Kenji Ozawa, the co-director on Visions of Mana, has began a brand new studio referred to as Studio Sasanqua after Ouka Studio was shut down by NetEase final yr. He is additionally calling out how administration’s poor selections result in recreation creators being let go.
In an interview with Automaton, Ozawa mentioned he wished to start out his personal studio as a result of he noticed administration at his earlier corporations not taking obligations for failed tasks. Whereas administration makes nearly all of high-level selections like approving recreation pitches and discovering funding alternatives, Ozawa famous that it is the builders themselves that get reduce when administration makes a mistake.
With Studio Sasanqua, Ozawa wished to be sure that each builders and administration are on the identical web page, as each departments are normally siloed from one another. He is additionally prioritizing a way of safety for builders and confirms that he is prepared to simply accept full accountability if a recreation fails as a consequence of administration errors.
Whereas Studio Sasanqua hasn’t revealed its first recreation, Ozawa defined that the studio will concentrate on smaller tasks in Unreal Engine, with the longer-term objective of making larger-scale video games for PC and consoles.
Ouka Studios was one of many early victims of NetEase’s downsizing, because it was shut down not lengthy after the discharge of its debut recreation in Visions of Mana. Final month, NetEase out of the blue laid off its US-based Marvel Rivals employees regardless of the sport’s huge success. NetEase can also be reportedly attempting to dump its non-Chinese language studios because it makes an attempt to drastically pull funding from the gaming area. Nevertheless, NetEase claims that it is nonetheless dedicated to its abroad studios.