Break time

Mount Fuji, magnificent though she is, is an active volcano and will one day KILL US ALL. Until such a time she provides us with volcanically heated spring water, which is absolutely great to bathe in. These baths go by the term “onsen”. A great aspect of Tokyo life is that within a couple of hours you can be in a lush green environment, away from the hustle and bustle with a choice of onsen to stay at. Which is exactly what I’ve been up to this weekend. As I have already stayed at hotels (western style), hotels with tatami sections and ryoukan (Japanese style hotel) this time we decided to stay at a minshuku, the Japanese version of a B&B. Price may also have been a factor, as a game artist’s salary doesn’t really provide for five-star hotel stays. In the same vein we saved a few pennies on the bullet train and took a local line in stead, which only took about three times as long. The destination this time was a small station just past Atami on the southern peninsula of Shizuoka.
It’s surprising how little the scenery changes for the first two thirds of the trip but then the densely packed urban sprawl makes way for smaller pockets of densely packed suburban sprawl interposed with the occasional green hill. Once you get to the peninsula the scenery alternates between dark tunnel and small bay village all the way south. Atami and the surrounding areas were once the destination for honeymooners and people wishing to holiday, but it has seen better days. There is a strange atmosphere in this one-time Riviera in the off-season, a strange dilapidation with hints of a former glory; palm lined avenues, old Japanese hotels with facades turned green with growth. The villagers, traditionally reliant on the fishing industry, have taken back their land and hang fresh seaweed to dry on a beach front where once young couples bathed in trendy 60s bathing suits.

The minshuku, once we found it, was exactly what you’d expect from a B&B: a large house with several tatami rooms on the top floor and a bathroom housing the purpose of our visit: a private onsen. The room was a single 6 tatami affair with hardboard walls shielding us, if in sight only, from the neighbours who could easily be heard. The onsen was shared between the occupants, which numbered quite a few on the Saturday night but only us on the Sunday. Apart from the world’s smallest television, a kettle and a fridge the room, as all hotel rooms in Japan, also contained a green tea set to make your own ocha with whenever you please. The futon, hidden in the cupboard, had to be laid out yourself, but that is hardly an issue.

There is a whole tradition of etiquette when it comes to bathing. Once you enter you are greeted with a Japanese shower; the same as a western shower but lower, you’re meant to squat on the stool provided. Soap and shampoo are usually free. You wash yourself rigorously, wash your hair and your body, then rinse off to make sure there is no dirt or errand suds. Only then do you lower yourself in the piping hot natural spring water, where you sit quietly until your body and mind give up. After a quick rinse you get dressed, in your yukata probably, go back to your room and collapse on the tatami, your head dizzy and pounding from the heat. At these times beer becomes as easily drinkable as water, and a few snacks disappear with relish until you fall asleep in a hot stupor, your skin smooth and clean from all the minerals in the water, the room slightly farty from the sulphur. I, personally, love it.

The Sunday we followed up on various recommendations by going down to Kawazu. As the weather was exceptionally fine and the area is itself a few degrees warmer than Tokyo the cherry blossom were already in full bloom; everybody was going down to see it. And by “everybody” I mean every aggressive little old lady you can image piled into the “sight-seeing train”. This train has one slightly undulating row of seats facing outwards towards big windows so the passengers can see the ocean, the villages and the mountains. The battle for a seat was bloody and exhausting. At one point one old lady walked towards a recently vacated seat and was about to sit down when another almost threw her handbag there and said “sorry, taken!” In stead of picking up the bag and throwing it away the first lady merely admitted defeat. Hell hath no fury as an old Japanese lady. Not scorned, just as is.

Kawazu was busy but beautiful. The sakura was not only in full bloom, but some trees had already greened, which even for the south is unseasonably fast. Back in Tokyo we have yet to wait a few weeks. The glory of a sakura-lined street in full bloom is not something you can appreciate until you’ve seen it up close and personal. The pink flowers snow down upon you as you sit there in the sun getting drunk and stuffed with food. Kawazu was one endless row of stalls selling fruits, roasted shellfish on a stick, sliced and fried sweet potato, Japanese sweets, dried fish and squid and oranges. Shizuoaka is famous for its oranges, apparently, so we had no choice but to buy some, though there were many private trees in full bloom which could have provided had the wife not been so keenly aware of scrumping laws in Japan.

Kawazu also boasted a 1300 year old temple next to a 1000 year old tree, which to me looked impressively gnarled and majestic; a real “tonari no Totoro” affair. Atami, however, boasts a 2000 year old tree, which we didn’t get to see this time. The temple looked deceptively new though. The Japanese have an “old broom” approach to history. Sometimes you replace the head, sometimes the handle, but it always remains the same old broom. Likewise this temple obviously did not contain any original materials and had seen numerous renovations but was still the 1300 year old temple.

For lunch we had to whip our way through a sea of old ladies to a soba restaurant where, after a badly chosen but delicious curry soba I was forced to experience the Japanese squat toilet; usually not an adventure I seek out. Luckily the minshuku provided both a squat and a flush toilet, the latter flushing so fantastically rigorous the first time I used it I jumped back in surprise and hit my head on the doorframe.

For a two-night weekend I managed to have a dip in the onsen 4 times, which was exactly the aim of this little break. I highly recommend any foreigners moving to Tokyo to organize periodic trips to one of the many onsen resort areas around the metropolis. It’s a great way to unwind and relax, even if the sightseeing eventually sees you back home tired and exhausted; but at least you’re exhausted by good, fun things rather than work, which makes all the difference.

The way back was a race against the weather, with the forecasts predicting a heavy storm. We didn’t want to get caught out in the middle of nowhere; I know what Japanese storms can be like. Indeed, when we arrived back home the wind was licking at our clothes and the clouds were swirling dangerously. Now it has started raining too. It will be a dark and stormy night.

M.I.A.: Koro Koro Kirby 2

Don’t be melodramatic. Games explode every day. Wonky business decisions, bad development practices, lack of money, a changing market, there are quite a fair few reasons why games get cancelled, and they do get cancelled, quite a lot. Usually you’ll never know about it; NDAs (Non Disclosure Agreements) force developers to keep schtumm about their work, even after an ignominious death. But there are few games that get announced with a lot of fanfare and then suddenly disappear never to be seen again. For one horrible, heart-stopping moment I thought the upcoming Super Paper Mario was one of those when it disappeared from the GameCube launch list, but luckily it popped up again as a Wii title.
One title that was less lucky was the late Koro Koro Kirby 2 for the GameCube.

If you’ve never played the GameBoy Color version of Koro Koro Kirby, released in the West as Kirby Tilt’n’Tumble, then you’re a fool. It was a great little game that used a motion sensor in the cart to allow you to balance your Gameboy to control a rolling Kirby around a maze, making him jump with a quick flip upwards of the console. It was surprisingly responsive and fun. I have fond memories of publicly, without shame, playing this game on my Japan-only clear transparent Gameboy Color with a Mr. Driller strap, tongue sticking out in concentration as I held the console as if it was a saucer filled to the brim with liquid gold. Which it was, in a sense. Looking back, though, I realize I must have been a horribly geeky little shit and I probably deserved the many whiplash wounds in my face the Mr. Driller strap caused every time I flicked the GameBoy upwards.. Nonetheless, it was a great game. The nay-sayers could call it gimmicky, which it kind of was, but then, they said that about the DS too. And who says gimmicks aren’t fun? This game was fun.

Nintendo used to organize its own game shows called Spaceworld, avoiding the noisy, stinking Tokyo Game Show. Though Spaceworld was never meant to be a fixture they haven’t done one for years now, in stead organizing the occasional Pokemon Fair or demo road show. Back in 2001 though the launch of the GameCube was just around the corner. Using a clever ruse that wasn’t all together honest I wormed my way into the pre-Spaceworld press event where an excited Messrs. Iwata and Miyamoto showed off the new console and some up-coming titles.

At the press event we got our first glimpse of the new Zelda, “Kaze no takuto” (“Wind Waker”) which just blew my mind. The cartoon style graphics were what I instantly fell in love with and I still prefer them over the recent, admittedly beautiful “Twilight Princess”. But the title that got more stage time was Koro Koro Kirby. The big display screen revealed a 3D environment in which a ball-shaped Kirby was rolling around. A cut-in showed a camera aimed at the hands of a stage hand holding a GBA connected to the GameCube which he was tilting around to control the orientation of the maze on-screen.

After showing Kirby roll around a bit, duplicating, activating a switch or two and jumping, by flipping the GBA upwards, they showed Kirby rolling off the edge of the world. Here is where it got really interesting. On the GBA screen were clouds. A quick-witted player could maneuver the cloud the catch Kirby as he fell off the television and onto the GBA screen. Once safely caught in a cloud, a quick flip of the wrist would hurl him back up to the television where he would bounce back into play. The interaction between the GBA and GameCube was what really excited me. Mr. Miyamoto tried his hand a little but as he was concentrating on speaking he didn’t do too well and laughing humbly handed the GBA back to the stage-hand.

The rest of the press event went on as you’d expect. Afterwards the masses were allowed to play on a few demo machines where this strange new title “Pikmin” was getting some attention, and we all left happily and giddy, excited about the upcoming console and me, particularly, eager to play the new Kirby.

And then…nothing. Not a sausage. It just disappeared from the scene forever.

As mentioned before, there are a lot of reasons a game gets canned, but I can think of a few difficulties that may have helped kill Kirby.

For one, it was totally dependant on both a GameCube and a GameBoy Advance. If you look back on it, all GameCube titles that supported GBA link-up had it as a feature but also provided play for those without the handheld. Zelda Four Swords Adventures, for example, allowed GameCube-only play and used a little GBA screen inlay on the television for when you’d normally use the GBA. Only multiplayer absolutely required it, but a person who bought the game would not be unable to play it anyway. Kirby would have to have massive warnings on the box to warn people they needed both a GameCube and a GBA or the game would be unplayable. And as age limitation warnings have shown us, nobody ever reads the box but people are quick to complain and demand compensation if that lands them in trouble or “corrupts” their kids.

Or maybe the game simply didn’t stand up to Nintendo’s standards. This is a bit odd as those titles usually end up delayed, rather than cancelled, especially since it had been used as a demo for the pre-launch GameCube. That said, Nintendo probably cancel a lot of games, but we simply never heard about them. Cancelling announced games, though, is a fairly big deal.

Other issues may have been at play too. The GameCube/GBA cable was from the pre-WiFi era and an excited player may yank the console off its shelf during hairy, exciting moments. Or, quite simply, maybe the graph that plots cost to profitability just wasn’t steep enough. The GameBoy Color game reportedly didn’t sell as well as it should have, which may have lead to the cancellation. We’ll never know.

The title should work well on the Wii though. Similar tilt titles already exist and the Wiimote seems made for this kind of game, except that the one thing that made the proposed GameCube game so interesting was the interaction between the home- and held-held consoles. Nintendo have talked about integrating some kind of Wii/DS link-up system. The game I envision would use the DS as a controller, a motion-sensor cart in the GameBoy slot, to tilt the on-screen world to roll Kirby around. Again, a quick flip of the DS would make Kirby jump. If he falls off the television screen he’ll land on your DS screen from where you can rescue him or play hidden, under-world type maps. The DS, of course, can use rudimentary 3D graphics as well, using the top screen as an extra time buffer, showing a falling Kirby, so the player has enough time and a visual indication to react. The motion sensor cart can even contain some mini-games to play when you’re on the go. Drop Kirby from the Wii into the DS, save the game and shut down. Then on the train you can roll Kirby around the mini-games to collect extra points, unlock abilities, secrets, etc. Back at home you switch on both games, flip Kirby back up to the television screen and continue playing. The imagination runs wild with possibilities.

Will this ever happen? Who the Hell knows? I certainly don’t. Again there would be the problem of needing both a Wii and a DS, which, if you haven’t got them yet, are both in very short supply right now. Who knows what hit game will be released later to cause another drought? I would certainly welcome a game like this though, and if I wasn’t so convinced that internet petitions were an optimistically naïve waste of time I’d have started one. Let’s just hope a clever, English speaking, forward-thinking employee at Nintendo or HAL Laboratories reads Japanmanship; a double-edged sword, as that would probably mean they wouldn’t want a trouble-maker like me to work on it.

Short cuts

“I was talking to the lead about you last night.”
See, I’m not paranoid! “Really?”
“Yeah, how come you always wear black?”
“I don’t. Look, I’m wearing my blue stripy shirt today.”
“Yeah, well today you’re not. That’s why I’m saying.”
“Well, historically a country or empire at its perihelion, the zenith of its power, has as the prevailing fashion the colour black. Clothes, uniforms, it was all black. I guess by me wearing black a lot I am instinctively and subconsciously transmitting the idea that I am at the height of my power, my skills are finely honed and I am at the top of my profession.”
“Huh?”
“I guess I wear dark clothes because it disguises the fact I’m flabby.”
“But you’re not fat!”
“The fact you think that only proves the point, really.”
“I’m a bit flabby.”
“I don’t know what to say to that.”

~ ~ ~

“Otsukare.”
“Otsukare.”
“Did you finish San Anrdeas yet? Haha.”
“No, man. I haven’t had any time to play it recently. Have you got a light?”
“Here you go. Are you enjoying it though?”
“Oh yeah, it’s fun. A little difficult, but fun.”
“You should do some side missions to get extra weaponry. You should spend some time doing the graffiti tags.”
“Graffiti tags?”
“Yeah, you must have seen them. They cropped up in one of the early missions.”
“Well, I’ve been mostly working on getting money.”
“Ah, you should go to the betting shop.”
“Betting shop?”
“Yeah, near the gun shop. You can buy a house nearby and…”
“Buy a house?”
“Yeah, just north of your starting position. It’s in one of the rival gangs’ territories.”
“Rival gangs?”
“Or you could do some taxi missions, or vigilante or something but there’s not much money in that.”
“What missions?”
“Um…how far did you get, actually?”
“I opened that second island.”
“The one with the huge mountain?”
“Mountain?”
“Yeah, there’s a huge mountain there. Didn’t you see it?
“No.”
“Let me send you the link to gameFAQs.”
“What’s that?”

~ ~ ~

“Wotcha, chuck. What you up to?”
“Just checking some of the menu graphics.”
“I’m bored shirtless, mind if I look over your shoulder?”
“Be my guest.”
“Hm… why the English? That there doesn’t make sense. That should be this. And that should at the very least be plural, and at the end there, not the front. And why is that in English there but in kana there? Who wrote this stuff? The planner?”
“The planner.”
“The planner… It’s a shame there isn’t someone who speaks English here he could have checked it with first.”
“Hehe, quite.”
“Is this all textures? That’s going to be Hell to localise.”
“Yeah, good luck with that!”
“What the? No way, man. I don’t speak English!”
“Hehe, you cheeky sod.””
“Speaking of textures, that there is a little unclear. It’d probably be better over there and sticking out slightly.”
“Hm.”
“…..”
“…..”
“You know what? Sod it. It’s perfect! I wouldn’t change a thing, if I were you!”
“Hurray!”

Interface? Interferes, morelike!

Inspired by Marek Bronstring’s tirade, well, arguments against the use of comic sans and curlz in games I mulled over the problems with Japanese interfaces for a while. It’s not a terribly deep subject, mind you, and probably not worth a post, but if, like me, you have had occasion to get involved with interface or GUI design for a Japanese title you may have come across some of the problems associated with it.

Firstly, let it be said that only people who have studied or are interested in typography can get this upset about the use or misuse of fonts. I have my own favourite and much hated fonts, though I wouldn’t necessarily organize a campaign against any of them. I do feel that developers should make an effort to develop their own typography for a game, have one custom-made or at least have the decency to stay away from DaFont or 1001FreeFonts. Novelty fonts are like Photoshop filters in that they look like what they are and can only ever be used for the home-made invitation cards for an accountants’ office party; they certainly have no business being used in video games.

So why do we always see Arial and Helvetica in games? Aside from the fact these are work-horse fonts that have, in essence, nothing wrong with them, it’s usually publishers who get wet feet over weird typography and, under the blanket excuse of “readability” will hoist either of these two fonts upon the poor graphic designer tasked with having an interface design credit attached to his name.

In Japan though, especially as a foreign designer, there are plenty of other pitfalls when it comes to text in games. I, for one, have apparently no sense of what is deemed “cool” when it comes to Japanese typography. Possibly because kanji has that effect on westerners I find slightly calligraphically designed letters and square or bubble techno fonts pretty damn cool. My colleagues, however, will twist their faces and exclaim it looks old-fashioned, ugly or childish. In retaliation I am often bemused by them sprinkling texts with the occasional English, as that is considered cool, no matter if it’s erroneous. No, there is definitely a cultural barrier here and if the onerous task of graphic design falls on me I am usually not too proud to let a colleague suggest a font.

With today’s technology you really want an anti-aliased font. On old televisions a wrongly aligned bit of blurring or a single pixel line could cause flickering as it fell in between scan lines. Today’s televisions don’t really have that problem anymore but show things in their gory crispness that some smoothing is desired. If you don’t smooth properly at the very least you’ll get a long bug list with comments on how the slant in the “fu” is every so slightly pixilated. TrueType is right out, of course. Your average Japanese font is around 2 to 4 megabytes in size, compared to the 200 kilobytes of a western font. So bitmapping it is!

However, I found, from personal experience, you simply cannot go below 14 pts in size when you’re using kanji. Some of the more difficult kanji use so many horizontals and verticals hat anything smaller just reduces it to a mess of pixels, more resembling a square barcode than a letter. Even so, some hand-adjusting is often desired. I have spent days going in with the pencil and block eraser tool scanning the hundreds of kanji used in the game to just clear up the occasional anti-aliasing slip. It’s the dictionary definition of tedium.

For this reason, as well as general readability, and of course because they are free, regular Windows fonts usually end up doing the trick. A lot, if not exactly all western imported and localized games end up using one of the MS fonts, often jarring with the rest of the design or image. At least, jarring to me, but maybe not my Japanese peers. For Japanese titles a rounded font, the Japanese version of comic sans, crops up in games aimed squarely at children, and these often don’t use kanji anyway. Calligraphy fonts may be used for historic battle games (with or without giant enemy crabs). This is not a hard and fast rule. And that’s about all there is to say on the subject.

It’s a shame really. Typography is one of those hobby interests of mine; I am by no measure an expert, but I do want to learn more about these things. Kanji, though, and the cultural way the Japanese read and react to them is such a closed book to me I wouldn’t know where to start. I’ve watched calligraphy masters stare at paper for minutes before quickly putting down a word, which admittedly looked beautiful but can also transmit emotion and deeper meaning to a Japanese audience while I am left to only admire the simple aesthetics.

Just beware that when you, as a non-Japanese add some kanji or kana to your designs, and we’ve all done it, fess up, the Japanese will probably just giggle and point. We think having some techno-kana in the background looks cool and DR, but to them it often simply does not. But that’s okay. You may laugh at their use of English, the way the film “Akira” was written in romaji because that’s just so damn cool. Maybe we should all just switch scripts and languages and call it a day. But whatever you do, spare a thought for that poor bastard who spent days cleaning up bitmapped font files for any Japanese release. Tighten up those graphics, proud solider!

Japanese for neologists

Language is often lacking, especially when it comes to describing situations or things that didn’t exist, say, 50 years ago. Many people have made efforts to supplement English with new definitions, most notably Douglas Adams and John Lloyd in their highly recommended “The Meaning of Liff”. Japanese is no exception; my lack in skill can attribute to my own failings in making myself understood but even my Japanese colleagues must sometimes shrug and admit defeat when asked to teach me some new words. “Sorry, JC,” they say, “There is just no need in Japanese for a word like that.” Well, I say there is and though I am a mere beginner on the long road to native Japanese speaker I am confident there is a real need for the following words to be accepted into the language as a whole.

(ge-gai) (pronounced: “gay-guy”)

n., A foreigner working in the Japanese game industry.
Derived from the Japanese for “game” and “foreigner” (“gaikokkujin”), heavily abbreviated.
Example: “JC is a gegai, the poor, stupid bastard.”

(lip-zangyou)

n., Unpaid overtime that serves no other purpose than to stroke the boss’s ego.
From the Japanese “lip service” and “service overtime” (“service zangyou”).
NOTE: When you’re offered something as “service” in restaurants, it means it’s on the house, free; hence service zangyou only means unpaid overtime (you offer the “service” to the company). It could be necessary overtime or not, but which it is isn’t clear from the word. “Lip service”, despite what images that may conjure up, simply means to say things without meaning them, sometimes, but not exclusively, used to mean “to suck up”.
Example: “Yes, sorry dear, I’ll be home late again tonight. Lip-zangyou, don’t you know.”


(ani-aka)

n., The high-pitched voice, pitched somewhere in between an anime character’s and a baby on Helium, that certain Japanese females affect in the mistaken belief it makes them more “cute”.
From the Japanese “animation” (“anime”) and “baby” (“aka-chan”).
Example: “I didn’t understand a word she said, she spoke in ani-aka. I’ve got a headache now.”


(gaichirei)

n., A small temporary slouch or bob of the head foreigners automatically instigate when passing through doorways in Japan.
From the Japanese for foreigner (“gaikokkujin”) and “bow” (“ichirei”).
NOTE: After you first move here and bash your head against several doorframes you’ll find yourself instinctively doing the gaijin bow when entering trains, passing through doorways or walking underneath suspended objects regardless of the headspace available.
Example: “Ouch, that bump looks nasty! Don’t worry, after a few more of those you’ll learn to gaichirei.”

Who’s a pretty boy then?

The idea of “metrosexuality”, if not the word, must have been developed in Tokyo. There is no end to the throngs of young men who obviously spend an obscene amount of money of clothes, cosmetics, hair products and brand goods. Shops and advertising often target these kinds of guys and like their female counterparts they have swallowed the whole thing hook, line and fragrant hair-gel.

There is nothing particularly wrong with wanting to look presentable. I personally draw the line at paying good money for Luis Vuitton briefcases and Prada telephone straps, but some nice clothes, a shave and styling wax never hurt anymore, apart from, possibly, laboratory mice. But in the same vein you see women using every available reflecting surface to adjust their face, with train windows especially a favourite, you’ll see guys picking at their hair to make sure it’s spiky enough, polishing their shoes and adjusting their foundation.

Sales promotion teams have to go out to other companies to sell goods and these guys seem to be heavily populated with those of the metrosexual persuasion. I often share the lift with sales boys from neighbouring companies. I call them “boys” because they all look so very young to me, but to be fair I am notoriously bad at guessing the age of Japanese people, with a margin of error in excess of a decade either way. If I was single and playing the field this would probably get me in trouble. These boys, to get back to the subject, are dressed to the hilt in razor-sharp suits, shiny shoes, carefully sculpted hair and an improbable amount of male cosmetics. The lift can sometimes become a deathtrap of noxious l’eau de stink vapors or back-of-the-head-butting as the guy in front of you Beatle-shakes his hair to get that perfect coiffure.

Cosmetics, style magazines and fashion for men can never rival the onslaught of the female variety with Japanese women having a head-start for being obsessively fashion conscious, but the market is growing. Drugstores will have sections stuffed full of men’s products, from aftershaves to a bewildering variety of hair products, face masks and the like. Famously female-centric high-fashion shops are turning unisex with ever expanding guys’ sections. All-male health spa chain “Dandy House” caters to the metrosexual with too much money on his manicured hands. Their adverts, by the way, hilariously wheel out a dusty and creaking Richard Gere, loafing around an American countryside doing vaguely countrysidey things, his bones audibly groaning with every movement.

On the usage of the word “dandy” I like to educate my Japanese peers. Not dressing like the usual game developer, i.e. washing my clothes, I have been, on occasion, referred to as “dandy” I am greeted with shock when I tell them “dandy” is often used in the pejorative, followed closely by surprise after I’ve explained what “pejorative” means, all this aside from the fact the word hasn’t been used since 1932 when it was belaboured with foppish and slight limp-wristed undertones. Not so in Japan, apparently, where the purer, original meaning remains: someone who takes a lot of care of his looks and clothes. I do advise my colleagues never to refer to someone in Britain as a dandy, though, no matter how well intended the compliment.

The very best thing about all this is, though, that Tokyo is a fashion free-for-all. Nobody, and I mean, nobody will take much issue with your clothes, no matter what fashion you do or do not follow. You can wear anything you damn well like, be it the stinking rags of a boozed-up tramp (see also “Game Developers”), a sharp, pin-stripe suit, even if Italian or an outrageously elaborate Goth outfit, nobody will openly laugh at you, aside from the lesser informed tourist. This is a commendable attitude; I applaud it! I have my own standards and don’t mind telling people around me you shouldn’t wear flip-flops unless you’re walking on sand or that on the matter of shoes brown is for business, black for the club but the populace at large doesn’t care, and probably rightly so. Of course, if you do follow the current, short-lived trends people will think you a God amongst men, but if you don’t, well, so what?

So ladies and gentlemen of the jury, why, I ask you, with all that unisex compulsion for health, fashion and cosmetics, is it still impossible to find a good deodorant in Japan? They only seem to sell the power-spray variety that wears off after 10 minutes and can leave marks seeping through the elbow areas of dark shirts or T-shirts if used with enough tenacity. Bah humbug!


Yes, that image is the hilariously named Gackt, who doesn’t necessarily represent the metrosexual persuasion but it was the first and easiest photo I could find of an androgynously obsessive pretty-boy Japanese to illustrate this post with.

Do as the Hollywodians

Japan is both ideally suited to change the game development rules to follow the Hollywood example, and the last place on Earth where it’ll ever happen; a tragedy of missed opportunity. First let me explain what I mean by the “development rules!” and the “Hollywood example”.

The current system (in theory)

A publisher contracts a developer to create a title. The developer has its staff and overheads regardless of the availability of work or not. The publisher oversees and ultimately controls the project. The producer on the publisher’s side will want changes made when he or she sees fit, but the local boss does likewise, often contradicting each other. Local staff works hard, unpaid overtime and weekends and with a delay the project is finally finished and released. Publisher and developer now have a “bond” and unless really too much money was pissed up the wall it is likely these two will come together again in economic union.

The current system (in practice)

The publisher has ever-growing expectations but an ever tightening wallet. When it contracts a developer to create a title, said developer or even the publisher directly is often forced to outsource part of the development on to another company. This other company has its own overheads and staff that need paying regardless of the availability of work. Often such large chunks of development are outsourced this way that it’s sometimes hard to figure out who the primary developer is. Either way the publisher oversees and takes control over the project ultimately. Though both the publisher and the boss will demand changes the outsourced work is more difficult to control and often rework is needed (or not needed but done anyway) locally before it is accepted.
Not only the publisher and the developer now have a track record to build on but return favours from friendly companies that have helped with development may be required or at the very least continued outsource work is expected.

The system of tomorrow, or the day after, or…

The publisher pays an agency to oversee and put together the development of a title. Agency, publisher and a small core of senior developers work together closely on a prototype, design document and schedule. If these all pass muster the final go-ahead is given and the agency contracts freelance developers or teams to create assets according to the agreed design, standards and schedules. Once the work has been delivered the developers’ contract ends successfully and they are free to move on to the next project. The agency and core team assemble the assets continuously, change and adapt as they come in and so forms the final product. If late changes are required a new contract can be made with the developers, unless the changes are needed because said developers didn’t deliver to standard. The developers charge more for their work but it’s not more expensive for the publisher as there are no or litlle overheads or benefits to cough up and when there is no work there also is no team of developers sitting on their thumbs pulling a wage. With only a skeleton staff the agency, or indeed publishers themselves, have less pressure to get the next project going and can, in theory, spend more time on planning, pre-production and scheduling. Failures are easier to spot during this period so projects can be canned without too much of a loss which in turn can open the door to more original and experimental game ideas and IPs.

It’s all a little too simplistic and doesn’t cover much of the challenge faced in such a situation but you get the general idea. This is of course not a new proposal and many developers and publishers have been debating the merits and problems of such a system in private, on forums and at trade shows. Very few companies are picking up the gauntlet though, but I fully expect that to change some time in the future.

~ ~ ~

There are many reasons why this will and will not work in Japan.

Pros

Location, location, location
A development map of Japan is extremely polarized: a few spots in the West of Japan and surrounding the capital and a massive bull’s eye over the center of Tokyo. There are few places on the Earth where there are so many developers in such a small area comparatively. A freelance developer will have a huge range of options to choose from when considering his next project, and he won’t even have to relocate. If he works from home a short train-ride (for Tokyo standards) can bring him face to face with his employer or other remote team members. Likewise the employer has a huge, local pool of developers to choose from.

The last mile is the toughest
Though I sincerely think such a massive change in game development won’t happen any time soon in Japan it is in essence already halfway there. Outsourcing has become a fact of life for most developers already. Don’t have the staff to supply that portion of the game? Just outsource it! Smaller development companies or companies with a team to spare often do this kind of work-for-hire outsourcing for befriended companies. All that needs to really happen is for the employer of the outsource staff to be replaced with an agency.

Overheads
Overheads is what ultimately makes traditional game development so expensive, and a large part of that is Tokyo’s premium on office space. Without a staff to house you won’t need to pay an arm and a leg for a huge office. As for personnel, if you have none you won’t have to pay their wages or benefits when there is no work to do.

Working hours
The tradition is to stay at the office until the boss leaves, regardless of how busy it is or how late it gets. This is not only unhealthy in the long run, it is also counter productive. Without a boss to breathe down your neck and mark you out as a troublemaker for leaving when your work is done developers can spend the actual time needed to develop assets and no more. Whether they will do this in office hours or sleep until midday and work until midnight is not really relevant, but the fact they won’t have to artificially fill in lost time by reading, napping and working incredibly slowly will speed up the whole process, lead to a healthier mind and body and help with focus.

Choices, choices
In stead of getting lumped with sequel after sequel of a successful series developers who want a change can simply do so with their next contract. Japanese teams are usually fairly specialized and if you happen to be working at a company that’s making the kind of game you don’t like working on, you’re stuffed as you can be assured your next project will be the sequel. With a per-project contract if the employer or the project isn’t to your liking you can simply avoid them in the future and choose to work with other employers you are comfortable with without the hassle of quitting and job-hopping.

No preciousness
Despite the many futile arguments whether games are Art or not (not) and the few spectacular games that sometimes come out of Japan I found that generally the mentality here is of a conveyor belt factory, which would explain the ease with which Japanese developers outsource a lot of their work. Though there are benefits to having all disciplines close together they aren’t really that precious about it and churn out projects one after another. Games are product after all. Product is made of parts. Parts just have to be produced. So if there isn’t a desire to foster a “creative melting pot” or a “creative entity” the step to have offsite, per-project contracted developers working together on a centrally overseen project isn’t really that much of a leap.

Cheap broadband
Japan is a broadband country where the internet is incredibly fast and very affordable. Offsite work should theoretically be easy as data can quickly be up- and downloaded to and from FTP servers and the whole team can have face-to-face meetings and discussions using webcams at a whim.

Cons:

The work-floor hierarchy system
Bosses still rule the roost in Japan. They have their fingers in every pie and hand out commandments and decisions written on stone tablets with a lot of Tipp-Ex. The Japanese working environment relies on it. The boss sets the rules, staff obey the rules and many a meeting is called to discuss these rules. A remote-workforce would be almost unthinkable in Japan’s working environment. Set up tasks and schedule them properly? Pay people for the work done with extra budget to be spent if late changes are required? Have people work from home or away from the boss’s eyes? It would severely undermine the cushy position of today’s Japanese boss and, like politics, these kinds of things only change with bloody revolutions not natural evolutions.

The serf mentality
On the flip-side the Japanese staff need to take more responsibility, not just over their own work but their whole lives. Work may be hard, constant changes grinding but under the protection of a seishain contract you are relatively safe and assured of a monthly wage, no matter how paltry. Quality of work isn’t as much an issue in Japan’s development sphere as is your ability to pull long hours. This mentality has to change. Developers need to be made to rely on the quality of their work to get their next paycheck. Developers need to be given and readily take responsibility over their work.

Planning and focus
A subject I never tire of talking about, apparently, but Japanese development could do with some serious rethinking in the “planning” and “scheduling” departments. Indecisiveness is the main factor which translates into a “I’ll know what I want when I see it, but only maybe” approach, causing a lot of woe for the developer. A Hollywood style contract business where people will be charged by the hour and work from a design brief will possibly cause the collapse of several businesses, the Japanese Yen and world economy as directors ask for change after change and get lumbered with invoice after invoice.

~ ~ ~

For your consideration
Unionization should also be considered to set standards of quality and pay in a freelance development world. With developers free to choose their next contract there is more balance of power and in stead of employees being scared of starting a union for fear of reprisals from their employer it is the freelancer who can boycott an employer should they not adhere to standards. And as union membership is required there is less chance of keen, young and above all cheap and inexperienced amateurs picking up the slack of union members in action. Many creative industries have managed to protect their members with effective unionization and I don’t see how us game developers couldn’t benefit from a similar system.

~ ~ ~

For the benefit of its much maligned development staff, the brighter future of a more and more challenging development environment and a demanding market I truly feel this is the way to go and Japan, being by far the worst offender when it comes to development horrors, is ideally suited to be the first country to totally abandon the status quo and follow on this new track. It’s just such a damn shame that it won’t happen until it has been proven to be popular in America and the majority of Japanese publishers and developers have gone bankrupt. Colon dash open-bracket.

Gaijin Eye for the Japanese Guy

I like to watch western views on Japanese culture. Why, you may ask, would I do that when I myself am surrounded by it? It’s probably because I like shouting at televisions. Of course my own experience of Japan is the only correct one and any differing view is false, idiotic, misinformed. I think you’ll find that with most people, actually.

The western media and Hollywood alike seem to want to portray Japan as a mystic, polite, sexually deviant and utterly confounding place. And though it is these things and more the Devil on the outside looking in sees things differently from the Devil on the inside looking in the same direction. Here is a little summary of Western media’s views on Japan and exactly what I think of it.

Adam & Joe Go Tokyo
Your enjoyment of this excellent television series depends largely on how much you enjoy Adam & Joe’s brand of humour. The shows are fairly typical of your average geek looking at the “weird and wonderful” world of Tokyo, but the way they deliver it makes it a fun experience. Often bemused but never overawed they tackle the usual subjects in their own inimitable ways. Especially hilarious was their bid for fame where they walked around Tokyo and had some actors disguised as public treat them as if they were celebrity royals, just to see how other people would react. Sure enough everybody started snapping photos and asking for autographs. If they were being cheered on and photographed they must be famous, right? Their quest also brought them on a date with the hideous Kana sisters and a musical performance in Yoyogi Park. The show always balances between benign piss-take and honest geeky interest.

Japanorama
It’s programs like this what cause unrest. It ticks all the boxes I hate. Trendy, semi-Designers’ Republic intro graphics, check. Reference to vague 70s robot television shows that only thirty year old virgin bachelors have ever heard of, check. A rather slanted view at all the wackiness that surrounds Japan, check.
It’s the kind of show that seeks out specifically weird phenomena and extrapolates them as a general view of Japan, as if everybody in Japan is a rich, horny deviant who goes to maid cafes every day for hand massages and video games. It’s a little like filming in Soho and claiming all Englishmen live like Peter Stringfellow. It’s pure sensationalist claptrap, or “Japcrap” if you will.
If you watch this series and think you know what Japan is going to be like when you visit here you’ll be in for a shock.

Lost in Translation
This cult classic is a little troublesome. At the heart of it lies a great story with great actors and as such it deserves the love it gets. On the other hand, though, the Japan they portray is fairly stereotypical and shows the experience from a tourist point of view. The overly polite businessmen, the karaoke, Hatchiko square, the rape-play prostitute, it’s all a little clichéd and doesn’t really show Japan how it truly is, at least not when you live here.
But Sofia Coppola obviously knows her stuff. When the protagonist is talking to his wife on the phone he tells her Japan “is not better, just different”, and that hits the nail pretty much on the head. What this film seems to portray really well is the effect such a vastly different culture as Japan’s can have on a visiting westerner. Lost in a world they don’t understand two people find each other, a timeless story that could have been told in any foreign country where English is hardly spoken and the culture is vastly different from America’s. Ironically it is set in the most wannabe-American country in then world.
It’s a great film and if you haven’t yet you should watch it. But only if you come as a tourist, scratch the surface and deliberately seek out the special experiences will the portrayal of Japan resemble yours. If you end up living here it’s all a little…flat, though it may make you yearn for the wide-eyed first weeks of your arrival when things were still special.

Fear and Trembling
This little probable-gem had completely passed me by until a reader emailed me about it, and I am very glad he did! I’m going to have to pull a little game journalist trick here by writing a review of something I have not seen yet, as I can’t find this film anywhere in Japan. But judging by the trailer it will show Japanese office life from a foreign perspective in an exaggerated way, yet closer to the truth than you’d probably imagine. Screaming, insecure bosses, backstabbing colleagues and bullying are par for the course as poor foreign girl tries her damnest to survive her one year contract, come what may.
It looks to be a humdinger, so expect a full review when I finally manage to see it. For now, though, it seems to be a film which shies away from the usual “oh, Lordy, isn’t Japan a wonderfully weird place!” malarkey and focuses in stead on office life, which, let’s face it, will encompass roughly 90% of your life in Japan.

Kelly Osbourne Turning Japanese
Whether the makers are aware “turning Japanese” is slang for masturbation or not, it’s a fitting title. Though the program makes the usual stereotypical mistakes, like “the strangest country on Earth” and “polite society” and focusing on love hotels and maid cafes a little too much, strangely this series perfectly encapsulates the gaijin experience in Japan.
Exhibit A: Fat brat with an inflated sense of worth (“By being an intolerable fat brat I am giving hope to fat slappers everywhere”, is Kelly’s philosophy) says she “loves Japan” though she clearly has no clue what Japan is all about. Totally unprepared she moves over here and immediately gets lost. Having no discernable skill, talent or charisma she hops from crappy, low-wage job to crappy, low-wage job, is repulsed, confused and ends up alone in her apartment crying. Meanwhile the people around her tolerate with bemusement and irritation the presence and utterances of this sociopath. She thinks her life and actions are important enough to show to a wider audience (in this case by making a television show, but it could also have been, say, a blog) and that the world owes her its rapt attention. Friendless and depressed this spoiled westerner stumbles through life in Japan in a meaningless succession of failures.
Apart from the lush apartment this is the gaijin experience in Japan, and I’m shocked it was left up to someone like Kelly Osbourne to portray it on screen so succinctly. Shocked, I tell you!

Exit Strategies

As the late Pat Morita explains in the 1984 philosophical treatise “The Karate Kid”, life, like karate, is all about balance. In this case he was referring to Ralph Macchio getting his leg over with Elizabeth Shue, but in a general sense the theory holds up: life is all about balance. And that balance is a very hard thing to achieve working in the game industry, especially in Japan.

Your life is taken up by office hours. You wake up tired, work long days and come home tired. There is little time, let alone energy, to focus on your private life and hobbies. Game development isn’t half as visually creative as you’d think; all your energy is spent being technically creative trying to make the best art possible within the strict and often changing technical development environment. When visual creativity arises it is taken over by the boss or art lead. For any creative person hobby work is essential to satisfy the Muse. I’m not saying everybody’s creativity should be given free reign at work, but being the way it is you’d want to do your own thing too, and for that you’ll need spare time, something which comes at a premium, especially in Japan.

Extremely rare is the developer who at one or more points in his or her career hasn’t considered packing it in. This industry has a pretty bad retention rate and if you’re honest with yourself how many people can imagine still working under possibly similar conditions in 20 years time? Bad hours, bad pay, bad management and little job security means that sooner or later you’ll think to yourself “what else could I be doing?”

I’ll make no bones about it; I’m at that crossroads, once again. Will my next job be an industry one or do I throw in the towel? The latter option has never looked so enticing. The supposed “kudos” of working in the game industry is an artifice, partly perpetuated by management who rely on keen,, young idiots to work mandatory unpaid overtime and partly by the hype that surrounds our whole industry and the massive fan-culture around it. This can’t really be helped, and to be fair, it helps our market tremendously. But once you’ve been through one or two projects there is little joy or pride in telling your friends that you “work in games”, especially if those friends all have their own jobs, mortgages and kids and still have enough money left for twice-yearly holidays. No, the idea of it being “cool” to work in games went out my particular window quite some time ago.

But why did I stick with it? Well, the one thing I, as an artist, really enjoy about the work is the ability to create worlds and experiences, usually from scratch. There are few professions where you build a fantasy environment for other people to play in, and in truth that is a massively exciting thing to be doing. Do you know any other jobs that do this? Quite.

So what could I be doing and what would be important to me in finding a non-industry job?

Balance
I need to find my work/life balance again. At the moment I’m only working and recovering from working. I have weekly headaches that lay me low for at least one day of the weekend, the rest being taken up with household tasks and correspondence, as well as a little relaxing. All my hobbies have perished and I need them back. I want to relearn origami, start learning how to knit (seriously), experience some more Japanese pastimes, learn the language better. A well-scheduled job with strict hours is required for this to happen.

Filthy Lucre.
I hate to say it but being underpaid for so long has really made the need for a good salary priority number one for my next job. I doubt other industries don’t suffer from some of the same issues as our industry, like long hours, bad management, etc., but at least these obstacles are much easier to live with if you’re not counting your yen at the end of the month. Hell, I could even bare to stay in games if my salary was double (yes, double*) of what it is now. I’d still be frustrated but at least I’d be adequately compensated for my time. If a boss wants to take over my every waking hour he can damn well pay for it.

Fun
Not the job itself but the goal of the project. I like to bring a smile on the faces of children and childish adults. I like people to enjoy what I’m doing. Games obviously do this very well, but what else? Corporate jobs would probably pay very well but they burn out the soul in no time. Something aimed at children, maybe?

Creativity
90% of game art is technical, hacking, fixing and not much artistically creative. I would like a job where my sense of the visual is challenged, where communication means something, and not just how I can hack a piece of work so it will work in an ever-changing code and design environment. With this also I would like a sense of personal creativity, responsibility and achievement. Games seem to offer this but really they don’t. You are always a slave to the whims of your superiors, whether they have any artistic sense or not (usually not).

So these things are important to me. On the top of my head I can think of maybe design companies, advertising, multimedia, interweb, video or film. I’d probably like to work in interactive media aimed at kids; something worthy and educational but fun and exciting. My best bet is probably a design company. There is a chance of a lot of corporate work, but also of the occasional fun challenge. The biggest problem is, I have no idea what they usually pay.

I have about a decade of game experience. I have connections and contacts, friends and enemies, I know how to do my work blindfolded, I know what is going on. The biggest, scariest obstacle is having to throw that all out and start again from scratch. But in Japan they say your mid-thirties is the perfect time for a career change, and it seems to happen quite a lot.

But there is a distinct possibility the outside world will be too scary for me, so I’ll cop out, get another game job and bitch and moan for another few years. Maybe it’s about time I grew that backbone. Game industry Stockholm syndrome, sigh.

* If you think asking for a 200% pay rise is terribly cheeky, keep in mind that that would bring me in line with the lower-end average of a US game artist’s wage!

We have rules but no solutions

The other day I was witness to an analogy in action.

Two people from neighbouring companies had parked their scooters in our company’s parking area. This is, apparently, not cricket. It’s not that there wasn’t space for them, nor were they obstructing anything or prone to cause a problem later when that space would be needed, as it wouldn’t be. No, there are rules about this. They were parked where they shouldn’t be parked so a solution had to be found.

Two colleagues, as ordered by the boss, started dragging the smaller scooter out of the parking area. It was obviously quite heavy so they were both straining a little. They parked it at a 90 degree angle in front of the parking area. They then proceeded to push the larger scooter away too before realizing the first scooter was now forming an obstacle. So two other colleagues moved the first offending article out of the way a bit, but then it became clear that the space they pushed it too was also in the way of the second scooter’s intended location.

When the intended location was pointed out an impromptu discussion erupted between the four colleagues as to what exactly would be the best location. Some fingers were pointed and arguments put forth. The small scooter was placed in area A, but it soon became clear the bigger scooter was too heavy to carry that far so was put in area B. Then the first scooter was repositioned from area A to near area B. Standing back and admiring their handiwork it was decided it wasn’t good enough. The first scooter was repositioned again to actually be in area B, next to the bigger vehicle but first the latter had to be repositioned, yet again, to make space.

The situation wasn’t ideal, but it’d have to do. The vehicles were simply too heavy to shove them about anymore. The matter was concluded, hands wiped clean and actual work resumed. It only took twice as many people three times as long as I would have had they thought it through from the start.

A more perfect analogy of Japanese game development cannot be found.

Better ways to have dealt with the situation:
Market research
Is there really a problem here? Are people waiting for a solution, a gap to be filled? In this case the boss had commanded action, so there was a presumption a problem existed that needed fixing. In reality, though, there wasn’t one and to avoid it ever becoming one in the future small notes could be circulated to neighbouring companies asking them to avoid parking in our area in the future.
Outsourcing
If the problem needed fixing a single person could be sent round to neighbouring companies to find out who the offending motorists were and ask them to remove their vehicles themselves. It may take a little longer but requires only one worker to go around making enquiries and to check afterwards if the outsourced work was completed satisfactorily.
Proper planning
If we decide to take action ourselves we should have looked at the situation and envision a solution; in this case figuring out where the offending scooters should go and how to best get them there. It would take two persons a fraction of the time had all this been decided in advance. Decide the final location, drag one of the scooters there, then the other. Planned, focused and executed. No need for retakes.

The only real difference with actual game development was the fact the boss didn’t come round afterwards to demand minute, labour intensive and unnecessary changes in the scooters’ positioning. “I want scooter A to be rotated 180 degrees, switched with scooter B, which I want blue, not red.” You know the kind of stuff.

Trials of the Mudbloods

There is a great moment in the Irish comedy Father Ted where a nun is talking to a black priest about Africa and missionary work to which the priest, in a deliciously thick Irish accent replies "I wouldn't know. I'm from Donegall"

Whether we are aware of it or not most of us make assumptions about people based on their looks. It's fairly obvious that the Japanese see me and think to themselves "ah, an American!”. My physical self sort of gives the game away somewhat, looking, as I do, so different from the natives. And this is fine with me; I have no desire to totally integrate, even if that was possible, and the extra attention I do get is more often the kind of benign, positive discrimination than not. I do wish they didn’t assume I am American, though.

Stories of discrimination, benign and malignant, in Japan are rife, of course, and apart from the one instance I was accosted and publications like Gaijin Crime File I can’t really complain. It’s usually the Koreans and Chinese, even if they’re third generation Japanese inhabitants, who get the worst of the xenophobia. Japan isn’t a racist country per se, but it is a country where racists, that exist everywhere in the world, can go about their business unchecked and unpunished.

But one group of people is often overlooked in these discussions: the Japanese foreigner. These are the Japanese people born and raised abroad or those of mixed parentage. For them life isn’t easy either! If you look Japanese you are expected to act Japanese and anything else will be seen as odd, corrupted or uncouth.

I knew of one guy, an American born and raised Japanese, who came to Japan and was asked something by a Japanese guy while waiting in line at the airport bus stop. Speaking very little Japanese he was a little dumbfounded and asked, in English and faltering Japanese, what the guy had said. But looking 100% Japanese the guy expected him to act and talk like one and so was taken aback and just looked at him as if he was mentally deficient.
Or there was the case of the Japanese woman who spent a fair number of years living and being educated in the US. When she came back she could not find herself a husband because all the guys were put off by her “Western ways”. Being abroad for too long corrupts the Japanese, apparently.
If you look Japanese and smell Japanese you had better act Japanese or you’re an outsider, as much as people like me, only worse because you really should have been Japanese.

People of mixed race, or “ha-fu” (“half”) as the Japanese call them, are something else altogether. As children they may be a little bit outside of the group at school, simply because they look different, but generally Japan thinks they are cute, beautiful, nice. There are quite a few “ha-fu” talentos on the television and music industry. A lot of Japanese friends (and, to be fair, Western friends too) are terribly excited by the possibility of my siring a half-Caucasian, half-Japanese baby. People have already sketched out career plans in the modeling industry for my, as yet non-existent, offspring.
As a “ha-fu”, of course, you won’t look 100% Japanese and as such you could get by without adhering to the strict social rules and etiquette required of Japanese citizens.

As an aside, I’m a “ha-fu” myself, though being half one kind of Caucasian and half another kind of Caucasian you can’t really tell. And I’ve never even been to the Caucasus! When people call me a “ha-fu” I always delight in telling them, ”No, I’m a DOUBLE!” ; a joke that works much better now I've lost some weight.

It is really quite mind-boggling to consider just how homogenous Japan is. Having lived in very culturally mixed countries myself the difference couldn’t be more extreme. Part of this is probably because Japan was a closed country for so long while the West was mixing and matching cultures with their empires. Partly it may be due to a kind of cultural closed-mindedness aggravated by a lack of skill in a lingua franca. Or maybe it’s the still strict immigration laws; whichever it is, Japan is very very Japanese. Though it is hard to pinpoint a universal “Britishness”, it seems it’s quite easy to find a universal “Japaneseness” and if you looks like you fit in that category but don’t act as if you do, you’ll face the same xenophobia, misunderstandings and problems as a ‘real’ outsider.

So if you’re white and living in Japan, count your blessings. You are one of the cool, ‘good’ foreigners. Sure, you’ll face some discrimination, which is bad and inexcusable, but compared to the Koreans, Chinese and often overlooked “Japanese foreigners” we still live on easy street.

Japanese for game geeks

If you’re really a hardcore game fanatic you should already know where the big Japanese companies get their names from. If not, it’s still an interesting insight into some corporate Japanese thinking. In Europe and America game companies, especially recently, like to go for, what I call, the “double-barrel comedy misfire”; i.e. vaguely naughty or silly names that mean nothing and are often instantly forgotten; things like “Mollusk Pants” or “Simian Nuts”. The Japanese, with a few notable exceptions, take their naming a little more seriously, and though there can be occasions for hilarious Engrish and more recently pretentious and sometimes misused Latin, their motives are often pure.

Though even the Japanese releases show the famous oblong Nintendo logo when you boot them up, their office signs, corporate details and stock-market listing all use the kanji version ; “nin” (charge, responsibility), “ten” (Heaven, sky) and “do-“ (temple, shrine or magnificent). This is often translated as “leave luck to the heavens”, which seems a bit of a liberal translation but one that sums up their business acumen pretty well.

Capsule Computers, another good example of the Japanese desire to cut words short. Of note is the fact in Japanese there is no “-m”. There are syllables beginning with “m-“ but not ending with one. For this the Japanese use the “-m”, which is the universal soft-stop. So in katakana you actually write “kappu-conn”.

The shortening of the name “Service Games”, which was previously “Standard Games”. Though it is possibly the most Japanese company you’ll encounter, with all the Japanese corporate culture you’d expect, and it has, bafflingly, a slew of rabid fans it was in actuality founded by American, David Rosen, and was only taken over by Mr. Nakayama in 1979.

Previously Sega’s AM7 team they took on the name “Overworks” after their boss Mr. Oba, which sounds pretty much identical to the Japanese pronunciation of “over”. I wonder if he intended to advertise the working conditions so openly.

Shin Nihon Kikaku (“New Japan(ese) Project” or “New Japan(ese) Design”)

Big (“oo”, “dai”) East (“higashi”, “to-“)

“Genki” means, literally “happy”, “healthy” or “fine”. I think it is best translated as the French “cava”, encompassing all that is good and happy about someone or something. If you think the logo looks like it’s been drawn by a six-year old that’s probably because it was.

The old “splice two names together” trick perpetrated by Kou Shibusawa and Eiji Fukuzawa; except, of course, these people don’t exist and the name is simply a joke anagram of Keio University where husband and wife founders Yoichi and Keiko Erikawa studied.

From Nakamura Manufacturing, who created coin-operated machines to Namco. How’s that for shortening a name?

The long bad Friday

Argh, will this project never end? Working days are becoming longer and longer, mentally speaking. Lots of things to clean up but I’ve decided not to fix anything unless it’s specifically asked or listed in our bug database. Partly this is due to the obfuscated and long process from Maya asset to in-game check, a journey of a million steps where something can break at any moment, but mostly because every time I show initiative someone else takes ownership over it and asks me to change something about it. “Can you build some kind of blocking object here?” So I do, I build a nice new model of something or other. “Oh, that’s nice. Can you make it a little fatter and with different colours?” Why don’t you just do it yourself in stead? No, I’m counting the hours and doing only those tasks specifically requested. At face value this may sound a little unprofessional but in fact it is a devious ploy to save my sanity.

At lunch disaster strikes. I have brought a home-made lunch but the microwave decides to weld one of the lids to the Tupperware making it impossible to open. This has never happened before so I’m puzzled as to why this should happen now. I spend a good quarter of an hour trying to break open the dish to make my way to the lovely food hidden within but despite a bent teaspoon and some nasty scratches the lid stays in place. To console myself I go out for a coffee at a local coffee shop. A Japanese guy next to me, probably my age or slightly older, is knitting. Knitting! I have often thought of trying that myself. It seems a good way to switch off your mind and do repetitive boring tasks, something I have become very adept at in my decade of game industry experience. It must be nice to sit back, switch off your mind, listen to La Triviata and suddenly find yourself with a sweater or scarf. I always thought it’d look ridiculous, and judging by the guy next to me, it does; but still…I think it’d be an interesting hobby for a guy.

When I later tell the wife of my knitting ambitions and the guy in the coffee shop she informs me that knitting is kind of “in”. Apparently an ex-baseball star started supplementing his meager pension by knitting and has become quite popular doing so. He teaches it, sells his works and appears on NHK occasionally. “The Knitting Prince” he is called. That would suggest a vacancy for a “Knitting King”. I think I have found a calling…

The colleague next to me wants some more tutoring. I move over to his desk but I hate his setup. Not just his mouse and monitors but his custom Maya UI, so I drag him over to my desk so he can watch me doing what he wants to learn. Because he gets in fairly late he also eats lunch late. Around 3 o’clock this nasty smell suddenly drifts around the work floor. It’s a fishy, oily smell that goes straight up my nostrils and stays there for the rest of the day, until well into the evening. It’s his bento lunch. From the corner of my eye I try to figure out what it is; rice, some veggies, some kind of slab of stinky fish. Horrendous! The cigarettes I smoke after and the water I drink all taste of this funk.

I am bored again. I have XNA Studio installed now and am tinkering with it surreptitiously. So far programming is proving to be piss easy. Soon I’ll be a coder’s worst nightmare: an artist who programs. Ha! I have a long way to go yet, but I’m buoyed by the success of these early baby steps.
Of course around one hour before my planned leaving time some bugs get passed my way; I don’t blame the lead, he’s been roped into meetings all day, the poor bastard. With a heroic effort I drag myself out of my bored slumber and whiz through the bugs. I check them on the converter, which still takes longer than the actual fixes and upload them to the server.

As I have to find creative ways to fill up my working day I spend a lot of time writing my "update" emails that get sent round the office whenever anyone updates his or her work. Rather than my usual baby-Japanese kana emails I look up in dictionaries and on-line translation websites the perfect kanji and make sure my grammar is correct. One colleague comes over and exclaims with delighted surprise that I've been sending kanji round in emails! As I feel awkward taking credit where it isn't due, a reason for my continued lack of progression in this industry, I show him the Excite translation site I used, which causes great hilarity all round. "Oi," he shouts at a colleague, "that kanji we talked about? Translation site!" Other colleague laughs, the one sitting next to him exclaims an "oh, that’s why!" and several others giggle behind their hands. I'm not doing a good job teaching the Japanese that gaijin can learn Japanese quite easily if they put their minds to it.

I’m off home. More train stories. I had actually dreamed of train agro the previous night, so leaving the house in the morning I had a mindset looking for trouble. “Some annoying bastard is going to get the brunt of my frustration today”, I promise myself. And I strike gold! An old guy, trying to look respectable is reading a paper in a packed train. I am right next to him. He turns his back to me and leans closer and closer to me to make space for his paper. I grab the metal bar to the right of me with my left arm, thus forming an elbow-shaped barrier between him and me; we have contact. I’m not letting him move out further, but he’s not really pushing anymore. At one stop he turns to me and gives me the eye. I put on my scariest Joker face, sans demonic smile, and hold his gaze for a good 10 seconds before he turns away. His face tells of his disgust at this uncouth foreigner. So you’re wearing a long coat, suit, gloves and slick your hair back; if you really were a well to-do businessman you’d be traveling to work in your own black Mercedes with little white curtains in the window, you mountebank! But he worms himself into the corner and tries to read his paper in the empty space above the seats he is facing. Win!

On the way back a bullish, fat, flat-capped oaf is trying to read a book. I am surprised he can read, and judging by the way he turns the book this way and that with his head cocked back, as if trying to make out a Magic Eye image through nasty light glares, he probably can’t. But he is pushing. I have no space and this sour-faced gorilla is pushing at me to make space for his book. I can feel him pushing with his toes, lifting his heels off the ground for extra leverage but I use the opportunity for an extra little shove which unbalances him and forces him to take a step forward. A few stops down he moves to a different position altogether. Win again!

The rest of the journey I look over the shoulder of a rather plain looking woman playing Animal Forest on her white DS. She’s just running around her village, not doing much.