Lost Planet

Okay, it’s Monday morning, and as I promised, here is part 2 of the interview with my man Eric Bailey, working hard to make sure the dialog and text in Lost Planet is as polished as its visuals and gameplay.

If you haven’t checked out Part 1 yet, you’ll want to start there.

[Brian] How long have you been working on Lost Planet, and what kind of role have you had in the development and localization of Lost Planet? And if you can, talk a little about how the development and localization processes has been going.

[Eric] I’ve been involved on Lost Planet for about a year and a half now. I translated most of the text used in the game along with the script used in the voice recording. I also helped to translate some of the correspondence between the sound team at Capcom and the sound studio that helped to produce a lot of the great music and sound effects in the game. That was definitely interesting since it was a new experience to hear the results of my translation work. Usually translation is a very visual process, but this was one of the rare instances where it was also an auditory process.

Click to read the rest of Part 2.

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If you’ve been keeping up with the blog, you know that I mentioned that I’d be doing some exclusive interviews with some of the great people working on making Lost Planet.

Well, my first interview is with Eric Bailey, the English Localizer for Lost Planet. It’s kind of long, so I’ll be splitting it into two parts so it’s a bit easier to digest. Eric’s a great guy so it’s a pleasure to give him a voice on my blog.

[Brian] Why don’t we start off by having you tell the readers a bit about yourself and your background.

[Eric] Sure thing. I started out studying Japanese at the tail end of high school because there were many facets of Japanese culture that had left a big impression on me. It’s funny how very small things can change a person’s direction in life, but the one moment that suddenly made me decide to study Japanese was going to Japan Town in San Francisco and seeing a Japanese band named ELT (Every Little Thing) playing on a big screen there. I was already been interested in Japanese, but that music video was the final push that I needed to give Japanese a try.

Click to read the rest of Part 1 of the interview.

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I already shared a little bit about myself in my first post. So this week I want to add some visuals to that so you can see where I actually work.

So, let’s start the tour!

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Okay, I have an excuse for not making this particular show. It was all the way up in Canada. But we had a few Capcomers up at the event showing off Lost Planet as well as Dead Rising – Rey Jimenez, Associate Publishing Project Manager, and Arne Cual-Pedroso, Public Relations Program Manager.

Rey took a few pictures and did a cool write-up of the event for me:

X06 Canada had a great turn out. If you don’t know what it is, it’s one of the premier Microsoft events held in Canada to showcase the Xbox 360. It was held on 10/18 in Toronto at the Brant House. Several publishers participated in the event, so there was something for every gamer.

The day started off with members of the press coming to check out what’s new and hot. We were showing builds of Lost Planet and some little known title, Dead Rising. Everyone already knew and loved Dead Rising, so we just had it showing just for the 2 or 3 people that actually haven’t played it yet. Like always Lost Planet was met with much adoration and anticipation. We actually had a new version of the current demo that’s been out since E3 to show off. We’ve had a lot of time to absorb feedback from the community since E3 to figure out ways to make it better. Based on these comments, the new demo (which has the same maps as the E3 demo) has improved AI, better textures and graphics, slight changes to the level layout and thermal energy dynamic, and a much requested melee attack. So now, just by hitting the B button, players can deliver pain via the butt of Wayne’s rifle.

Click to read the rest and check out pictures from the event.

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Last week I mentioned the After Hours event Gamespot held in San Francisco over the weekend. Unfortunately I wasn’t feeling very well so I couldn’t make it up there. But I handed off my digital camera to a recent addition to the Capcom team, Tony. He was kind enough to do this great write-up of the event, which I will post here along with the pictures he took.

Note that all the pictures here are thumbnails, so click on them to view the full size versions.

So, I have the unique pleasure of writing this little mini-blog because our resident blogger, who you are all already familiar with, missed out on going to the GameSpot After Hours event with us this past Saturday. Okay, so it wasn’t really his fault. Brian works extremely hard around here and we don’t blame him for needing a little R&R.

So what’s up, everyone? I’m Tony, fresh out of college and the newest addition to the marketing team here at Capcom. I’m into almost all types of video games with the exception of sports games. I especially like RPGs and RTS games, but my forte is first person shooters. I also like coffee ice cream, Everybody Loves Raymond re-runs and long walks on the beach.

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In my post on Friday, I mentioned that we were going to do some multiplayer testing with Japan.

Well, we did. And yes, it was awesome.

But before the test with Japan, we squeezed in a few multiplayer rounds on the office LAN during the day.

We have been playing the heck out of the multiplayer demo made for the Leipzig convention, which we used at the Dallas Gamestop show and at the Gamespot After Hours event this weekend (pictures and report coming very soon). This version has a single map and supports 4 game types.

Last Friday, after getting some more Xbox 360 test kits into the building, we went crazy with some multiplayer sessions.

My own system was in the back of the building with a few others, where they were set up for the testing with Japan scheduled for later.

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I’m planning some exclusive interviews with the developers, localization team, and marketing/PR staff I will have here (feel free to let me know what kinds of questions you want answered and by whom, either in the comments here or on the Ask Capcom board). Aside from that, these “Sightings” category posts will have links to some recent (and not-so-recent) interviews you can read online.

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We had a great showing a few weeks ago at the Tokyo Game Show, with people waiting up to 4 hours to get their hands on Lost Planet multiplayer. We also showed a bunch of other stuff, including the latest installments in the Monster Hunter and Ace Attorney franchises (which are both hugely popular in Japan), along with Devil May Cry 4 for the PS3 and many others.

Click to read the rest and see all the pictures.

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As you know, the industry has had a number of big shows in the last few weeks. I assume you’ve already downloaded the 5-minute Lost Planet video off of Xbox Live Marketplace from X06. If not, what are you waiting for? It’s got a ton of new gameplay with glimpses of new weapons, VS models, enemies, and stages. And as it says at the end of the video, we have a special downloadable multiplayer demo coming later this year.

We were at the Gamestop/EB show in Dallas a few weeks ago. If you’ve never heard of it, every year Gamestop flies all the store managers (including the EB managers now that they have merged, bringing the number up to nearly 4,000 managers) to Dallas to learn about new, upcoming games. And Capcom, along with all the other major publishers, were at the event to show off our goods. For us, that meant Lost Planet of course, and some other new upcoming titles including Power Stone Collection and Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Justice For All.

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I have opted to not introduce myself with “Hi, my name is…” like I’m greeting a group of fellow AAA’ers or something. I don’t want to come off as some marketing type who is just going through the motions with this, because that’s not what this is about. Plus, I know this is just a blog, but at the same time this is Capcom’s very first blog. Besides, (cue self-deprecating humor), Capcom itself hasn’t exactly been at the forefront of website design and technology. But I can safely say this now without getting in too much trouble because we just launched the first phase of our new website a week ago.

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