Jun Akiyama

Jun Akiyama is a Japanese video game event director and scenario writer that has been working for Square since 1995. He is known for his ornate camera work, and his subtle and realistic character animations in Vagrant Story (2000) and Final Fantasy XII (2006).

Biography
In his role as event planner for Final Fantasy VII, Akiyama was responsible for the story elements and event scenes involving the characters Red XIII and Yuffie Kisaragi. During his work as the event director of Vagrant Story, he intended to make the transitions between gameplay and event scenes as smooth as possible. The fully polygonal graphics of the game entailed precise camera movements, character animations, and the usage of different lens effects.

In January 2002, Akiyama joined the Final Fantasy XII project as event director. He was in charge of all aspects of the cutscenes such as the cinematography, camera movements, character facial expressions and body movements, and the Japanese voice acting. When Yasumi Matsuno stepped down as the game's producer and co-director in mid-2005, he expressed his high confidence in the remaining team members, especially Hiroyuki Ito and Jun Akiyama. Akiyama was given Matsuno's position of scenario director, while also still being the event director. Hiroshi Minagawa, who was handpicked by Matsuno to replace him as the game's co-director, has stated that many of the scenario ideas Akiyama came up with had to be abandoned in order for the game to meet the Japanese release date.

Shortly after Final Fantasy XII was released in March 2006, Tetsuya Nomura approached Jun Akiyama and asked him to be the event director for Final Fantasy Versus XIII. Nomura wanted the story of the game to be presented with a balance of in-engine cutscenes and CGI by Square Enix Visual Works. However, when Akiyama saw the quality of the in-engine graphics made possible by Crystal Tools, he decided that they should present the majority of the story with in-engine cutscenes, similar to the case with Final Fantasy XII. Nomura accepted Akiyama's idea as he felt Akiyama was skilled a developing in-engine cutscenes. However, as the development months went by, Nomura changed his view on what he wanted to achieve with the game. Not only did he want the majority of story to be presented with in-engine cutscenes, but he now also wanted the player to still be playing the game while these cutscenes were happening. This new concept greatly extended the development time of Final Fantasy Versus XIII and made development very challenging on the aging PS3 hardware.

In July 2012, Final Fantasy Versus XIII was cancelled by Square Enix management with the aim of it being reshaped into Final Fantasy XV. At this time, a new director called Hajime Tabata was placed in charge of the game. When Tabata became the director, event director Hiroki Chiba was brought in to help Akiyama remake all the event scenes in Luminous Studio. Due to the game being remade in this new engine, all of Akiyama's event scenes using Crystal Tools when the game was called Final Fantasy Versus XIII were scrapped. Akiyama has since left the project, with Chiba taking over completely as the event director.