Needed Changes

Change does indeed come slowly in Japan. It is not unheard of to find governmental offices still keeping financial records with string bound ledgers and a pencil. While the private sector is a bit quicker on the uptake, there are still those resistant to change as noted by Barnett, “Japanese corporations are glacial when it comes to changing with the times. They haven't even sorted out workers rights and sexual equality yet…”

Perhaps the biggest issue facing foreign workers in Japan is pay. According to Barnett’s blog, both artists and programmers earn less than in the West. Tavares says Japanese companies “…hire right out of school and pay very little. A programmer at Sega or Sony would start at around 3 million yen a year or $26k U.S. A top programmer at Sega or Sony makes a maximum of 6 million yen a year or about $52k. Because Japanese companies work that way, they do not value experience.”

He adds: “Fortunately for them and unfortunately for the people working there, they all only speak Japanese, which means the people are basically stuck in their system. Those that manage to learn English have the option to leave to a higher paying system but the rest don’t …so I suspect that system is unlikely to change from external pressure.”

With the industry changing so quickly Japanese companies need to change. But certain practices show no signs of being abandoned. Issues like pay, work hours, rewarding of innovation continue to plague Japanese developers. “The hiring out of college and paying poorly issue has not changed and I don’t know if it ever will or if it will… The inventor of the Blue LED left Japan because he was so angry that the company didn’t give him anything for his invention…Japanese companies reward the least…so his opinion was that all smart people should leave Japan unless Japanese companies change their ways,” says Tavares.

Examples of slow or non-existent change not withstanding, there also are signs of progress in the industry. “I saw a few changes although there is still a long way to go,” Tavares says. “The use of middleware for example happened while I was there. Use of version control systems as well. Also a change from hand coding everything to using level editors and other tools…It’s possible it could change from internal pressure. If one company ever started paying for experience then other companies would start losing their experienced people unless they started paying as well.”

In the end, Cuthbert summed up his views on the industry in the three territories he has lived and worked in.

“The UK is a pub culture - people like to doss and arse about a lot, but they are very good and very skilled at their jobs - when they do them.”

“The US is a corporate culture, everyone is a cog in the machine, even in a smaller company, so there is far less responsibility towards the company and its finances and people assume that they should have the best wage, best equipment, best software, best everything, even if they don't use them. That said, they have great responsibility to the work itself and there are some extremely clever and diligent people there. Corporate politics, gossip and rivalries can get a bit too much.”

“The Japanese games development culture is still slightly "salaryman", everyone kind of avoids responsibility by remaining quiet but they persevere by themselves until they get the product done. Unfortunately, this lack of sharing is hurting the technical development of the games industry here in Japan. The Japanese never give up until all the details are in place and they try and leave nothing haphazard or rough-edged, or oozappa (in Japanese).”