Accomplished artist and games industry veteran, Ikumi Nakamura, has revealed that she vacated her position as Ghostwire Tokyo‘s creative director because her work was making her ill.
Nakamura was featured in a documentary by YouTube channel Cutscenes (via Video Games Chronicle), in which she spoke candidly about her career, revealing that it was “really hard” for her to leave Tango Gameworks especially because Ghostwire Tokyo was “her own child.” However, she felt like her work was impacting her health and she needed a break.
Nakamura made it clear that it wasn’t the environment at Tango Gameworks that made her feel unhealthy, and that she had already been feeling ill for quite some time prior to her departure.
“Arriving to that point was like a long dive underwater,” she said. “I had been ill for some time. You can’t make games if you’re not healthy. I started wondering whether there wasn’t a way for me to make games while feeling better. I took the decision to quit before it was too late.”
Nakamura spent nearly a decade at Tango Gameworks. Prior to this, she worked at Capcom and started her career with the company as an artist on Okami. Now, she has her own studio and is making her own IP, but she didn’t go into any further details.
“It was the chance for me to travel and learn what made a good working environment,” Nakamura continued.” I decided to use that experience to open my small studio and build my IP.”
Nakamura said that she wants to hire developers from various backgrounds despite language barriers because she wants to work with people “who have the curiosity to learn and understand each other.”
