Former Capcom character designer and illustrator Akira “Akiman” Yasuda, famous for his work on Street Fighter II: The World Warrior and Red Dead Revolver, recently shared some insight about his early days working at Capcom. On his X account, he spoke about his habit of working overtime, with the biggest reason for it being “wanting to beat other big game companies.”
Overtime work is nothing unfamiliar to the Japanese corporate landscape, and the country’s game industry is notorious for crunch culture (although things have been gradually improving in recent years). But not all overtime is imposed by employers, especially in creative fields. Over on X, an industry animator posed a question – what does it actually feel like to work overtime, especially for people who do it voluntarily. While most people would rather finish work and go home, many of them choose to stay late, sleep over at the company or even clock in on their off days. In response to the question, Akiman explains that he was one of those people who worked overtime because they had a goal to achieve. In his case, it was making Capcom bigger and topping over other rivaling major companies.
According to his post, in order to achieve his goal, he worked non-stop, and there were instances where he would even sleep in the office for a couple of months. However, it seems like his personal ambition wasn’t the sole driving force behind him forming such working habits. In a 2003 interview (courtesy of shmuplations), Akiman also mentioned being assigned extremely harsh deadlines that didn’t allow him to step away from his desk. He even had a futon under it so he could sleep over in case his supervisors gave him another 10-hour deadline. Taking this into consideration, it makes sense that this kind of work-life balance ended up leaving him extremely burnt out.
In the follow-up post, Akiman sheds some light on how this actually affected him. “I entered Capcom in the summer when I was 21, and at the beginning, I did overtime work because I wanted to beat the other big game companies. With each hit game released, there were more newcomers joining the company, outnumbering the seniors, and I worked so I could help them become proficient – after that, I burned out.”
While he doesn’t specify the burnout as an exact reason, Akiman left Capcom in 2003 to pursue work as a freelance designer and illustrator. Over the years, he has also worked on many famous anime, including Code Geass, and has designed characters for games such as Square Enix’s Star Ocean series. As for his most recent endeavors, Akiman is currently working on GODZ ORDER, a series of plastic models depicting cute but fierce winged paladin warriors – with all of the characters designed by him.
