“But I felt that it was so much better than joining boring other projects,” Takahashi said. Takahashi recognised that this was a high-risk project. The plan for the class was to produce a prototype game, and if that went well, to create a fully-fleshed out product. Ozaki-san thought the students could make objects that a katamari can roll up.” So Ozaki-san needed a game idea that was easy to collaborate on with very junior artists, and my idea was selected. “But the students of this school learn to be CG artists. “And this game class had a curriculum where they actually make a game.” “Ozaki-san said that Masaya Nakamura, then president of Namco, was interested in being a school principal, and that is one of the big reasons for this business,” Takahashi said. Like the Konami education program that had produced Beatmania, Dance Dance Revolution, and GuitarFreaks, Namco’s hope was that their program would produce new and interesting work while funelling graduates into new hires, resulting in a reduction in the in-house training usually required of new recruits.
He seemed to not have a bad impression of my idea, but he couldn’t make a decision about the game itself.”įaced with that institutional obstacle, there seemed to be no clear path forward, but Takahashi pushed on anyway. He had moved to another department, so I had to talk to my current boss about my idea first-but he was not a manager of game designers, he was a manager of artists. Also, technically Ozaki-san was not my actual boss at that time. “Usually game ideas were proposed from the game design department at Namco, but we both worked in the art department. “I talked with Ozaki-san, my boss, about how we should move this idea forward to an actual internal production,” Takahashi said. This is most evident in the fact that no clearly laid-out internal process within Namco existed to pitch a game design from the position Takahashi held or the department he was in.
Atypical, though, was his ambition to create a new kind of game, and his willingness to speak up and fight for his point of view rather than conform to the wishes of his superiors. For example, his departmental shuffling to find the best fit is a fairly standard practice for new employees at Japanese companies. Takahashi’s path through Namco was ordinary in some ways. Game developers in particular experience long periods of what’s known as “crunch,” in which teams work intensely for extended hours and on weekends in order to finish a product by a deadline-sometimes for months at a time, and at the cost of time spent on family, sleep, and general well-being. However, sometimes that requirement of loyalty results in tough times and unhealthy lifestyles for employees, including long workday hours simply for the sake of appearance or because a boss is still present on site.
This is especially important in a society where everything from romantic relationships to housing applications to a child’s grade school acceptance can be affected by one’s job and the corresponding status it affords them. The long-term relationship that an employee develops with a company also leads to strong bonds between managers and their employees, and among teammates.Īlthough their in-office interactions can appear formal and are often based on a “master-apprentice” model, this rigidity exists to achieve collective harmony: Everyone knows what to expect.Īs long as employees grow their networks, avoid mistakes, and don’t rock the boat, their career growth over time is fairly predictable. Internally, Japanese company structures and customs are often highly regimented.
0 kommentar(er)
