the boss’. Kamiya, Kojima, Miyamoto, Mikami, Toyama, Iizuka, Nomura, Aonuma. A single name cites a vision of their career instantly, but whereas those whose work began in the years of the Famicom will certainly be able to hone in on even the individual contributions in a team that can often be counted on two hands, their influence, even as a director, inevitably diminishes as the magnitudes of size of a game’s development compound.

You see this question inverted when comparing the creation of Kamiya’s new studio Clovers, named as a spiritual successor to the Clover Studio of old, with Platinum Games. Who even is that studio in 2025? Little more than a brand? Kamiya and Platinum have often been viewed as synonymous even as other director’s took the lead on major projects like NieR Automata and the sequels to Bayonetta, and an exodus following the founding of Clovers to join the new studio certainly would suggest a lot of key names who delivered high-quality work for their former studio have left Platinum in a weakened state.

On the other hand, much of the team remains. As of January 2025 Platinum staffs over 300 people, and Clovers still remains just a year old and far smaller. The figurehead is gone, while the talented people who are often forgotten remain a part of the team.

I think to the announcement of Okami 2 with inevitable skepticism. Decades have passed. and the toll of an industry often so cruel to those who make art. A single name on the credits developing a sequel with the expectations of millions behind it is a high bar to clear. This doesn’t mean Kamiya can’t lead a team capable of collaborating with him on a work with the quality to match or surpass the original Okami. Similarly, unless you can recruit the talent to work with you in bringing such a challenging and high-stakes idea to life, you’re just an idea man with a megaphone.

Recently, a Japanese TV program tracked down Nasir Gebelli. While we think of people like Nobuo Uematsu and Hironobu Sakaguchi when it comes to the creation of the original Final Fantasy, the little-known name’s programming talents were key to bringing these games to market. What would gaming be without Final Fantasy?

Kamiya has proven himself as a leader of incredible titles that he has the talent to bring great games into the world. That is, if he can bring the team along with him (and he can often be outspoken about the worth of his colleagues, both positive and negative). A name can often also be a distraction: it can do nothing alone, no matter how much power or money it wields. The auteur is a double-edged sword, both smoke and mirrors and a pot of gold. Which will it be for Okami? With the development company young, the team still small and the teaser minimal, we probably have a few years to find out.