18 posts tagged “career”

A lot has happened since I last posted. I have certainly learned a lot more about myself during this job than any other experience in my life and not all of it is good. It's been very depressing to think about, but I think I'm at the point where I can talk about what the heck happened.

I need to be more assertive about me hitting my limits. One thing a co-worker told me that if I was to survive, I'd have to learn to say "no" to my superiors at the right times and in the right way. I was a complete door mat and I got trampled to say the least.

Don't let fear make the best of you. I had a fear of failure that ultimately became a self-fulfilling prophecy. It grabbed a hold of my urge to please(which has gone overboard since my confidence sunk into a pit a few years back) and twisted it into something that would do/say anything that it'd think would make others happy. Including some behaviors I will regret the rest of my life. I wanted to regret stuff like tattoos, driving a motorcycle too fast on a curvy road or spending too much money on sushi in the Ginza, not bad interpersonal crap like this.

All that and a hectic schedule rendered my brain into mush. I was only part way understanding things. I knew how some systems worked, but then when trying to apply stuff with them, my brain just fizzled. This was not always the case, but I was not in a normal state at the time. I'm still not sure if I'm fully recovered yet. Travels on the road to recovery are slow but at least they aren't going backwards.

I haven't been very active here for a few reasons. 1) Been doing overtime. Not as crazily as some others, but I'm doing 9, 9.5 hours a day instead of my fairly steadfast 8. 2) Since I'm in Japan, I want to take advantage of the amazing self-publishing resources available. They aren't necessarily as sophisticated as Lulu in ways(no ISBN # help and it's not Print on Demand) but unlike Lulu, the process is far more affordable and friendly for individuals who want to make a high quality book in the 20 page range.

Anyways, my to-do list goes as follows. Perhaps all of you out there could help prioritize the list!

1. Beyond East & West: Nintendo as a Global Standard of Quality.
   
2. Let's Dissect! What makes Monster Hunter Freedom Unite/2nd G Fun!
3. Forced Evolution: Stories of Adapting to a Western Development Method
4. A random Japanese cultural column. I thought of this since today I took part in "mame nage" or a bean throwing ritual to ward off demons. If you want this to be about work culture and job, I could do that too.
   
5. The Level Design of Every Day Places. My local subway station as a surprise source of level design enlightenment. The use of cues, placement and some incredibly useful information.
   
6. Social Experiment with Monster Hunter. This might not come for a while since it requires me to go to a public place in my free time and see if I can get along with total strangers through a few sessions of Monster Hunter Freedom Unite.
   
7. Prattle on a random video game design topic of your choosing!
8. Something not mentioned on this list.
   

I got a job offer to work in Japan. I'm most likely going to take it unless offered a job elsewhere that gives me a raise compared to my last US salary.

If I take this Japan offer, I most certainly will continue to blog here about the experiences. WHEE!!!!

And now for a random post!

Nepotism and Shoddy Voiceovers go Hand & Hand. I understand cost cutting needs. You could probably get some insane anime fans at a community college who dream of being voice actors to do the job for a beer or something.

Game Stop has been liquidating some of their floor sample copies of games for 50% off or so. These games were opened and placed on shelves for players to peruse.

Given the success of Age of Conan, I'm curious to see if Capcom will localize Monster Hunter Frontier to English. It simplifies the number of attacks you can use which I like. The use of timing, positioning and attack choice looks rich, which I also like. Oh MAN it's bloody too! Blood isn't a huge turn off to me, but I don't seem to go seeking out the bloodiest games I can find anymore.

I'm being cautiously optimistic about a job I recently interviewed for. I had 2 good prospects; one was a long shot for a senior position. The company liked my potential, but in the end they really did want someone with at least twice my experience. I knew it was a long shot, I'm glad that I made it as far as I did. So I'm down to 1 really super prospect that fits my experience and will help me overcome a lot of my present shortcomings. I so don't want to jinx myself for this position.

It's a week until Etrian Odyssey 2 comes out, I entered a contest for it. If by some random chance, I both win and have to buy a copy, no worries, Etrian 1 is fetching prices over MSRP on the gray market. Atlus has conservative print runs; buy early.

I'm enjoying Kotaku's review of Ninja Gaiden II. This is really what I'd like to see. No numeric score or letter grade, since they really don't make sense to me. How is a 98 game better than a 97, especially when they're usually entirely different kinds of games. Tell us what's going on, what works and why(yes, that is an opinion...) and make the reader feel ready to decide for themselves whether or not they want to buy, rent or skip the game. 

I looked at Gamasutra's list of their top 20 influential women and I was disappointed. The list was mostly of female executives; while I am happy to see that these women are climbing to high positions such as "executive VP of global marketing" and all, I was hoping for a list of amazing women who worked like crazy in the development trenches creating and innovating awesome games. The women were instrumental in the creation of original IP and exciting experiences. Here it is, in order of me coming up with their names.

1. Reiko Kodama. She was one of the co-creators of the Phantasy Star series of role playing games for the Sega Master System and producer for Skies of Arcadia. It seems like she does everything from design games, create pixel art to managing the production of a game. Considering how much I loved Phantasy Star as a kid, I consider her to be an idol of sorts. I dream to meet her some day.
   
2. Mieko Ishikawa. A composer and now producer at Nihon Falcom. She was one of the original composers for Ys, an action RPG franchise known for having some of the greatest music ever in a video game. Mieko continues to take part in shaping Falcom's products. Falcom is a special company for sure, making a good deal of money on live concerts of their music(I'm pretty sure arrangements of Mieko's original pieces still persist) and arrangements of their music that weren't in their games.
   
3. Minae Matsukawa. Producer of the Phoenix Wright series. She's worked office jobs, a security guard job and just wanted to get into games. She did so with great success and I admire her for it.
   
4. Rika Suzuki did game design for Hotel Dusk: Room 215, Trace Memory and the first 3 Dragon Quest/Dragon Warrior games.
   
5. Kim Swift. Right from graduate to Game of the Year winning pro is a leap many envy. She was one of the members of a group of students that made a project that became Portal, one of the greatest gaming phenomenon of recent times. Props to her and the other members of the student team that Valve snapped up in a jiffy.
   
6. Amy Hennig. Directed Legacy of Kain Soul Reaver. I enjoyed this game on the Sega Dreamcast, and thought is was pretty darn groovy that a woman directed it. Props to her!
7. Rhianna Pratchett. Writer and story designer for Overlord, that amusing game of causing mayhem through a combo of action and real time strategy. Thank you for making lines worth reading.

That's it for now, if I think of any more, I will add them to the list.

Yeeow, $175.00 for the basic expo pass. I've enjoyed a full pass that gave me access to all the talks before and I'm gonna miss that.  But for almost $1000, yeeeeeeeeow, hopefully I'll be able to pick up some recordings of the lectures I was interested in. So far, there aren't too many lectures I feel like I absolutely have to see. Shocking, given how many absolutely amazing games came out recently; a Mass Effect postmortem would seriously have me ponder that $1K ticket.

On an unrelated note, Cursor^10 is a crazy, interesting game. It's co-op. With yourself.

I thought about leaving the games industry, especially since I've been having a terrible time getting a permanent position. I spoke with a recruiter from NextGen Talent that gave me some advice and I hope, some job leads. I know most games people look down upon recruiters. I was approached by a shady woman who gave me no last name, no company she represented. No call back number, no email address either. I guess she got my info off Monster and who knows what. Sheesh, I'd better make sure this person isn't about to go stealing my identity or something...

I had an interview for a QA position outside of games. It pays nicely in the corporate software world. Supposedly, there is less nonsense that typically

Although there is a bit more money in it, software outside of games is still marred by the troubles I somehow thought games seemed to have the corner on:
-Horrible hours.I would have looked at some 60-70 hour weeks. Company seemed to have no interest in doing anything differently as far as releases went. Do your annual release with some minor updates.
-Documentation? Durrr...I really don't understand..Spend a bit of time to do that and you'll make things easier down the line.
-Ease of use of tools. When you sell a service to produce something digital or whatnot, why not care about ease of use? When some of my level design tools just had interface bugs and issues that made making maps highly inefficient, I brought the issue up. Having a shoddy tool can hurt your bottom line. Am I nuts for wanting to take the time to make a good, solid tool set?

Stability was one thing this company did have above game jobs. Back to looking for game design positions.

To Do: Brush up resume, register for Game Developers Conference and so forth.

I was recently contracted to play through a game. I am under an NDA so no, I won't divulge any identifiable details about the game in question whatsoever.

I wanted to get through the game as quickly as possible. I wasn't there for the game itself, I had ulterior motives. The game did feature leveling up your character. I found myself running through levels, not fighting too terribly often then occasionally getting into trouble when going up against the boss. I'd go back to older areas where enemies were easier to kill to grind and build up my persona.

Then, I started to wonder. Why am I doing this? Why am I avoiding encounters that would give me a chance at much needed experience during the actual levels, only to begrudgingly grind elsewhere? In the case of this particular game, it doesn't abide by standard RPG rules of letting you enjoy your level ups as soon as you get them. You only enjoyed the fruits of your labor after successfully completing an area. So of course I go back to easy areas, unless I do something really foolish, I'm absolutely positive I will win and gain the ability to power up my character.

I realize, though, this is by far not the only game I've avoided encounters like mad. I'm an RPG enthusiast, Unless I've got some insatiable urge to utterly dominate the ins and outs of a certain game, I have a tendency to go through under-leveled. This is true for games whose combat I've enjoyed. If a player hates the game, then

What is with under-leveling and why should it matter? Under-leveling is a balance issue. A very important balance issue, especially for RPGs. Chances are, if a gamer goes to an encounter and gets horribly beaten down multiple times, their reaction may not be to go level up and try again but to curse the programmers for making a game too hard. Yes, I know, it's not the programmers fault, but I've seen a lot of rants and vitriol directed at programmers.

Towards the end of the game I was playing-as well as some other RPGs- I've hit a lot of "forced encounters." Sub-bosses/Mini-bosses you have to beat in order to keep going through the final dungeon. These can be particularly devastating for the under-leveling gamer. I never finished Final Fantasy IX off my own personal save file because of this. I didn't run away from any enounters, but I didn't do a lot of the "extra curricular leveling" activities. I did a few side quests that were readily accessible to me but I didn't seek out certain high powered items that would have both leveled my characters on top of giving me a special move with astonishing power. Power that usually breaks the balance, but you spent all that time chasing the item instead of leveling up so it's essentially the same result. Only, with brighter, bigger fireworks.

Well...I'm still not sure why I do the whole under leveling thing...I'll have to give it a bit more contemplation.

I wanted to be better about posting here, but I haven't. For this I apologize.

The Job Hunt Stats:
Applications Sent = 23
Attempts at Using Network to get somewhere = 6
Interviews Held = 1 Phone Interview, 2 in-Person(outside industry position.) 1 recruiter called, didn't identify the recruiting agency she works with or provide me her last name.
Offers Received for a full time position = 0

Playing Games:
Went to a friend's house. This friend buys games like crazy, has a drop dead gorgeous HDTV, surround sound system and oh so comfy couch. Plus a cat that likes to rub up against my feet.
Played
-PAIN for PS3
-Assassin's Creed for 360.
-Folk Lore for PS3(different visit)
-Phoenix Wright 3(one of the few indulgences I allowed myself.)

Games I really want to get:
-Zack and Wiki for Wii.
-Super Mario Galaxy for Wii.
-Mass Effect for 360.

On my personal game dev front:
-Still begging and pleading for an engineer I trust to help with a prototype for the last month.
-Still drawing on paper to just get better at it since I'll most likely be doing all the artwork for it.
-Stopped trying to get the prototype.
-Going back to just generating and writing down ideas again.
-Watching the feces hit the fan over the Gamespot firing debacle.

My job was in a current state of semi-limbo. I'd been sent off on an unpaid vacation. I was wrong to think I was safe from the layoff monster because I had skills that a paying project needed but nope.

Well, a week after my forced vacation started, I got the call. There's not enough money to go around so a lot of people just got laid off, including myself. Time to start looking for a new job. I spent almost 1 and a half years at the company, which is the longest history of being in one place in my career so far.

Feelings are mixed on this. I really loved the company when I started but then something changed.

Where to go from here? I don't know if I could ever work for any casual game developers local to me. One of my former company's clients is hiring. They were difficult to work with and I doubt my sanity could survive that sort of thing on a day in day out.

We'll see.