Topic: Working Desings is gone.

[ruby_onix]

http://www.workingdesigns.com/forum/showthread.php?t=118916

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Originally posted by: Victor Ireland
There's no easy way to say it, so I just will. Working Designs is gone. All the staff has been laid off and the office is closed and has been for some time. Yes, the website is still here, and I am going to do my best to keep it tucked away somewhere on the 'net so it doesn't become an illicit domain. (Of course, some of the haters may be of the mind that it's been illicit all along, heh!).

When Working Designs shifted their translation/publishing business to the PSX from the Sega Saturn, Lunar 1&2 provided the biggest success in WD's history.

But when they tried to take on the Arc the Lad series, SCEA said they'd only be allowed to do it if they did all three games all at once, and charged the price of 1.5 games, because (even though the games were made by Sony) they weren't up to Sony's high standards. WD took a major hit financially because of it.

Sony did the same thing to them again on the PS2 with Growlanser Generations.

Of late, WD has been working on the PS2 version of Goemon, an early-PS2 game somewhat known for bad graphics, but despite WD's attempts to polish the game up, Sony refused to allow it on the PS2, cancelling it, and ending WD's run in the videogame industry in the process.


There's probably something to be said for WD's formerly-small niche of anime-style and strategy RPGs becoming crowded, forcing WD to make-do with the "less shiny" gems, but in the end it was Sony holding the knife, and Victor Ireland seems a little bit resentful. If you read between the lines, he's basically telling people to choose the Xbox360 over the PS3.

[Hans Beckert]

Writhe in agony and die, Sony.

[odifiend]

I was wondering about where Goemon went since mystic ninja and mystic ninja 2.

[Djunknown]

Its shame really.  Does this mean that their stuff just appraised in value since they don't exist anymore? I should try and score a copy of Lunar 1 and 2...

[MysticGohan24]

hmmm... I have Lunar: Silver Start Story Complete for PSX, it has the cloth map, thick color book manual and art with a red cloth book marker. a Music CD sound track

Sad to see WD go. Instead of 360 he should of mentioned Nintendo Rev

[couchmonkey]

I'm surprised he's looking at Xbox 360, simply because I don't know what big localization projects could possibly come out of that.  I guess maybe if he teams up with Microsoft or whatever big publisher that takes on the Mistwalker games...

Anyway, that's a real shame.  I've never played any of Working Designs' games since they've never developed on a Nintendo console, but the types of games they do seem to be the same ones I'd be interested in playing if I had the PS2.

[Ian Sane]

This could be a golden opportunity for Nintendo though they'll probably not realize it.  There is a whole company worth of laid off people who hate Sony.  Nintendo always has problems with RPGs.  Working Designs most famous projects are localizing RPGs.  Now they don't actually make the original game but I believe they have ported existing titles to over consoles, like from the Saturn in Japan to the Playstation in North America.  So they could probably port a PS3 game to the Rev.  The controller isn't a stumbling block for RPGs.  A menu-driven game doesn't need tons of buttons or an analog stick.  The remote alone should work fine.

And even if that isn't feasible why not use Working Designs to help translate titles twice as fast?  Or to translate old Japan-only NES/SNES/N64 games for the download system.  FFIII, Dragon Quest V & VI, all the old Fire Emblems.  It's a prefect match.

In the end MS will probably get them because MS is trying very hard to provide more Japanese games on their console.

[Shin Gallon]

Good riddance. Working Designs didn't so much translate games as completely rewrite them, throwing in "funny" pop-culture references instead of accurately translating the dialog, and they had a habit of tampering with the game engines as well. The nicest thing I can say about them is they had nice box art and some nice extras, but the games themselves were battered.
Imagine if they'd localized Final Fantasy VII: It'd have come out in 2001 because they spent years recoding the game so you lose EXP when you save, and it would have been filled with references to the OJ trial and Monica Lewinsky, and the Turks would have been named after the Backstreet Boys. Ugh.
I'll not shed a tear for them, that's for sure.

[ruby_onix]

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Originally posted by: Djunknown
Its shame really.  Does this mean that their stuff just appraised in value since they don't exist anymore? I should try and score a copy of Lunar 1 and 2...

Those games went out of print a long time ago, so the company publishing them going out of business wouldn't really have an effect on that. But don't let that stop you from getting them.

I don't think Working Designs entirely "stopped existing". I don't think they ended up going into debt and declaring bankruptcy or anything like that, but without money they'll never get off the ground again.

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Originally posted by: Ian Sane
This could be a golden opportunity for Nintendo though they'll probably not realize it. There is a whole company worth of laid off people who hate Sony. Nintendo always has problems with RPGs. Working Designs most famous projects are localizing RPGs. Now they don't actually make the original game but I believe they have ported existing titles to over consoles, like from the Saturn in Japan to the Playstation in North America. So they could probably port a PS3 game to the Rev.

I think Working Designs was made up of about 9 people at the height of their operation. I don't think they ever ported a game from one console to another (they just picked whichever already-existing version they wanted), but they've offended a lot of purists by reworking some games to try and reduce loading times, improve graphics, and adjust difficulty levels. I think they said once that porting a game would be a snap for them.

One of their top programmers quit a couple of years ago, and now he works on Insomniac's Ratchet and Clank series (Insomniac and Working Designs are both California-based).

[KDR_11k]

Working Designs didn't so much translate games as completely rewrite them, throwing in "funny" pop-culture references instead of accurately translating the dialog

Would you prefer references to japanese pop culture and sayings? Plays on words that just don't work in your language? Sorry but translations should never be literal just to make a point.

[Ian Sane]

"Good riddance. Working Designs didn't so much translate games as completely rewrite them, throwing in "funny" pop-culture references instead of accurately translating the dialog, and they had a habit of tampering with the game engines as well. The nicest thing I can say about them is they had nice box art and some nice extras, but the games themselves were battered."

I've always heard this complaint and I think for the most part it's valid.  But what would you rather have?  An irritating translation or no translation at all?  At least we were able to get games released in North America that wouldn't have been otherwise.

[Shin Gallon]

I'd rather have a translation that accurately reflected what the original Japanese script said, not references to what The Rock is Cookin' or Monica Lewinsky.
And yes, I WOULD prefer that, if it had references to Japanese pop culture and sayins, that they kept those.
Frankly, I refused to play many of their games because of their awful "localizations", because I'd always end up more irritated at the changes they'd made than I would simply enjoying the games. If ANYONE but Working Designs had brought over the Lunar games they'd have been much, much better.

[KDR_11k]

That may be fine for you because you probably know everything about japanese pop culture but in Japan anyone can understand those references and that level should be kept in the US version.

I know what  I'm talking about, I've been on the receiving end of many translations from English to German that I couldn't make sense of without translating them back to English. Sometimes sayings that just don't exist in German, sometimes ambiguities used that don't exist here, sometimes even ambiguities mistranslated (e.g. "duck key" suddently involved birds ("to duck"->"ducken", "duck"->"Ente")). Plus the many references to japanese mythology are bad enough (especially since it's assumed that the user knows what it's about), if they kept their references 99% of their customers wouldn't understand what the hell that guy is referring to. You can't have a translated game display explainations for the references at the top of the screen.

I'm one of those people who are annoyed by fansubbers leaving words like Death God ("shinigami"), Spirit Energy ("reiatsu"), Thirteen Court Squads (whatever those were called), etc (I guess you know what series I'm talking about) untranslated. I don't want half the subtitles to consist of japanese words that I couldn't possibly remember. I guess you like it like that but I always prefer to understand what they're talking about.

[Arbok]

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Originally posted by: KDR_11k
I'm one of those people who are annoyed by fansubbers leaving words like Death God ("shinigami"), Spirit Energy ("reiatsu"), Thirteen Court Squads (whatever those were called), etc (I guess you know what series I'm talking about) untranslated. I don't want half the subtitles to consist of japanese words that I couldn't possibly remember. I guess you like it like that but I always prefer to understand what they're talking about.

Personally, when it's in relation to a name or location, I don't mind it being left in Romaji. Specifically because stuff like Kumasogami sounds a lot better then its literal translation. On the other hand, I would agree that stuff like "reiatsu" should be translated out.

In terms of this whole argument, I don't care a great deal if references to Japanese popculture or fables like the "Birth of Japan" are removed from games (I would if it was a movie, though); however, I would argue against a company placing in American popculture references, especially ones that will date the game like the mentioned Monica Lewinsky reference.

[Galford]

Vic Ireland is just as responsible for killing WD as Sony was.  He burned his bridges with Sega and then was left at the mercy of Sony, who really didn't need them anymore.  I'm sure he and Bernie Stolar will get a long just fine now....

PS - I need to edit my posts better.

[ruby_onix]

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That may be fine for you because you probably know everything about japanese pop culture but in Japan anyone can understand those references and that level should be kept in the US version.

Working Designs was also the first company in US videogame history to regularly include translation notes and Japanese song lyrics in their instruction books.

The Clinton/Lewinsky jokes went too far, and even Victor Ireland knew it. As were the fart jokes, although WD always seemed to like them.

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Vi Ireland is just as responsible for killing WD as Sony was.

He admits as much in a Gamespot interview.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6141225.html

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GS: As Working Designs showed that there was an American audience for many of its games, others began to take note and jump in the game. Currently, Mastiff, Atlus, NIS America, Agetec, Hot-B America all seem to specialize in somewhat niche, localized fare. Did the niche outgrow Working Designs? What kept the company from competing with these new players?

VI: Me, really. We were tied up, and I was obsessed with getting the three Gs approved. It made no sense to me that they were denied because they were so right for our market, and were exactly the kind of game we did that our fans liked. Until that was cleared, nothing else could be licensed. My hands were tied to get any more product by our majority shareholders. If I had cut and run, we could have been doing our usual two games a year in that time. Think of it, we could have done six games in the three years I wasted! But there's no guarantee any of those would have been approved either, since they would have been games that emphasized story and gameplay over graphics.

Some other interesting quotes...

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GS: With the company's focus on role-playing games and 2D-friendly approach to graphics, why was the decision never made to publish for systems like the Game Boy Advance or Nintendo DS?

VI: GBA was too crowded a market, and DS came into the picture too late. The software for the DS is only now really starting to come on strong. It does have Goemon, too! That game alone made me rebuy a DS so I could play it. Now I'm glad I did because there's a bunch of great stuff.

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GS: Any thoughts on the next generation of platforms?

VI: I want to know more about the Revolution. I also want everyone to write Microsoft and demand their JRPGs!

[Arbok]

"GBA was too crowded a market"

That's a really lame excuse, considering they were trying to get their games on the PS2...