Sega veteran Yutaka Ito, who is currently the technical director of Like a Dragon series developer RGG Studio, often takes to X to share interesting game dev-related insights. For example, he’s talked about how making remasters is harder than it seems, and has even revealed secret programming mishaps from 30 years ago. But most recently, Ito made a brief comment on stereotypes associated with game programming as a profession, as well as RGG Studio’s stance on them.
In a post from February 25, Ito comments, “Game programming is still associated heavily with science majors and men, but at RGG Studio, that’s not the case at all. We have people from the humanities field on board, and we have a lot of women on board too. Recently, the number of female programmers in lead positions has increased too.”
Ito links a new article by Japan’s Asahi News, which interviews Riho Ishiyama, a programmer with five years of experience working at Sega. Ishiyama was originally from the liberal arts field, with a major in business, but got interested in game development and started learning Unity and making games independently. With her portfolio, she landed a job at Sega, and after a year-long training regimen (more about how that looks in our interview with Yutaka Ito), she became a full-fledged programmer at the company. In her fourth year, Ishiyama saw her own mini-game implemented in 2024’s Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, and in her fifth year, she was assigned as leader of the studio’s asset control team.
Like a Dragon’s technical director has been devoting a lot of his online activity to busting myths surrounding his profession. For example, he’s even publicly shared some of Infinite Wealth’s source code online with the goal of showing people that making AAA games isn’t based on some kind of secret, inaccessible knowledge, and has talked about programming being something anyone can learn. Ito’s recent comment seems to be an extension of this philosophy, as he suggests that things like not having a background in the sciences field or being a woman in a male-dominated profession shouldn’t discourage you from pursuing a position in the industry.
