Tokihiro Naito, the creator of the highly influential Japanese role-playing game Hydlide, recently opened up on his personal social media account about the difficulty of finding work in his 50s due to age discrimination in Japan.
As spotted by Automaton-Media, Naito shared on his Twitter/X account, on October 15th, that when he was facing unemployment in his 50s, he struggled to find work in the game industry, with most of the rejections specifically mentioning his age. Meanwhile, the few companies that did offer him an interview often did so simply for "a chance to meet Naito Tokihiro", rather than out of a legitimate desire to hire him for a role.
It was only through his own personal connections in the industry and a stroke of luck that he managed to land a job at M2. Co. Ltd, which is where he now works as a director.
"When I was on the verge of becoming unemployed at 50 after my employer decided not to renew my contract, I applied to nearly a hundred companies," said Naito, as translated by Automaton-Media. "But about 90% of my applications were rejected at the document screening stage. The reason cited was my age. They didn’t even bother to look at my skills.”
This post ended up drawing a lot of attention on Japanese social media, with other developers, including fellow ex-T&E Soft staff, sharing their own stories of experiencing age discrimination in the industry.
The game developer Hiromasa Iwasaki, meanwhile, who is also a veteran of the industry, shared with Naito the following message: "After you turn 50, basically only overseas studios will interview you regardless of age, with some exceptions. Even the project I’m on right now was something I landed through an acquaintance. Honestly, I think age discrimination is blatantly present in Japan.”
Automaton-Media speculates that the problem emerges from the country not having "explicit laws or punishments addressing age discrimination by employers", and "a strong culture formed around seniority" that means "many employers don’t want to hire subordinates that may be older than their managers".
They also suggest this problem doesn't seem to be prevalent overseas, but that's not the case, at least according to those we've spoken to in the past.
Over the years, we've interviewed many veterans of the games industry, working both in the UK and America, who have admitted to hiding past work on websites like LinkedIn as they feel there is a bias against hiring older workers from both recruiters and game companies.
Meanwhile, individuals such as David Mullich (producer of I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream and Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines) and Larry Kuperman (currently of Nightdive Studios) have both publicly expressed their experiences with ageism in the past.