Kuma is unlikely to come back. As he told me, he's 'turning over a new page in his life.'
Given he's not here to defend himself, I'm going to offer some defence of Kuma as his friend. While I won't go too much into the details for obvious privacy reasons, we did talk and I considered him a friend. I wouldn't normally feel comfortable about this, but as Studio Kuma has well and truly closed it's doors for good and a few months have passed, I feel it's only right I at least say something, especially as there is no one else around to defend him.
His project management was not the best, but the man was very damn passionate, and laying all the blame for the failure on him isn't exactly fair in my opinion.
All of which means nothing when you realise at no point (I believe ever), Studio Kuma once broke even. The overhead costs were astronomical, and I'm going to be blunt here, if what I was told was true regarding overhead costs, (I won't go into the specifics of that because it's too personal), half of the supposed staff involved, from a pure business standpoint... I would have fired, and told him so myself.
Kuma was always trying to look out for everyone and always trying to keep a sinking ship afloat to his own detriment for everyone elses sake.
Much of these decisions came out of a desperate need to at the very least break even, Milky Touch was not financially successful despite all its years in production, it was a money sink and it's collapse was inevitable, all of these other ventures were hopeful throws of the dice to turn the ship around.
While these were wrong decisions, I believe when you put them into proper context, it's clear they weren't just his 'random whims' because he liked cyberpunk- he hoped to cash in on the cyberpunk craze to help keep things going and turn a profit.
There were many management points me and Kuma disagreed on, but as I came to understand the situation, Studio Kuma's fall came from a lack of funding (even at it's peak, it wasn't close to what was needed) and very expensive overhead costs.
It did not totally collapse because Kuma leap frogged from one thing to the next ... That was a symptom of the above issues.
