Who is Hideki Kamiya?

The director who treated "cool" as a design document.

Hideki Kamiya (born December 19, 1970) joined Capcom in 1994, worked as a system planner on the first Resident Evil, and directed Resident Evil 2 in 1998. His next assignment, a fourth Resident Evil, escaped its series and became Devil May Cry in 2001, the game that defined his method: build everything around the hero's abilities, grade the player on style, and set the difficulty as, in his own words, a challenge to those who played light, casual games.

Capcom moved him to smaller, stranger work: Viewtiful Joe (2003) with Team Viewtiful, then Okami (2006) at Clover Studio. When Clover closed, Kamiya left Capcom and co-founded the studio that became PlatinumGames, where he directed Bayonetta (2009), Devil May Cry's self-declared evolution, and The Wonderful 101 (2013). He left PlatinumGames in 2023 and founded Clovers; at The Game Awards 2024 he was announced as director of a sequel to Okami, back at Capcom, nearly two decades after leaving.

THE METHOD

Kamiya, in his own design rules

Designed around the hero

Devil May Cry was, by Kamiya's account, designed from the ground up around Dante's acrobatics and combat abilities. The enemies, rooms and camera exist to show the character off, not the reverse.

A man you would drink with

Kamiya based Dante's personality on the hero of Buichi Terasawa's manga Cobra, and describes his own aim plainly: not a show-off, but someone who would pull a ridiculous, mischievous joke to endear people to him, a character you would want to go out drinking with.

No sequels by his hand

Kamiya directed only the first Devil May Cry. The series passed to Hideaki Itsuno, and Kamiya answered it from outside Capcom with Bayonetta, which he considers Devil May Cry evolved. In 2017 he said he would be interested in remaking the first game, and in a Dante and Bayonetta crossover.

THE TEAMS

Little Devils, Little Angels

Team Little Devils

The name Kamiya's group inside Capcom Production Studio 4 took in the first game's credits. The tradition continued with Team Viewtiful on Viewtiful Joe.

Team Little Angels

When Kamiya's PlatinumGames team made Bayonetta, they named themselves Team Little Angels, a deliberate bow to the Devils they had been at Capcom.

The Resident Evil 4 origin Bayonetta, the sibling Who is Dante?

Who is Hideki Kamiya?

THE METHOD

THE TEAMS

THE FIRST WORD