Our time in Tokyo was closing in on us with only a few days left of exploring. We couldn't believe how fast the trip was going by! Today we would be visiting Namco Bandai Games in Shinagawa, which would be the last company visit for most of us. A few other students were scheduled to see a game company in Kutsugawa called Assemblent the following Wednesday.
Before we set off for Namco Bandai we stopped at a small outdoor shopping area for some lunch. We were surprised when we found a 100 yen store and decided to fill up on snacks instead. The tiny store had so much cool stuff in it! I bought myself two keychains of little yarn figures that resembled the character Sackboy from Little Big Planet. I also found a bag of my favorite snack that tasted better than cheetos. Overall it was quite a successful shopping excursion.
Left to Right: Inside Namco Bandai's impressive building, Outside view of headquarters,
Inside view of wall waterfall and pathway over water
As soon as we arrived at Namco Bandai's headquarters we were impressed by the modern architecture of the building. The inside was spacious with a high vaulted ceiling and large windows to let in tons of natural light. They also had an inside waterfall flowing over a stone wall and a pathway that walked over the shallow water connecting beneath it.
Two English speaking represenatives greeted us and led us into an auditorium deemed the "Fun Theater" by an outside plaque. Then a woman got up on stage to give us an overiew of what we would see during the visit and explain the company history and job specialities. She finished her presentation by showing us a video of Namco's latest games. The video featured highlights from Tekken 6, Innocent Aces, Trusty Bell, Tales of Vesperia, Live for You, and Soul Caliber IV. I was especially interested in the additions that were made to Tekken 6, which allow players to customize their fighters. It seems like personalization and customization are features that Japanese developers leave out of most of their games whereas in America games are often filled with options to change body size, hair color, or a character's background information.
During the next part of the tour we were broken into two groups; one that would visit the sound room and another that would try out the arcade games in the main lobby. My group was taken to the arcade section first where the representatives set us up to play in teams on the Gundam Pods. For this game you would sit inside a pod and control a robot character while listening to teammates through a headset. I don't frequent arcades much so it was a new experience for me to try out the controls inside the pod. The screen inside was almost a 180 view since it wrapped around the sides of the pod, making the gameplay even more immersive. After I got a hang of the controls I was really having a lot of fun playing the game.
Gundam Pods!
Now it was time for our groups to alternate and my group headed up to the sound room. As we walked through different sections of workstations the reps were saying that teams (ie sound or IT/networking) were placed in their own rooms so that specialists within each team can collaborate with others in the same field.
Once we made it to the sound room we were introduced to an sound guy that had worked on the sounds for Soul Caliber IV. First we watched a video of the game with the final sound in it and then we saw a video about how they created the sounds. It was cool to see the foley artists making walking sounds (in a box of sand) for Yoda while the video of the game played in the background. We had a short Q&A with the sound guy and learned that Lucas Arts had given them the sound of the light saber for the game, but that they had made their own to better match the actions. We also found out that only 7 main employees worked on all of the sound for Soul Caliber IV, which is surprising because I would have expected the sound team to be larger than that.
We regrouped and took a car ride over to Namco's motion capture studio. The building was really spacious inside and we even got to see some actors practicing in some motion capture suits. Two motion capture guys came over to answer some questions as well. They said that the building was big enough for most of the action they needed to capture and that they make all of their own props there too.
Cute Statue in Namco's main lobby
For the last part of the tour we entered back into the auditorium for a Q&A session. The two English speaking representatives, one specializing in strategic planning and the other in localization, answered some questions about team structure. We also got to meet a few developers from the company. Someone asked a question about the origination of the concept behind Katamari Damacy. The developer told us that it was actually a product made by students from a past school program within the company.
Overall I think we learned a great deal from our visit to Namco Bandai. We also recieved a folder of information and a cute hand cloth patterned with images from the Taiko drum game. To finish the day off we had our second group dinner at a Karaoke place!
Eating in our Karaoke room
I had to sing at least one song...and it had to be Spice Girls!
Karaoke tv screen
Noriko treated us to Karaoke and everyone was having fun picking out songs and doing duets. We ordered some pizza, chicken wings, and pasta which also hit the spot. And after our 2 hours were up some of us didn't want to leave. It was a great end to a great day.
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