Phoenix Wright producer Matsukawa on being a woman in the Japanese game industry
Gamasutra's Brandon Sheffield spoke with Ace Attorney series producer Minae Matsukawa, mostly on the subject of being a female producer in the Japanese game industry. It's a situation that is about as rare as a US-localized visual novel series about lawyers.
As unusual as it is in Japan to be a female producer (she is the only one at Capcom), Matsukawa makes it sound as if she had little difficulty attaining the position. "I worked at a security company... I worked at Nintendo, and in the IT and online game distribution department. That's when I started to get into trying to do mobile phone games and applied at Capcom." From there, she started as an assistant producer, and graduated to producer status on the PSP Darkstalkers Chronicles. She eased into original game development by producing the new case for the DS port of the first Phoenix Wright game, under the supervision of Atsushi Inaba and Shinji Mikami. And now she's in charge of the Ace Attorney series!
