Yoshiki Okamoto, a famed designer and producer behind series such as Street Fighter II has been brought on at Web3 game developer Creta as a strategic partner and investor. The designer, who recently worked on the Monster Strike mobile game, has become personally invested in the project which is one of many seeking to capitalise on the idea of a ‘metaverse’, including digital and ownership. His position as an advisor comes as the developer seeks to build their platform on mobile as well as PC.
Okamoto said about the new partnership, “The Creta team have demonstrated they are extremely capable of bringing fresh ideas into Web3 gaming, which has so far shown lacklustre gameplay and tokenomics design. I am delighted with the vision of the team and their ability to execute and can’t wait to see the full version of the metaverse platform as well as the games currently undergoing production. It’s been a great honour to come on board as a partner to this project, which prioritises building games that are fun to play above everything else.”
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Okamoto’s work on Monster Strike has been a massive success in the mobile space, making $10bn in sales to date, according to the announcement. It was the second highest grossing mobile game of 2020 which we reported on at the time. Okamoto’s move from mobile to the Web3 space does not seem to be a massive departure, but could either indicate big things or misplaced faith.
Whilst consumer interest in the metaverse, NFTs, crypto and blockchain technology seems to be waning, interest from investors and developers is still strong. But with pioneers such as Mark Zuckerberg’s meta stumbling, the success of these conceptual games is far from assured. Though some may be sad to see Okamoto not committing to more mobile games, it’s also possible that his input may have a major impact on how Creta handles their work in the mobile space going forward.
On a parallel path, Netease has recently brought on another Capcom veteran for their new studio. Hiroyuki Kobayashi has been brought on to lead Netease’s new “GPTRACK50” studio, which will be focusing on the PC and console markets going forward.