Masamoto Morita

Masamoto Morita joined SEGA in 1994 after being impressed by the 3D graphics of Virtua Fighter, inspiring him to work at a developer specializing in 3D, such as Sega AM3, but he was instead assigned to Sega AM1, where he mainly developed fortune-telling game machine and puzzle games. Despite not getting his dream job, he still enjoyed his time at AM1, as the mass output and short development periods of the department compared to Sega AM2 instead gave him the opportunity to experience a variety of games in various stages, from design, to early development, to location testing, to final release.

Under WOW Entertainment, he shifted his focus from arcades to console and handheld games, culminating in being the lead game designer for the 2004 PS2 game Blood Will Tell: Tezuka Osamu's Dororo, himself a massive fan of the original manga, and being satisfied with the high-budget product he was able to develop, saw it as his peak in video game development.

Wanting to break out of the games industry, Morita became intrigued with the game-like experiences possible using browser services such as the newly-released Google Maps. He ran the website for a 3D shooter available on the PC-9801 that was developed by Asahi Net's founder, which was his gateway into joining said company in January 2006. His most lasting contribution to the company is the learning management system manaba, which he thought was a good service with poor presentation, so he used the skills he learned in the games industry to refine features and redesign the user interface without sacrificing any of the base program.