Akemi Maniwa-Thor

Akemi (she/they) is a producer with over a decade of experience in a variety of fields within gaming including Customer Support, QA, and Game Design giving her a broad perspective across disciplines. Akemi also writes and designs tabletop roleplaying games. She is an avid aikidoist and likes penguins. They like making cool things with cool people.

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Production

After a number of years in gaming, having experienced many different roles production seemed like a natural progression to communicate across disciplines. Through Indie Game Academy I led a team of 6 through the process of creating 2 games over a 4 month period. The first was Destiny Reflections, a magical girl themed platformer that utilized a character switching mechanic. This was created over the course of a weekend as a game jam where we learned how to work together as a team. It's important to note that as a team we had never met or worked together before the course but other than a few merge issues we were able to complete the project in time for the in-class playtest with minimal issues.During this weekend long jam I also learned to implement audio in Godot because it was something that needed to be done and at the time no one else was able to dedicate time to the audio needs. I had never before worked in Godot but I was able to find documentation and make it happen so the team could focus on other aspects and keep the process going.

Following the release of Destiny Reflections, the team got to work ideating, prototyping, planning, iterating, and polishing our next project, Honeydew, Adieu a full game created in the course of 4 (close to 3.5) months that plays against the romance tropes of farm sims.Throughout this process I lead the team scrums, kept track of all tasks, organized all of the documentation for the game, steered the project vision, and developed my skills as a producer/project manager.Early in the process the team had to decide on the game engine we would work in. I had put together an anonymous Google form but the votes came down to 1 for Unity, 1 for Godot, and 3 for No preference. As such being the producer I was the deciding vote. In order to resolve this, I led a meeting where everyone on the team was able to express their thoughts on game engine of choice, the pros and cons of each and anything else they wanted to express related to the issue. After hearing everyone's opinions it came down to while it would be easier for one of our engineers to work in C# in Unity, but our team's artist was more comfortable using Godot and as such they wouldn't need help implementing art in game. Therefore, I made the decision that we would work in Godot. Often times people will make it easier on the engineers but in this case I determined if the artist doesn't need to ask the engineers for assistance implementing art it would be better for the project because the engineer's time could be better utilized doing other engineer work.

Game Design

In 2019 while still at Machine Zone, I transferred from the embedded QA position for Game of War and Mobile Strike to join the design team and worked on World War Rising. This is where I was found I enjoyed creating player experiences, even though most of my work at this time was creating stat curves, cost curves, loot tables, and leveling data for buildings, heroes, and gear. I learned a lot about creating game economies and game balance during this time.

Following a layoff from Machine Zone I obtained a job at Tempo Storm where I worked as a game designer on The Bazaar, a deck building autobattler roguelike game. This was where I was able to really start to develop my design skills and create design documents.

My first foray into the gaming space was working as a production assistant for a Japanese romance visual novel company called Voltage Entertainment USA. We localized and created original romance titles designed for women. While a production assistant I was a major part of the production of the titles, creating character concepts, aspects of the story, utilizing a limited amount of game assets to create and build the world of the story, contacting freelance writers and artists, and doing QA checks on the apps. During this time I helped establish a QA pipeline for the 20-ish member studio and provided support for 4 titles.

Following my time at Voltage USA, I joined Machine Zone first as a Japanese bilingual customer support but after the company moved most of the CS team to their Las Vegas office I transferred onto the QA team because I realized that somewhere between 25-30% of customer support is actually QA skills. During this time I worked on Game of War Fire Age, Mobile Strike, and Final Fantasy XV: A New Empire.

To help out our team's lead designer even as a producer I took on some of the design documentation in order to make sure that all the features were properly documented.

Writing Credits

Self-Published Games

Testimonials

Akemi is intuitively respectful in her role as a producer. She is multi-skilled, understanding, and careful to respect boundaries.
Trey Poling Team Herald Hearts through Indie Game Academy

Akemi is a talented designer with creative concepts and has the ability to transfer those concepts into a game or system. Her affection towards narrative and storybuilding is refreshing. She's motivated, technically sound, and understands good games. She understands games and narratives in many languages and perspectives, which is hard to come by. She's an interesting person and she's easy to work with.
Matt (he/they), Game Designer at Tempo Storm

I've known Akemi professionally and personally for over 20 years. I know firsthand Akemi approaches her all projects with a mixture of professionalism, gentle humor, and dedication. She will make an invaluable addition to any creative production team and project.
James Eaneman (Hw/His/Him)

It was lovely working with Akemi at Machine Zone. She's very easy to communicate with and collaborate with. She's good at what she does and I would be fortunate to work with her again.
Annie Idris (She/Her). Former art producer at Machine Zone.

Akemi worked together with me and our teams developing content for mobile games at Voltage Entertainment Inc. Akemi is one of the friendliest go-getter personalities I've ever met, and her genuine enthusiasm is contagious in all the best ways. I could approach her with anything and know that she would always respond in kind, with an exemplary sense of initiative to support the team effort. She responds well to feedback and consistently strives to make meaningful improvements in all that she does. In a good work environment, there tend to be certain people you are excited to see when you get into work, and Akemi was 100% that for me. She's one of the real ones. I would absolutely love any opportunity to work with her again!
Ivy Horng (she/her) Voltage Entertainment USA

I've worked with Akemi over multiple years at Big Bad Con, this last year in a direct supervisory position. Akemi is a great person to work with. She has good attention to detail and a very positive attitude. She approaches problems with creativity and works hard. She meets her obligations and gets things done when they need to be done. Akemi's ability to take a task to completion without direct supervision impressed me and she would make a great addition to any team.
Jerry Ozbun | Technical Writer and Process Developer | Big Bad Con

Akemi is enthusiastic in a way that makes others feel the same. She’s unflappable under pressure. And she cares about the details the rest of us might miss.
Andy M. he/him Big Bad Con

I’ve worked with Akemi between 2019 and 2024 where she served as a volunteer and then a volunteer captain for Big Bad Con, a Bay Area gaming convention. Akemi, in all the roles she filled has been nothing short of exemplary. She standardized procedures, trained volunteers, welcomed guests, managed facilities, and worked with our coordinators to improve the organization of the convention. She did all of that while always bringing cheer, compassion, and empathy to the table. Akemi is wonderful to work with and I would be delighted to stand by her side anytime!
Sean Nittner (he/him) Big Bad Con