Mikami, who has played an important role in the foundations and success of the Resident Evil franchise, had a thought-provoking comment.

Archipel interviewed Mikami, who has been in the gaming industry for more than two decades, and he explained how the devs gain experience over age: „You change depending on the experience that you acquire. When you’re young, you have a good sense of making things. Your energy, your heart and your stamina are better when you are young. However, you lack in experience so even if you have a good sense, you’re not mature enough to compile things or show things simply to players,” Mikami said.

What about those who get older and are still in the scene? „From a veteran perspective, you would see risks on multiple ends, but you get short-sighted, so it’s usually tough to get crazy ideas and deploy them onto a project, it’s full of holes. But once you get over that, you can ship out a whole new title.” he added. This makes sense: when the developers are young, they likely have no money but a ton of ideas, so they dare to be more „reckless” than those who aren’t as „hot-headed” anymore.

He also brought this example over to his history: „I made Resident Evil 4 when I was 39, I believe I fit in that peak. I could state some examples for some other creators besides me, but generally, I think that you see a lot of creators who make their best game in during their thirties,” Mikami said. Then again, Resident Evil 4 had a patchy development history (the first concept was turned by Hideki Kamiya into Devil May Cry, the second, nightmare-ish concept was scrapped).

Mikami is now effectively an Xbox developer: he founded Tango Gameworks, which was then acquired by Zenimax, which in turn has recently been bought by Microsoft. However, as is their approach, their next game, Ghostwire: Tokyo, will still launch on PlayStation 5 and PC as they started development before the acquisition.

Source: PSL

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