Former Ghostwire Tokyo creative director and Bayonetta concept artist Ikumi Nakamura has opened a new indie studio.
The news comes via a new documentary video from Cutscenes, the folks behind Archipel, where Ikumi confirms she has launched her own indie studio in Japan and they’re working on a new, unnamed IP.
In the mini-documentary, Nakamura talks up her past in the games industry and how she came to work at Capcom, how it taxed her overall health, and how she decided to leave the company back in 2019 before it was too late. Nakamura eventually launched her own studio after traveling the world and having a child.
“Many people were also offering me to come and visit their studios,” Nakamura said. “It was the chance for me to travel and learn what made a good working environment.”
She added, “I decided to use that experience to open my own small studio and build my IP. I want to try my hand at an IP again in that studio, this is what I’m working on right now.”
While her new indie studio and their first game have both yet to be named, Nakamura said she hopes to hire many new staff from around the world. Despite the language barrier, she wants to form a team that has a mutual curiosity to learn and understand each other.
“If I can form this type of team to work on a new game, I feel that we’ll be able to bring something new to the players,” Nakamura said. “So this is the approach I want to take for my studio and my IP.”
