Massimo Guarini

Massimo Guarini is a visionary Director with over 14 years of experience in the entertainment industry. He is specialized in directing all the creative aspects of cross media productions, with particular focus on high profile videogames for the international markets.

Despite his specialization in directing videogames productions, Massimo has extensive knowledge and mastery of multiple arts and disciplines.

His professional experiences range from Game Design to Visual Design, from Photography to Film Direction, from Art Direction to Creative Communication.

Massimo’s wide interest in different creative arts and businesses makes him an extremely versatile director, able to professionally take on different challenges while bringing something different and unique at the same time.

PRESENT

Massimo Guarini is currently living in Tokyo, working as Game Director at Grasshopper Manufacture Inc.

Massimo is working directly with Suda51 (Goichi Suda), the eccentric founder of art-house Grasshopper Manufacture and Director of “No More Heroes”, with Capcom’s fame Executive Producer Shinji Mikami, and with Silent Hill composer and Executive Producer Akira Yamaoka.

At Grasshopper, Massimo is in charge of directing all the creative aspects of game productions, reporting directly to Suda51 and the executive body.

Massimo lives and works in Tokyo since October 2007.

BIOGRAPHY

Massimo Guarini began his Game Design career at Ubisoft in 1999. Since then he has written, designed, directed, or otherwise assisted the development of more than 15 games all over the world, winning several industry awards, including the E3 2007 Best Fighting Game (Xbox360) Award, the 2007 Game Critics Award nominee for Best Fighting Game and the 2000 Platform Game of the Year (GameBoy Color) Award, issued by Nintendo in its official buyers guide.

After Ubisoft’s acquisition of Redstorm Entertainment in 2000, Massimo directly worked on the production of several titles based on the Tom Clancy best selling series Rainbow Six and Splinter Cell.

In 2003 Massimo co-founded Shibumi Visual, a creative agency and video production studio based in Milan, Italy, working closely with Dynamic Italia (a division of Tokyo-based Dynamic Planning, founded by Go Nagai) to produce and market Japanese Anime home video editions. He served as its President and Creative Director until late 2004.

In early 2005 Massimo moved to Montreal, Canada, where he lived for almost three years serving as Game Director in the award winning Ubisoft Montreal studio.

At Ubisoft Montreal Massimo directed the famous “Naruto – Rise of a Ninja”, which debuted in October 2007 on Xbox360 in North America and Europe.

“Naruto – Rise of a Ninja”, has been awarded by Ign.com as E3 2007 Best Fighting Game and has received the Game Critics Awards nominee for 2007 Best Fighting Game.

Following his passions and interests, Massimo moved to Japan in October 2007.

He entered the challenging Japanese Videogames Industry as Producer and Creative Director at Interchannel Inc., a Japanese videogame publisher/developer based in Tokyo and owned by the holding company Index Group (Atlus, Takara-Tomy, Nikkatsu, Madhouse Anime Inc).

At Interchannel, Massimo has been in charge of creating and directing new Games Intellectual Properties for the Japanese and international markets. He has also been in charge of licensing deals (in and out) with international publishers, animation and movies products evaluation and games submissions to platform holders (Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft).

During his stay in Tokyo, Massimo had the chance to meet with Suda51 (Suda Goichi), the eccentric founder of art-house Grasshopper Manufacture and Director of “No More Heroes”.

Impressed and inspired by his strong personality and unique creative approach, Massimo decided to join Suda51 and Capcom’s fame Executive Producer Shinji Mikami on their new projects.

Massimo had extensive abroad working experiences in Italy, France, China, Canada and Japan.