Shinji Mikami Wanted to Leave Tango Gameworks Years Before He Did

Famed game developer Shinji Mikami, known for directing the original Resident Evil and The Evil Within, has revealed why he left his former studio Tango Gameworks despite founding it himself.

In an interview with Byking, translated by Automaton, Mikami said he actually wanted to leave Tango eight years before he did, meaning just five years after the Evil Within, Ghostwire: Tokyo, and Hi-Fi Rush developer was founded. Mikami didn’t leave until 2023 due to the responsibility he felt towards ongoing projects at Tango, he said.

His reasons for wanting to leave weren’t animus, as Mikami said he wanted to create an environment where young talent could prosper through development which included shorter project cycles, for example. Mikami also had a desire to make unique, smaller scale games himself, so wanted to connect these two ideas.

His connection to the survival horror genre, through the likes of Resident Evil and its spiritual successor The Evil Within, were another factor in his leaving, however, as Mikami said he wanted to step away from this association.

As for why he couldn’t do this at Tango, Mikami said he became closer to “a rank-and-file employee” than someone with influence after ZeniMax Media acquired Tango just seven months after it was founded.

“I had only been CEO for six months,” Mikami said. “I think a lot of people were under the impression that I was the representative, but I was very close to a rank-and-file employee. I had ‘producer’ attached to my name, but I wasn’t an executive or anything of the sort.”

Mikami started a new studio seemingly around March 2024, though has yet to reveal much about the team there or what projects they are working on.

Image Credit: Christian Petersen/Getty Images

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.

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