Mood:  incredulous

It's my experience that most people outside the game industry don't recognize the names of even the biggest game developers/publishers, even if they've played their games. So, when I tell people I work for Namco, they have no idea what that company is or what it's made...until I make a munching motion with my hand and go "wacka wacka".

I've been working on a number of PAC-MAN related games for mobile phones at Namco (www.namcogames.com), and one of my jobs is to make sure that our PAC-MAN and Ms. PAC-MAN games are as arcade accurate as possible. This isn't always easy, because there's very little actual documentation on the games, so I have to rely on my familiarity with them and what information I've gleaned from playing.

So, imagine my glee when Kenji-san told me I;d be meeting and having dinner with Mr. Toru Iwatani, the creator of PAC-MAN!

The only challenge: Iwantani-san speaks only slightly more English than I speak Japanese...which means a few words at best. Luckily, Kenji and Scott were there to translate.

I asked Iwatani-san a lot of questions about how the original game works. Most of this would bore the average person to death, but it was pretty illuminating to me. I mean, how many people wonder about the differences in the seek behavior of the ghosts in the game. What's the difference between Inky and Pinky, aside from the obvious color? Let me raise my hand here.

Scott Rubin, Iwatani-san, Maurice and "The Man"

We discussed some ideas I have for future games. Iwatani-san suggested we do back and forth discussions, rather than him just accepting or rejecting my ideas outright. Oh, twist my arm...ow...ow...

Dinner was very nice, Scott, Kenji, Mr. Iwanti and I were joined by Hideki from our licensing dept. at a nice Japanese restaurant in Mountain View. The bill, with tip, was over $700, and something like 3/4s of a gallon of sake was consumed. Scott and I went our separate ways at that point, but the Japanese contingent then went into San Francisco and partied and Karaoked until 2:30 a.m. Yikes!

Posted by molyneaux at 12:01 AM PST

Updated: Tuesday, 19 May 2009 11:31 PM PDT

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Today was the first day of the GDC (Game Developer's Conference), held this year in San Francisco instead of San Jose where it was usually been held in the past. Great for me, because it means I don't have to do the lengthy San Jose commute that my job usually requires.

This morning I worked on update the "roadmap" for Namco's 2005 wireless (mobile phone) product line. I added two games, one of which is somewhat obscure, but a really fun game with a good name that I hope we can make attractive to our carrier partnes like Sprint and Verizon.

The afternoon was spent in meetings and at GCD panels. The fun thing about trade shows like this is that you run into industry people you don't see often. Today I saw three people from Tira Wireless whom I visited in Toronto a few weeks back, a lady from Stunt Puppy (a company I briefly interacted with a few years ago), Steve Patterson (formerly of Psygnosis), etc. etc.

The conferences were pretty boring. I guess most of these things are of more use to people trying to break into the biz than those of us who've been down in trenches slogging through the mud. I put my time to use scribbing game designs in my notebook while waiting for the few-and-far-between nuggets of information I didn't know.

I was three different people today. I loaned my show pass to Rob Schoeppe while I was in meetings, so when I was done Kenji loaned me his pass, so I was Kenji for a while. Then Kenji needed his pass back, so I borred a pass from Rie, because Rob forgot to give me my pass back before driving to San Jose!

In the evening I joined Scott and Kenji for drinks with reps from Verizon. Afterwards, sans Verizon people, we went to a restaurant in Japantown (S.F.) and had good food and drink.

I tooled back across the bay bridge listening to loud disco music. I then fell asleep on the couch watching an episode of the new Battlestar Galactica series. Odd evening, but viva le difference!

Below is what I looked like just after walking in the door...

Posted by molyneaux at 10:31 PM PST

Updated: Tuesday, 19 May 2009 11:31 PM PDT

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I'm so behind on this Blog...I really have to get back in the habit of writing in it.

This week's been rough. I've been pulling 11 hour days at work. Thank goodness I'm meeting a developer in San Francisco mid-afternoon, because it'll force me to get away from the office and get off work at something approaching a reasonable hour.

Kinda backfilling events since my last posting, on Monday Dec. 20 I attended the company Christmas Lunch, held at the Decathalon Club in Santa Clara. The food was decent, and there was wine. Once nice thing was that the company popped for actual entertainment, having hired two comics from San Francsico to perform for us. The first guy was the funnier...a juggler and comic who runs a comedy club in Union Sqaure. The second is someone probably better known, but not as a comic. She's the woman who appears as the Pine Sol lady in all the commericials. In her act, she was talking about how the only video game she can play is Ms. PAC-MAN, but complained that it as hard to play on her cell phone...and as she said this, she looked right at me, which is funny because I'm in charge of the cell phone products at Namco. After that, she kept talking to me throughout the act. She even gave a gift certifacte for Pine Sol. After that, I won one of the table decorations in a raffle, which, strangely enough, was made from Pine branches.

So, no, I wasn't pine-ing for anything that day.

Posted by molyneaux at 12:46 AM PST

Updated: Tuesday, 19 May 2009 11:35 PM PDT

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Today was one of those days...

I woke up early and was showered and out the door by 6:50 a.m. All was fine on the commute...traffic wasn't too bad on I-880. Got into a slowdown just around the bottom of Hayward and the car in front of me stopped suddenly. I braked to a stop. The driver behind me wasn't paying close enough attention and slammed on his brakes late. He came to a stop just short of my car, but POW, another car hit him, and another car hit that. His car lurched forward and tapped my back bumper, but there was no damage. The other three cars were a wreck. Shook me up pretty good.

Then the day was really long. Not only did we have one of those 2+ hour meetings, but I had a zillion things to do, and I had to get a bunch of material ready for meetings with visitors from Japan on Monday. I got to work at 7:45 am, but didn't leave until almost 11pm. Oy!

A few things balanced out there day.

1. Kenji-san had the arcade division bring a mini-cabinet Ms. Pac-Man/Galaga machine into my work area. Also, I understasnd we're also going to get a full-size Taiko No Tatsujin (Taiko Drum Master) arcade unit soon (it's a video game where you literally beat a Taiko drum as the controller)! Sometimes I love working in the videogame biz!
2. Today was a company BBQ and it was nice to sit outside, chat and stuff my face.
3. By the end of the night it was just Amy, Umesh and myself there, all slogging away, but we took a break for dinner (ordered in a pizza) and had a fun conversation that was part work, part personal, and mostly silly.

Posted by molyneaux at 1:10 AM PDT

Updated: Tuesday, 19 May 2009 11:42 PM PDT

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My life takes some funny turns now and then. Today was the end of my first week at my new job as General Manager of Wireless Products at Namco of America, a place I wouldn't have expected to be only a month ago, when I was seriously considering bailing out of the game biz entirely.

As with most of the work I've had in this industry, I didn't go to it. It came to me. A colleague who knew I was looking for work gave my name to a recruiter. After much phone tag, the recruiter called me about this position at Namco. Two hours later, Namco called me and I did a 1.5 hour phone interview that went really well. They wanted me in for a face to face right away, but the man I needed to meet was in Japan, so, almost two weeks passed before I was able to come in for the interview. I honestly wasn't sure if I'd done well or not when I left, yet less than 24 hours after I'd left for the interview, the Chief Operating Officer called me directly and offered me the job!

Settling into a upper level position like this isn't the easiest thing in the world, as not only are you trying to remember eveyone's name and where the paperclips are, but you have to hit the ground running on a whole bunch of projects in various stages of pre- post and production.

But I can't complain too much, despite the 40 minute commute each way, I'm making over 1.5 times what I was making at Psygnosis 6 years ago, the company bought me a spiffy new camera phone and let me pick out my own computer for work, I get good benefits, work with nice people, I get to have a lot of say in what products we do, I'm going to Japan in Sept., and I get to play a lot of Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man as part of my job. Yes, Namco IS the Pac-Man company, and the bread and butter of the Wireless division is getting the two main Pac games out on every handset possible. What a treat, since Ms. Pac-Man remains, to this day, my favorite video game of all time.

Life she is good!

Posted by molyneaux at 10:40 PM PDT

Updated: Tuesday, 19 May 2009 11:43 PM PDT

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