The Japanese had joined the Sega team in 1984, where she participated in the creation of “Sonic”. She is the first woman to have received a prize for her career at the Game Developers Conference.
Le Monde
“In tribute to Rieko Kodama”, we can read in the credits that credits the teams in charge of the Megadrive Mini 2 from SEGA, a mini-consoling available Thursday October 27 in Europe. On social networks, the players immediately moved this tribute to a designer who was still thinking alive: Sega then confirmed that Rieko Kodama was dead in May 2022.
The late formalization of the disappearance, at the age of 58, of this developer, producer and graphic designer aroused tributes from the editor’s historical employees: “We have created Phantasy Star and Sonic Ensemble”, thus recalled Yuji Naka, the designer of the iconic game Sonic the Hedgehog (1991).
Rieko Kodama Passed Away on May 9, 2022. I have very background Memories of Her Becuse we Were Sega Colleagues and Creat… https://t.co/kpoanhdia3
Women were rare in studios in the 1980s and 1990s. Rieko Kodama is a pioneer in the industry. She started working at Sega as a graphic designer in 1984 on champion boxing. The company has just marketed its first console, the SG-1000. The Japanese then helps to develop visuals of flagship titles of the next Sega machines, like Alex Kidd in Miracle World (1986) and the role play Phantasy Star (1987), on the Master System, as well as the iconic Sonic The Hedgehog (1991) and his suite (1992) launched on Mega Drive, one of the star consoles of the 1990s.
In 1993, she ensured the realization of Phantasy Star IV: The End of the Millennium, a position occupied by few women in this sector. The place of women in video games already seems to interest her since she offers a main female character. At the time, this choice, without being a first, remains an originality.
Despite the end of Sega’s golden age in the early 2000s, Rieko Kodama never changed their employer. In 1998, she became a producer for Deep Fear (1998), the last title published on the Sega Saturn console in Europe. Then, it occupies this function on role -playing games, such as Skies of Arcadia (2000), on Dreamcast, or the 7th Dragon series, from 2009.
In 2019, she was the first woman to receive the pioneer prize at the Game Developers Conference (GDC), one of the main meetings of industry professionals. “She participated in paving the way for many game creators who will follow” then said Katie Stern , Managing Director of GDC. The mix in the video game industry is gradually progressing. In France, the share of women in development studios has increased to 22 %, according to the 2021 assessment of the national video game union , against 19 % in 2020.