For reference, I’ve put together an English-translated image of Kamiya-san’s rules for interacting with him on X. My guess is that you probably violated one of them somehow… maybe by dragging him into a conversation he wasn’t part of. Looking at all these rules together, he does come across as pretty strict, doesn’t he? But when you actually talk to him in person, he’s an incredibly courteous gentleman. And when you ask him about game direction in particular, he never brushes you off. Instead, he’ll passionately share his thoughts with you, and what he says always gets right to the heart of the matter. What’s especially fascinating is how he has this uniquely Kamiya-like ability to put into words things that everyone has probably sensed intuitively but never quite managed to articulate. He’ll say something that makes you suddenly go, “Ah, THAT’S exactly it!” It’s not that he’s introducing some completely new perspective nobody had ever considered. Rather, he’s bringing to the surface something we all somehow already understood deep down, but had never consciously put into words. He takes those vague, almost subconscious realizations and gives them a clear, precise expression. That’s what makes his words so striking. And despite how he might come across, he’s also an extraordinarily sensitive and perceptive person. (He probably thinks he’s perfectly normal in that regard, or may not even realize it himself, but I’m absolutely convinced that his sensitivity is exceptionally heightened. It’s as if his creative and emotional sensors are tuned to an entirely different level.) He’s the kind of person who can get genuinely excited by just two lines of world-building text on an instruction card from an old video game. Those two little lines can spark an entire imaginary world in his mind, and he can talk endlessly about how they fired up his imagination and how deeply they moved him. There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind that he’s a genius with an extraordinary level of sensitivity and perception. Of course, given how he presents himself on social media, I suspect almost none of that comes across to people who only know him through X. LOL.

Today, friends from across the game industry gathered at VS Studio, and we had an absolute blast from 7 PM all the way until 2 AM! Looks like we’ll have an even bigger gathering with more people joining us toward the end of the year! #VS_Studio