Fuji TV’s series Where Did That Money Go? interviews people who had it all and lost it, like game designer Yoshiki Okamoto (Sponichi Annex via Automaton). During his years at Capcom he was producer on Final Fight and Street Fighter 2, as well as racking up credits on Darkstalkers and Resident Evil games, among others. He left to found indie studio Game Republic in 2003, which hit trouble when their American publisher Brash Entertainment went bankrupt, leaving him in debt to the tune of 1.7 billion yen (almost $US11 million).
As the interview documents, he built himself back up again with Monster Strike, a mobile gacha game that boasts more than 65 million players as of December. Now he’s a producer at Deluxe Games with a portfolio of gacha hits, an income of 1.2 billion yen per year ($US7.7 million), and a Malaysian mansion “the size of about 20 tennis courts.”
