Lost Planet

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.

[More:]

I took Japanese classes all through college while balancing computer science classes for my major. I even left for my junior year to join an exchange program in Tokyo. And after I graduated, I really wanted to continue with my Japanese. So I came over to Japan as a programmer at a financial company. But that kind of work was definitely not for me, even if it was a good experience, so I started looking for something that would fit me better.

[Brian] So I take it that something you found was Capcom?

[Eric] Eventually, yeah. I had stumbled across an English game testing job and jumped on it. As fate had it, I was too late for that testing job, but because I mentioned I knew Japanese, I ended up with a translation job at a translation outsource company. In the course of working there, I met some great people at Capcom and that was when I was given the opportunity to come and work for a game company.

[Brian] Awesome. So were you always a gamer? Did you play games growing up?

[Eric] As a kid, I was probably too young to recognize that I was playing Japanese games, but looking back, I definitely played a lot of them. I have been a game junkie back from when I was playing games on the Atari 2600 and Commodore 64. The whole reason I went into programming in the first place was because I always wanted to create a game, so my love of games has always been there.

[Brian] What do you like about living and working in Japan? Is there anything you particularly miss about being in the US? I spent a year in Japan, and although I loved being there, after a while I started to miss stuff like my favorite foods and TV shows.

[Eric] I would say the convenience of Japan is one great thing about being here. Trains run everywhere, and they’re on time. The convenience stores have a wide selection of food, and there are gadgets to suit just about every need imaginable. Probably the best thing about living in any foreign country is that every day is different and comes with its own surprises. I hate living the same day over and over, so picking a country on the other side of the globe so completely different from my home was one way to keep things interesting, even if it can be frustrating at times.

As for what I miss about the US, you hit the nail on the head with food and TV. It’s very difficult to get good Mexican food here, along with a lot of the American junk food staples like pizza and burgers.

I miss a lot of TV and music from the States too, but I try to catch what shows I can either by renting DVDs that are released in Japan or by stocking up when I go home on vacation.

Of course I also miss being able to just go and hang out with my parents and friends too, but they have always been very supportive of me and my life here.

[Brian] Moving on to your work at Capcom, what’s the typical work day or work week like for you?

[Eric] That’s a tough question to answer since every week is very different here, depending on what project I’m working on at the moment. It also depends on how far along a project is in development. I might be checking the volume of Japanese text in order to pin down a translation schedule for a new project, getting down to business with the actual translating, consulting with Brandon Gay, the great editor we have here for support on improving the quality of the text, coordinating with the development team to arrange for localization testing by a native speaker from our team, or asking the dev team questions about a puzzle in a certain area of the game to make sure I give the right hints in English.

[Brian] What are some other games besides Lost Planet that you’ve had a chance to work on? What has been the most fun or rewarding to work on?

[Eric] Onimusha 3 is the first title I was involved with at Capcom. Since joining the company, I’ve had the opportunity to work with a lot of great teams and titles like Mega Man Zero 4 and Mega Man ZX, Devil Kings, Resident Evil 4, and revisiting Onimusha with Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams.

Every title is so different that it’s hard to pick a particular one to call my favorite. With Onimusha 3, it was my first chance to see Capcom and work with great people like the director Minoru Nakai and the two planners that were kind enough to put up with me, Tsukasa Takenaka and Masashi Yoshida. So that might be the one I would pick. The first game is definitely going to leave a lasting impression, and that team was great when it came to supporting localization.

TO BE CONTINUED…

That’s it for the first half. The second half delves into the world of Lost Planet, and will be up Monday morning for your reading pleasure.

And so you can put a face to Eric’s voice, here’s a picture of him at the desk of Brandon Gay, the English Editor for all of the translations, apparently checking out the new Lost Planet website on the Capcom Japan website.

Left: Brandon Gay (English Editor) – Right: Eric Bailey (English Localizer)

Remember, check back Monday morning for the conclusion of the interview!
EDIT: Part 2 now up!

—Brian

PS – If you haven’t seen the new Gears of War trailer on Marketplace, go download it now! There’s a version GameVideos dot com too I think, but it looks and sounds much better on my big screen and stereo setup at home. So if you have a nice TV, definitely check it out on that rather than your computer monitor. That was a few days ago, and today we were blessed with new Halo 3 news! At least I’ll have Lost Planet to play in the months until Halo 3 hits the shelves (and after, too, of course). I’m probably the biggest Halo fan in the office, not to mention the best Halo player in the office (with 2-3 guys VERY close behind). And maybe the 3rd biggest The Office fan in the office (hehe). #1 and #2 would be Jack and Phil, but they’d have to karate-chop it out for the top spot – after a Lost Planet head-to-head match to decide who would be Michael and who would be Dwight in that karate match, of course.

PPS – Look out for an announcement about the details of the Collector’s Edition in the very near future.






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