Too Kyo Games On Why Zero Escape Creator Uchikoshi Joined, And The Global Niche

In DenFamiNicoGamer’s recent interview with Too Kyo Games’ Kazutaka Kodaka and Kotaro Uchikoshi, Uchikoshi elaborated on why he left to become a founding member of the new company, the global niche that the company can fill, while Kodaka explained what ‘Kyo’ in the name means.

Here are the highlights:

• The reason why Uchikoshi wanted to go independent was because he hates time constraints. Compared to studios like Telltale Studios where working 80 hours a week became the norm by the end, he’s the type of person that wants to work overtime for more than 80 hours per week. Yet thanks to changes in Japanese working laws, he’s forced to go home by 10pm.

• Expanding on this point, Uchikoshi feels that it’s fine for people working in the games industry to see their work as “a job”, as in just filling a quota. However, personally, he believes that for creative work, he’s more a fan of “those who would bet their life over their work”.

• Next, Kodaka talked about the name of the company, ‘Too Kyo Games’. While ‘Kyo’ is derived from the term for ‘crazy’, it represents that the company will work diligently on things they like, and not that everything they make will have a twisted premise or focus on despair. It’s entirely possible that they may work on a game as mainstream and orthodox as My Hero Academia is in the manga industry, if they feel like it.

• Too Kyo Games is aiming to become a cult classics game studio by pouring all their efforts into what they love to do. People tend to say that “visual novels do better overseas”, but compared to an ocean of interest in things like eSports, it’s really just a tiny wave. Kodaka describes their sort of adventure games as reaching the level of “people acknowledging they exist”, even within the niche, cult market. However, because of the exaggerated word-of-mouth, Kodaka feels that their chance has come.

• Uchikoshi follows up on Kodaka’s point, saying that while his games have a reputation overseas, he believes it’s largely because there is simply a larger pie to go around, rather than any difference in market share. Their games simply fit in that ‘global niche’. That said, thanks to Steam and other platforms, it’s become easier to bring their games overseas, and access that larger pie. Thanks to this, he feels that the timing was right for them to go independent.

Too Kyo Games are currently working on four projects, which we’ve detailed in our previous report here. Check out Part 1 of the interview, where Kodaka explains why he left Spike Chunsoft to create Too Kyo Games, here.