After I managed to start up new Tales project, I asked my boss to go to Siggraph 2004. At that time, I could see not only conferences of Siggraph 2004 but also participate in a Dreamworks Studio tour held by Hewlett Packard that Namco was one of their customers. Also, I could visit Rhythm and Hues Studio that is one of Namco’s affiliated companies. In Dreamworks Studio, we participants could look around their plant, meet with some creators who worked for Dreamworks and see demos of their original tools, see demo trailers, such as ’Madagascar’, and also talk with a manager having lunch. In Rhythm and Hues Tour, we could visit the studio, see the company’s demo reels, and talked with creators from Japan. Every year after Siggraph, we have in-house presentation. Same as the last year, I first reported some lectures about NPR and my thinking outlook for NPR. I then talked about U.S. software development environment formed from my experiences of a Disney’s lecture in Siggraph and my Studio tours. The experiences in the U.S. was very exciting. “Someday I want to go to the United States.”
Afterwards, I was asked from my boss to do a guest speaker at KGDC (Korea Game Developers Conference ) 2004 held in Seoul, Korea. As I thought it was good for me, I accepted that offer, and I wrote about my nine years experience in Namco as the theme of my speech. That became the basis of this “Motivation for Next-Generation Graphics”. After the conference I was able to have opportunities to see creators who were not only from Korea but also from Europe or U.S. Of course our communication language was English; however, I could not speak English and even listen them as well, so I was just sitting next to Mr. Shin, president of IGDA (International Game Developers Association) Japan, and he interpreted for me his conversation with creators. I could not do anything although I wanted to talk lots of things about game or computer graphics with them. That was the same feeling as what I felt in the U.S. Siggraph tours (2003 and 04).
I had been thinking that we needed to have more communication with foreign creators, but the idea had been still vague. However, by meeting with foreign creators I personally felt the necessity. And finally I decide to come to the United States. The company allowed me to take absence for six months, but I did not think I could master English so I gave up my career. Before quitting Namco, I tried to do new things, such as web designing and played part in an amusement machine game. And I bade farewell to my nine years in Namco.
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2 comments:
Great work.
As I read your message, I realize that at a lower level I felt exactly the same last year at tokyo game show when I met other students in game design.
I wanted to be able to speak japanese fluently to communicate about our experiences in game design schools. But all we could do at this moment was showing each other our game demos. I wished communication could have been possible ! so now I'm working on learning japanese, but it will take me a long time!
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