On December 1st, Sega Games and Mynavi Creator held a seminar for mid-careers candidates for Sega Games positions, as in for those who have over a year of experience in the game industry. Mynavi Creator is a subsidiary of Mynavi, a human resources company. This subsidiary, in particular, provides referrals for human resources needs in creative fields, such as web or game designing. On December 21, Famitsu published a report of the seminar.

The seminar touched upon many subjects, including Sega's current activities overseas. For example, it stressed out how thanks to its overseas studios like Atlus USA localizing the Yakuza games, the series became one of Sega's strongest brands.

As for why they held this seminar in the first place, Sega is currently hiring for the following positions: Game Planner/Designer, Game Producer, Game Programmer, and Game Designer. According to the Famitsu report, this fresh blood is mostly needed for Phantasy Star Online 2. The game reached its sixth anniversary in July, and this December, I've reached my first anniversary since when I quit, after reaching more than 1400 hours on my playtime counter. I won't have the time anytime soon, but I will probably write some kind of review one day, after going back on the game, and see if the problems which made me quit are still there or not.

Going back to the subject, a talk session was held at the end of the seminar, with multiple important figures at Sega:

  • Sega CS1 studio Director and Yakuza Producer Daisuke Satou
  • Sega CS2 studio Vice Director and Sonic Forces Producer Shun Nakamura
  • Phantasy Star Online 2 Director Yuya Kimura

Each of them spoke about their own studio. Satou-san detailed how Sega CS1 includes Yakuza Studio, how they focus on "entertainment for adults, with photorealistic graphics and solid stories", but how they're also in charge of series like Monkey Ball. Even inside Sega itself, some people are scared of Yakuza Studio because they're all scary-looking guys, but everyone there is nice according to Satou-san.

He also revealed a secret about Judgment, the latest game of Yakuza Studio: As you may know, most characters in the game were modeled and voiced by real-life actors, using motion capture and face capture. Judgment's protagonist, Takayuki Yagami, is acted by popular actor Takuya Kimura. Turns out, many of the nameless, non-important NPCs in the game were actually modeled after Sega employees, for fun.

Nakamura-san presented his studio as well, Sega CS2, also known as the Sonic Team, and how it handles Sonic games and the Puyo Puyo series. It's always worth noting that while I don't doubt its talent, the current Sonic Team is quite different from the past. Among other things, its founder Yuji Naka left the studio for more than a decade now.

Nakamura-san also shared that his studio is currently working on New Sakura Wars, or Shin Sakura Taisen, the tentative title for the next Sakura Taisen game. More precisely, the team working on the game is the team who handles the Valkyria Chronicles series, as they were recently integrated to CS2. Previously, this team was affected to Sega CS3, which in the past used to be called Overworks, and has always been handling games primarily targeting the Japanese market.

This makes perfect sense and isn't surprising at all. Many are those, myself included, who consider Valkyria Chronicles as a spiritual successor to Sakura Taisen, and to Overworks' Skies of Arcadia as well. All three IPs share some big names in their credits.

Seeing how fantastic Valkyria Chronicles 4 turned out, this is great news to hear, and I'm looking forward to New Sakura Wars even more than ever. The game should release for latest home consoles some day after March 31 2019. We'll get a first look at the game soon according to Sega's Toshihiro Nagoshi. Currently, on these last days of December 2018, the Sakura Taisen franchise is also having an art exposition in Japan.