Capcom shifts from individual auteur theory to a collective team development model to ensure stable franchise growth and employee success
A common misconception among the playing public and in the press is that each video game relies on one individual creative genius to find its success. To combat this auteur theory on games, Capcom has modified its corporate philosophy. The business side chief executive of the publisher, Haruhiro Tsujimoto, has recently been quoted on the subject of this company wide overhaul by the Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu. In the interview, he revealed that Capcom had decided to abandon reliance on star developers for the stability of the company.
As the executive stated, previously, one person at Capcom was in charge of a major franchise and its development, a situation that inevitably would lead to the entire development pipeline of one series stopping entirely due to one employee's departure. In order to prevent this, all executives started the massive process of overhauling their entire development strategy, abandoning a star system in favor of collective team effort.
"We had spoken with the leads of each series, concluded that we must discontinue the strategy, that each and every title will be redeveloped, even if the sales decline temporarily. Capcom changed radically after they abandoned star development and began team development."
This organizational change allows for knowledge and techniques to easily be passed down from younger designers to older designers. Instead of one creative person limiting the ideas to their vision, each member of a team can teach each other something that will aid in the success of their respective projects and build a more sustainable business in terms of employee growth.
The benefits of this approach has already become apparent, in that Capcom has been able to release one new IP as well as reintroduce franchises that they haven't seen any profit from in a while, such as the action game franchise Onimusha, to generate income with a new, shared development model. In the interview, Tsujimoto also stated that this had made it possible to come up with new and refreshing concepts with Pragmata, a new sci fi intellectual property.
