Like a Dragon’s RGG Studio speaks up about women in programming: “We have a lot of women on board, and we have female leaders,” says technical directo
Sega veteran Yutaka Ito, the technical director at Like a Dragon series developer RGG Studio, often shares interesting insights about game development on X. For instance, he has discussed how remastering games is more challenging than it appears and has even shared programming mistakes from 30 years ago. Recently, Ito commented on stereotypes about game programming as a profession and RGG Studio's view on them.
In a post from February 25, Ito said, “Game programming is still heavily associated with science majors and men, but at RGG Studio, that’s not the case at all. We have people from the humanities field and many women on our team. Recently, the number of female programmers in lead positions has also increased.” Ito links to a new article by Japan’s Asahi News, which features an interview with Riho Ishiyama, a programmer with five years of experience at Sega. Ishiyama originally studied liberal arts, majoring in business, but became interested in game development. She started learning Unity and creating games on her own. With her portfolio, she secured a job at Sega and underwent a year-long training program. After a year-long training regimen (more details in our interview with Yutaka Ito), she became a full-fledged programmer at the company. In her fourth year, Ishiyama saw her own mini-game included in 2024’s Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, and in her fifth year, she was appointed as the leader of the studio’s asset control team. Like a Dragon’s technical director has been actively debunking myths about his profession online. For instance, he has even shared some of Infinite Wealth’s source code publicly to demonstrate that creating AAA games doesn't rely on secret, inaccessible knowledge, and he has emphasized that programming is something anyone can learn. Ito’s recent comment supports this idea, suggesting that not having a science background or being a woman in a male-dominated field shouldn't stop you from pursuing a career in the industry.