iiotenki

Tom

@iiotenki

The Tony Hawk of Tokimeki Memorial

A most of the time Japanese>English game translator and writer and all the time dating sim wonk.

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iiotenki
@iiotenki

Since this story seems to be making the rounds across the western games press, I just want to remind everybody that even if Miyazaki's personal feelings are sincere on the matter, the fact remains that Japanese labor laws make it tremendously hard to get rid of full-time employees1 en masse, which is a primary reason we haven't seen contractions happen to the same degree here as elsewhere in the industry.

There is very little that is inherently altruistic about what we're seeing at these companies here right now, if at all. When they want to get rid of individuals, they can and do have other means at their disposal, many of which I would describe as "incredibly terrible and passive aggressive."

Honestly sucks to see so many outlets not do the most basic of due diligence with these sorts of Japan stories time and time again and actually ask someone who lives here and works with these companies what the reality on the ground is instead of just taking these managerial heads at their word. It isn't very hard to find bilingual folks online at all and it is deeply disheartening and frustrating as someone who has previously offered his expertise to the press for exactly these sorts of things. But then that would require the standard of coverage of Japanese game news to be higher than either "we lifted it from a specialist site who did the translating for us" or "we ran this quote through Google Translate and called it a day."

Doesn't make my education or experience feel particular valued outside of my immediate field, that's for damn sure.

Also, as an aside, From's entry level salaries infamously suck ass even by Japanese developer standards and as far as I'm aware, that continues to be the case even post-Elden Ring. For all of their tremendous design talent that they're frankly lucky to retain, From is not the sort of company people should be parading as a role model in Japanese games and especially not as a subsidiary of Kadokawa in particular.

  1. Emphasis on the full-time here. Ask me and my freelance translator friends who are distinctly not granted the same protections how our years have been going in terms of work offers and the like.

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pedipanol
@pedipanol

Reading these news I get a mix of "yeah that needs to be said and more people need to understand" but also knowing that the systemic issues that causes the layoffs (which the articles publishing these stories hardly talk about) are far above studio directors' control I don't feel its impact as heavily as it could have been...

Also very true what you said about the coverage of Japanese game news. I'm still really upset as to how game websites mischaracterized Nobuo Uematsu's advice to beginners about the state of music work in the industry as "Nobuo Uematsu thinks modern game soundtracks are bad"

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iiotenki
@iiotenki

Pretty much, yeah. Just a lot of attempts at whittling away people's morale and whatnot. No opportunities at career progression; even just outright not giving people stuff to do entirely even while keeping them on payroll. I wouldn't say every company is universally like that here by any means of course (and like I mentioned before, one of the tragedies of Tango closing is that, in my experience, they genuinely were one of the Good Ones in this industry), but the older, bigger, and crustier it is, the more likely you are to run into that sort of toxicity, I reckon. It's honestly one of the reasons I've stuck it out as a freelancer for so long even amidst my own job security issues. It's not that I'm inherently against ever going in-house, but any offer I receive would have to frankly do a lot for me to overcome my misgivings about going into the Japanese corporate machine proper.

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