Shigekazu Ito | Virtuos - 3D Art Outsourcing, Game Outsourcing, and Game Development in China

Shigekazu Ito joined Virtuos to address an increasing interest from Japanese clients looking to access Virtuos’ services. Shige is now a Producer working on Art and Development projects and acts as a key point of contact for Japanese clients. We sat down with Shige to ask him some questions.

What do you do at Virtuos?

I help our Japanese clients achieve their creative and technical objectives. When a client needs high-quality 3D art, they can communicate their artistic intentions and technical requirements to me in Japanese, and I will ensure that we provide exactly what they need.

What was your previous job?

I have worked in the video game industry for 15 years, since I was a student. I have worked as both a programmer and a producer. Before joining Virtuos, I was a graphics programmer. I use that experience today to make sure that we fully understand and deliver on our clients’ requirements.

How do you usually start a project?

We typically start with a kickoff meeting, either in person or via web meeting, where we discuss the game and the assets that we will be working on. These meetings have at least two Japanese-speaking people from Virtuos: Naoko who works with the client’s business objectives, and myself, focused on artistic and technical objectives.

What comes next?

Virtuos has worked with many clients from many different countries, and has developed a strong engagement process based on this experience. After the initial meeting, we help clients generate an effective project brief with the artistic and technical details we need to know to create great assets.

We generate an estimate of the work to be done for our client’s approval. When the estimate is approved, we start work. We find the most effective method is to first focus on a few assets, get client feedback, and quickly iterate on them. This helps us refine the project brief and greatly improves the efficiency of deliveries.

Both Naoko and I continue to be the client’s main points of contact for the whole project, so everything is always communicated in Japanese.

What do you like best about working with Virtuos?

We work on so many great projects – some of the Western market’s biggest games and many of my favorites. The speed of production here is much greater too, because we have such a big team and work with efficient development methodologies.

And it is very exciting to work with people from so many different countries – we have Japan, China, Russia and Austria on my floor.

What games do you play?

I like movies a lot – so that might be why the cinematic games “Killzone 2” and “Uncharted 2” have really impressed me recently. But my original experience with video games is on the Famicon (NES), as well as some old text adventure games and “Wizardry” on PC. Back in those days, without the rich graphics we have today, ‘the fire of imagination’ played a big role in the game experience, and I liked that.

What do you like best about living in China?

Everything can be done so cost-effectively – very different from my native Tokyo. Taxis, restaurants and everything else are good and inexpensive. It enables me to do much more than I was able to in Japan.

Virtuos in Japan

Learn about Virtuos' office in Tokyo.

Shigekazu brings to Virtuos 15 years of experience in the Japanese video game industry.