After announcing that he would do so late last month, Bayonetta director Hideki Kamiya left his job as vice president at PlatinumGames on October 12. And the very same day he became free of the studio he’d co-founded, he also hard-launched a new YouTube channel, “Hideki Kamiya Channel.” Its first and only video (which has two versions, with English or Japanese subtitles) features Kamiya explaining his decision to leave Platinum, what he’ll do now that he’s left, and his extended thoughts on making curry.
“[I] made CURRY the other day,” English subtitles say. “I had cravings for homemade curry. […] I went to the supermarket and bought ingredients while looking at the recipe on my phone. It says one onion, or maybe it was one-and-a-half, and one potato…”
Yeah, Kamiya doesn’t seem anguished about leaving Platinum, where he directed action-adventure game The Wonderful 101 and supervised every Bayonetta follow-up. The video shows him carrying a box stuffed with collectible figurines and plushies down from the Platinum office, about which he can only say, “I’m over it. I’m so over it.”
Later in the video, Kamiya—with his silver sport sunglasses on—says that it’s been three months since he settled on quitting Platinum, which he wanted to do out of his “beliefs as a game creator.”
“I’m not going to retire yet,” he says. “I want to keep creating games,” though “reasons” he couldn’t elaborate on—probably a non-compete clause attached to his contract at Platinum—prevent him from working in the gaming industry for at least a year. For now, Kamiya, who’s been in the gaming industry for some 30 years, says he’s feeling “very refreshed” watching Netflix instead of “[attending] those boring meetings with all kinds of important people.” He promises to post only “completely useless” information on his YouTube channel.
“[My channel] won’t be help to anyone wanting to be in the gaming industry,” he says. (Shots fired, Sakurai.) Then he drives his sour cherry red Lamborghini into frame. He pushes open one of its batwing doors to speak to the camera: “Off to the UNEMPLOYMENT CENTER. See ya!”
I’m happy for him—the only thing more fulfilling than spending decades of your life becoming a major, powerful figure in a cutthroat, creative industry is doing absolutely nothing.