(From left to right: Matsuyama, Uchiyama, and Harada. I'm the blond guy.)
Uchiyama made a joke that he's made several times before that CC2's games were boring before he came along. But it was pointed out that while working for then-Bandai he himself made some terrible games, and .hack was the first one that was an original and not an anime adaptation. .hack is currently on its fourth producer - Uchiyama was the first. Before .hack was released, CC2 was just CyberConnect and released Tail Concerto and Silent Bomber before changing presidents and names. Later, Uchiyama joked to Matsuyama about it being time for CC3. (Siliconera inaccurately called some of their major game releases like Tail Concerto and Solatorobo "passion projects"--Tail Concerto was actually the game that made them a game company).
Uchiyama pointed out that lots of series have fans, but CC2 is one of the few companies that does, and that has such a strong following overseas as well. Uchiyama also made a remark about the "demon interviews" applicants to work at CC2 have to go through. For instance, story planners, people who can't draw or program but want to work on the script of games, are given a blank sheet of paper and asked to storyboard page 8 of the last chapter of Naruto, to test their imagination. If they don't know Naruto, they're allowed to look it up.
They polled the room to see how old their fans are. Everyone besides Matsuyama was in their 30s or below, which just goes to show what a young company they are.
To counterarguments from the Namco Bandai personnel, Matsuyama said that the fans hate the smartphone games, and more and more CC2 is going to do some real games. They have something original along these lines in the works that they can announce soon that will both surprise fans and make them happy. Uchiyama asked, "it'll surprise them and make them happy, even though it's original?" The answer was, "yes." (strong hint that it might be like G.U.)
So there's hope!
Matsuyama recounted an incident where, for seemingly no reason, a swimsuit was ordered on his Amazon account. By default, his orders are shipped to the office, and usually someone will check the contents for him to let him know what arrived. The secretary came up to him in the the middle of the office and let him know he got a package, but said she'd err on the safe side and not say what it was. He told her it was fine, so she whispered, "it's a swimsuit." He had no memory of ordering a swimsuit, and even worse it was a school swimsuit. Anyway, long story short, he decided to wear it for laughs, and the picture unfortunately ended up on the internet, and now he's one of the top Japanese Google searches for "swimsuit":
In case you need to wash the swimsuit image out of your mind, Matsuyama did this last week: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Vgd804NB5op
