IMPLEMENTING AN ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE THAT FLEXIBLY LEVERAGES DEVICES AND IPS
NTN: In an interview last year, your predecessor Mr. Tanaka stated that, "As device specs and performance, now being led by smartphones, continue to increase, players will demand a gameplay experience different from the typical browser-type games. That in turn will demand the technology and know-how to develop those games. Although our plans were to gradually shift toward native app development, we lacked speed when it came to training our employees to develop the necessary skill sets." How do you plan on overcoming that challenge?
Mr. Hayakawa: As with the department store example I mentioned earlier, our company's strong points are the power to create, to refine, and to deliver. The organizational structure that can best draw on all three of these strengths is the centralized production division system that we introduced on March 16. The focus of this reform has been to enable us to instantly grasp the shifting needs of our customers amidst the quick-changing trends and technologies of the game business, and successfully leverage the right IPs on the right devices.
With the new structure we will also be making clear distinctions between management and creative roles. Until now, in addition to game development duties, our creators were handling a wide range of responsibilities including managerial roles. This can be a helpful approach when a studio concentrates on progressively specializing in a specific style of product, but we have found that a sudden market shift can render that specialization invalid and lave the studio unable to keep up. We faced difficulties in taking advantage of market shifts in areas such as licensing, with expansion of IPs outside of the games themselves, and also in leveraging IPs between different devices such as from consoles to the mobile platform. Based on these lessons, we have changed our approach to instead have managerial staff thoroughly focus on strategy and how their individual skills can be best applied, with that strategy then being executed together with the creative staff. That is the concept behind our new structure.
On the technical front, we are conducting widespread technical training, such as having our mainly 2D artists start developing skills with 3D tools and our server-side programmers learn about client-side development. However, training and workshops only serve as a first step. It would be a very tall order to have a mobile game creator start development on a console game straight away. Therefore, our approach is to first have the creators focus on and use the skills they excel at and then further expand those skills gradually as they work on development. When introducing a new method into game development, you are bound to encounter something that is not your forte. We have had past experiences where results did not pan out as planned when we delved into challenges for which we did not have the proper business knowhow or development/technical skills. While I would not go so far as to say "each man to his trade," I do aim to have our creators positioned effectively in projects where they can best employ their strengths.