Hideki Kamiya claims ‘there’s no way you’d get a decent game’ if he collaborated with Yoko Taro or Hideo Kojima

Hideki Kamiya speaking in a YouTube video on his channel.
(Image credit: Hideki Kamiya Channel via YouTube)

Hideki Kamiya - the director of Bayonetta, Ōkami, Devil May Cry and many more - has completely shut down the idea of him collaborating with Nier director Yoko Taro or Death Stranding director Hideo Kojima.

Kamiya - who left PlatinumGames in October - has been posting videos to YouTube in which he, as a self-proclaimed “unemployed man,” has been responding to fans’ questions and comments about his work and life. In his latest video which was posted today (November 23), Kamiya read out a tweet from a follower who suggested that he would “make great stuff if you partnered up with Tomonobu Itagaki,” the creator of the Dead or Alive series.

Although he didn’t address his thoughts on working with Itagaki specifically, he explained that he gets “this kind of comment a lot,” and ultimately thinks it would be a “disaster” if he worked directly alongside another distinctive game developer. 

“People say if I work with an auteur like Yoko Taro, or if I work with Hideo Kojima, blah blah blah. Look, it would be a DISASTER! It doesn’t work like in Dragon Ball, where Goku fuses with other characters,” he said. “Two people with completely different personalities and ideas would clash. There’s no way you’d get a decent game out of that! Right? Why is that hard for people to understand?

“There is a Japanese saying - maybe a proverb - ‘too many captains will steer the ship up a mountain,’ which means if a ship has too many captains, it will lose its way and end up climbing a mountain,” he continued. “So there should only be ONE CAPTAIN! That’s just how it is with unique game creators.”

Directly after leaving PlatinumGames, Kamiya revealed that he’s unable to take another job in the games industry for a year, “due to reasons.” However, he added: “It’ll be a while until I bring good news to you all. It’ll take time. But I’ll make it happen.”

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Catherine Lewis
News Writer, TechRadar Gaming

Catherine is a News Writer for TechRadar Gaming. Armed with a journalism degree from The University of Sheffield, she was sucked into the games media industry after spending far too much time on her university newspaper writing about Pokémon and cool indie games, and realising that was a very cool job, actually. She previously spent 19 months working at GAMINGbible as a full-time journalist. She loves all things Nintendo, and will never stop talking about Xenoblade Chronicles.