You notice different things when you only see a place once a year.
Since my last visit to CLOVERS’ Osaka headquarters last summer, the studio has grown considerably. What was once little more than a meeting room with a small annex for developers now occupies much of an entire floor. The entrance has had a makeover too, replacing its previously nondescript appearance with a brick façade and a large CLOVERS logo.
It’s a tangible reminder of how much the company has grown since its announcement at The Game Awards 2024, alongside its debut project, the Capcom-published Okami 2.
“We’ve now surpassed 70 staff, so in that sense the environment has become somewhat more company-like,” says CLOVERS president Kento Koyama.
Studio head Hideki Kamiya adds: “We often speak about, like, ‘wow, we’re actually a proper company now,’ and just the other day, we were reminiscing back to the early days when our Osaka and Tokyo offices were basically one room, and we had four or five people in each.
“Now we have this big office in Osaka, another nice office in Tokyo, and we’ve brought on more and more people. Back then, it felt like a hobbyist game design club, but now we really feel like a fully-fledged company.”
But while CLOVERS may increasingly look like a conventional company from the outside, Kamiya says maintaining its original spirit is crucial – and that starts with its people. The studio has been deliberate about its hiring, recently bringing an entire audio team on board, most of whom have worked with Kamiya on multiple projects before.
“Even though the honeymoon phase might have been over, pretty much everybody in the company was dating each other for a very, very long time before getting married, and so in that sense it doesn’t feel like anything has really changed,” Kamiya says.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.videogameschronicle.com/features/interviews/hideki-kamiyas-clovers-on-the-end-of-discs-capcoms-trust-on-okami-2-and-scalebound-hopes/
