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| nobinobita 1353th Post
  
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|  "Re(4):Most influential women in Japanese Game" , posted Sun 7 Sep 18:32  
Oh my gosh, thank you all so much! This is a treasure trove of information!
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If you have an 8-bit/16-bit melody stuck in your head there is a good chance it was from a female composer! Very excited to read your article when it goes up.
Wow I was always vaguely aware that many of my fav game composers were ladies, but I had no idea that they absolutely dominated the field like this!
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Sorry, I can't check right now, but Sakurai's wife has been working with him for a while and she's the one responsible for the menus (and UI ? not sure) of his game at least since Smash Wii, if not before. So these types of menus that are the most recognizable part of a Sakurai game (from smash to Kid Icarus) are actually his wife's.
Don't sure if it qualifies for "influential", though.
Michiko Sakurai did indeed do all the UI for those games. I would say she's extremely influential. I've seen UI designers reference her work in almost every social/mobile game I've ever been a part of. There are few UI artists with such a distinct style.
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I also discovered during the Bayo direct that the producer of Bayo 2 was female? Not sure about her name or CV...
Are you referring to Masami Narita perhaps?
http://platinumgames.com/staff/masami-narita/
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Worked on Romancing SaGa Final Fantasy IV, V and VI and wrote a treatment for VII (along with her husband, Tetsuya Takahashi) that eventually turned into Xenogears. Worked on Xenosaga after that before she was tragically taken off the project.
Man, there are a surprising amount of really awesome husband and wife duos in games! Was it ever explained why Soraya Saga was ousted from Xenosaga?
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Mie Kumagai
Ayano Koshiro
Miki Morimoto
Kazuko Shibuya
Tomoko Sasaki
Wow, a lot of my favorite games are in the resumes of these women. Virtua Tennis is perhaps the best version of Pong ever made, and I loves me some Actraiser 2. That game had a really cool narrative! I love the ending, where you watch a statue of the Master slowly erode over time, and he's totally ok with it! I really liked the idea of a god so benevolent that he doesn't care if people shower him with adulation, he just wants them to be ok on their own.
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Um, can we add Yoko Kanno to the list? She may have worked on alot of anime, but she actually started her big break in...games! (Romance of the Three Kingdoms on PC-8801) And I believe games are still relevant in her field, as I recall her composing the soundtrack to Ragnarok Online 2.
Holy cow, that's news to me!
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| Professor 4120th Post
MMCafe Owner
     
| "Re(1):Most influential women in Japanese Game" , posted Sun 7 Sep 18:39
You pretty much nailed the big names Nobi! I'd place Keiko Erikawa as the top of "influential" female figure in the Jp game industry, followed a tad behind by Tomoko Namba.
Btw, can you tell Hokutoandy that I replied to his question on the BBS about successfull comiket circles? Thanks in advance!
Some other names I can think of:
Miwa Shouda
Former planner and scenario writer for Square/Enix. Worked on numerous titles including Radical Dreamers, Saga Frontier, Legend of Mana, FF12, Last Remnant.
ALPH LYLA
Capcom's 4-female music team
Misato Mitsumi
The queen of adult games
Junko Ozawa
Composer for many of Namco's classic and more recent titles such as Tower of Drugaga, Sky Kid, Rolling Thunder, Galaga Legions
Chikako Yamakura
President of Gambarion
Emiko Iwasaki
Former director and designer at Arc System Works
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| nobinobita 1356th Post
Red Carpet Executive Member
| "Re(2):Most influential women in Japanese Game" , posted Sun 7 Sep 19:01:
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You pretty much nailed the big names Nobi! I'd place Keiko Erikawa as the top of "influential" female figure in the Jp game industry, followed a tad behind by Tomoko Namba.
Some other names I can think of:
Miwa Shouda
Former planner and scenario writer for Square/Enix. Worked on numerous titles including Radical Dreamers, Saga Frontier, Legend of Mana, FF12, Last Remnant.
ALPH LYLA
Capcom's 4-female music team
Misato Mitsumi
The queen of adult games
Junko Ozawa
Composer for many of Namco's classic and more recent titles such as Tower of Drugaga, Sky Kid, Rolling Thunder, Galaga Legions
Chikako Yamakura
President of Gambarion
Emiko Iwasaki
Former director and designer at Arc System Works
Thanks professor! I wrote that last post before refreshing the page and seeing yours :P
Wow, so many great additions!
Misato Mitsumi! Man, this list is gonna get a lot longer if we delve into the world of doujinshii, eroge and otome games. Otome games are pretty popular in Chinese speaking countries. I bet they could be popular in the US too. Maybe Hatoful Boyfriend can lead the revolution!
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Btw, can you tell Hokutoandy that I replied to his question on the BBS about successfull comiket circles? Thanks in advance!
Will do!
www.art-eater.com
[this message was edited by nobinobita on Sun 7 Sep 19:02] |
| chazumaru 1326th Post
Red Carpet Executive Member
| "Re(3):Most influential women in Japanese Game" , posted Sun 7 Sep 23:20:
Hi Nobi, to be honest, I am not sure I understand what kind of profile you are researching. It depends where your article is headed. I would suspect given your previous articles that you should focus on artists.
Unless your article is actually an entire book on female jobs in the industry, the list you are proposing in the OP is kinda all over the place. Mainly, I find very strange to put Erikawa and Namba in the same list as all those other people.
Erikawa and Namba are not even in the same conversation as the other people listed here. Erikawa is super duper influential in the entire industry since the late Nineties. Her company is valued higher than Capcom and she has ties with almost every Japanese company. No disrespect for the great job of the aforementioned composers but this is like brainstorming a list of important African-Americans through History and randomly dropping Obama in the middle of the Wayans Brothers. Namba officially retired but probably still has a huge influence on her company.
The Big Boss of Ganbarion, Yamakura Chikako, is also a woman, and the same might go at Ancient which - as far as the legend goes - is owned and operated by Koshiro's mother. Those are the only female CEOs that pop through my head rightaway but there must be or have been a few more. It's definitely uncommon to see women in such position of power, just like everywhere else.
Some companies have prominent female producers and directors, such as Nintendo for various games (check the Iwata Asks interviews), Capcom (many prominent female roles for MH3G) or Platinum (the Bayo2 producer Kuroda mentioned by Iggy). Hudson used to have one prominent business lady (Hiromi Tomisawa) for all international affairs before Konami closed shop. But how do you measure the "influence" of a character like Tomisawa? This is the kind of industry figure that managed everything behind the scenes and probably nobody who hasn't worked closely with them would know or remember their name.
If your goal is to talk about the acceptance (or not) of women in the Japanese industry, I think the producer or director job (like Kodama in the Sega MarkIII days) is more significant to measure progress inside the JP industry than checking up on artists such as illustrators and musicians. And even among those I'd put someone like Shibuya of Square above other artists because she was heavily involved in the technical and structural aspect of games.
On the other hand, if you want to talk about a direct impact on the look and identity of games, and therefore focus more on the cultural impact of Japanese women, then you should probably forget about CEO/managers/producers.
[edit] Spelling mystiques...
Même Narumi est épatée !
[this message was edited by chazumaru on Mon 8 Sep 04:53] |
| Pollyanna 3697th Post
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| "Re(5):Most influential women in Japanese Game" , posted Mon 8 Sep 05:56
Ooh, a favorite of mine I just remembered is Atsuko Fukushima, who is the illustrator for the Popolocrois series. She's better known as a key animator for Akira and Kiki's Delivery Service, among other things.
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One of the most important women in horror games: Satô Naoko! Scenarist of Silent Hill 1 and 2, SCENARIST OF SIREN THE BEST HORROR GAME OF ALL TIME, game designer of Gravity Daze.
Basically, the buddy of Toyama.
Wow, yeah, shame on me for not knowing this.
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Man, there are a surprising amount of really awesome husband and wife duos in games! Was it ever explained why Soraya Saga was ousted from Xenosaga?
Whatever it was, it was evidently quite ugly, as Saga herself was quite vocal in her distress after it happened. I want to say it was on Namco's end, not Monolith's, since Monolith had her work on Soma Bringer later. My memory on this is a bit fuzzy, so I'm open to corrections, if anyone knows better.
Anyway, she had worked on a setup for the Xeno series that was supposed to be six games. The amount of unused material in Xenogears really shows how much work was put into it. Evidently, Namco had a different direction in mind that no longer required the creator of the series. Although I am very fond of her and her work, it may be that she was taken off the project because she was being inflexible and hurting progress. Even if that was the case, it's a heartbreaking situation.
Perhaps she's happy with everything right now and gotten over Xenogears getting killed, then Xenosaga after it, though in my head, I won't feel like justice is served unless I see her name when I start up the new "Xeno" game.
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| Maese 753th Post
Red Carpet Regular Member+
| "Re(6):Most influential women in Japanese Game" , posted Mon 8 Sep 17:15
Interesting topic indeed!
Before contributing a few names to the list, let's take one thing into account. It might be difficult to keep track of notable female talents on the JP gaming industry because many Japanese women choose to be listed as males on the games credits; that is, they use aliases keeping their real surnames but changing their names to masculine ones. The reason is, supposedly, avoid harassment online. I was surprised when I learned about this practice but, while not the norm, it seems to be somewhat common nowadays.
However, there are many reconigsable female game makers in Japan, to be sure.
Let me add Junko Kawano to the list. She began as a character designer for the first Gensou Suikoden and, from there, she went up the ladder and became game director for many other Konami titles on the late 90s-early 2000s. including the not-so-great GenSui IV, where she still did some memorable character designs anyway.
Aya Kyogoku, scriptwriter of some Zelda titles of late and creator of Animal Forest, is one of the main heads of Nintendo's new generation. Her dialectic duels with Miyamoto during the press release of Twilight Princess were memorable, but I can't find the link to them for the life of me.
And I do remember that some of the main heads behind Hotel Dusk and Last Window, a well loved saga here in the cafe, were a bunch of somewhat young Japanese ladies as well. Kind of surprising for hard-boiled, noir kind of games such as these...
Outside their traditional roles of music composers and character designers, lately there seems to be quite a lot of female scriptwriters in Japan. And it's becoming more and more common to see them assuming direction tasks as well; I guess seeing see some female producers as well is just a matter of time. Perhaps when this current generation of female game creators grows a bit older and gets a bit more experience?
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| nobinobita 1358th Post
Red Carpet Executive Member
| "Re(7):Most influential women in Japanese Game" , posted Mon 8 Sep 17:53
quote:
I
However, there are many reconigsable female game makers in Japan, to be sure.
Let me add Junko Kawano to the list. She began as a character designer for the first Gensou Suikoden and, from there, she went up the ladder and became game director for many other Konami titles on the late 90s-early 2000s. including the not-so-great GenSui IV, where she still did some memorable character designs anyway.
Aya Kyogoku, scriptwriter of some Zelda titles of late and creator of Animal Forest, is one of the main heads of Nintendo's new generation. Her dialectic duels with Miyamoto during the press release of Twilight Princess were memorable, but I can't find the link to them for the life of me.
And I do remember that some of the main heads behind Hotel Dusk and Last Window, a well love
-- Message too long, Autoquote has been Snipped --
Thanks so much for the info! Oh boy, I've really bitten off way more than I can chew.
nteresting topic indeed!
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Before contributing a few names to the list, let's take one thing into account. It might be difficult to keep track of notable female talents on the JP gaming industry because many Japanese women choose to be listed as males on the games credits; that is, they use aliases keeping their real surnames but changing their names to masculine ones. The reason is, supposedly, avoid harassment online. I was surprised when I learned about this practice but, while not the norm, it seems to be somewhat common nowadays.
That's TERRIBLE. But again, thanks for the info!
www.art-eater.com
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