Japan’s CyberConnect2 Meets with TFS Video Game Students During Recruitment Trip
The Tokyo-based video game developer behind the Naruto: Ultimate Ninja and .hack video game series recently stopped by Toronto Film School as part of its worldwide talent recruitment efforts.
Taichiro Miyazaki, Vice President of CyberConnect2, took time out this month to speak with a standing-room-only crowd of TFS Video Game Design & Animation students and alumni about job opportunities at the company’s studios, both in Japan and here in Canada.
“I am here today to recruit talented creators for both the Tokyo and Montreal studios,” said Miyazaki, whose responsibilities include the management of CyberConnect2’s lone international studio, which opened in Quebec in 2016.
“I also wanted the students to know that we, as a Japanese video game developer, are hiring foreign professionals and students.”
Miyazaki’s visit to Toronto Film School’s 460 Yonge St. campus comes as CyberConnect2 gears up for the global development of Fuga: Melodies of Steel – a tactical role-playing game set to launch on PlayStation, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and PC in 2020.
The game marks CyberConnect2’s first self-published game in the Trilogy of Vengeance series – a milestone that spurred the company to launch its Hiring Worldwide! Initiative.
“CyberConnect2 is currently recruiting a wide range of talent from around the world, both inside and outside of Japan,” the company said in a statement on its website, which listed Los Angeles, Paris, Frankfurt and Montreal amongst the stops on its worldwide recruitment tour.
“In order to reinforce our search for worldwide talent…our representatives will be visiting different school in many different countries, and holding seminars and lectures about CyberConnect2 for those students who aim to become game creators.”
Among the positions CyberConnect is looking to fill include: game and level designers, environment modelers, VFX artists, character modelers and animators, cinematic animators, interface designers, technical artists, game programmers and technical programmers.
“I had no idea that there were so many opportunities currently in Japan. I’ve always been a fan of anime and Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm, and it was really nice to actually get a feel for what (CyberConnect2’s) studio is all about,” Sean Murray, a 2019 graduate of TFS’s Video Game Design & Animation diploma program, said following Miyazaki’s presentation.
“Seeing what they’ve done and how beautifully they’ve done it with their animations and their art style, following the manga and anime to a T, has just been absolutely fantastic. It’s honestly pushing me to do a lot better with my work and to branch out and learn more.”
Alumnus Jacky Lin and current student Roland Neufeld were likewise left “inspired” by Miyazaki’s presentation.
“I got goosebumps through the whole seminar, because I was just so invigorated and inspired by it,” said Neufeld, a current Video Game Design & Animation student.
“It was actually pretty cool to have an actual developer coming in, talking to us and telling us what they need and what we should be preparing for,” added Lin.
“It’s exciting to know that the stuff that we’re learning right now (at TFS) is pretty much what we’re going to be doing in the future…From everything we heard today, I feel like it’s exactly the environment we’re going to be in, so in that regard, it’s really cool.”
