Interview:
Victor Ireland
President of Working Designs
Interview conducted September 10, 2000
Jeff Luther
Working Designs is a small development/publishing house
that specilizes in finding some of the best Japanese titles available and giving us
stateside gamers a chance to get in on the action. They've been delivering high quality
games since the Turbografix 16 and have developed a signature style of addictive gameplay
and superb writing. Most recently they've given us Lunar and Vanguard Bandits, two of my
favorite RPGs on the PlayStation. Lunar 2: Eternal Blue will probably (hopefully) make its
way into your PlayStation pretty soon, and Working Desings has two titles, Silpheed and
Gungriffon Blaze, lined up for the Playstation 2 launch in October. I had a chance to ask
Victor Ireland, President of Working Desings, some questions and get the skinny on their
new titles, their creative approach, and those ever-so-sweet RPG translations.
Luther: The video game industry is usually dominated by the
next really big thing. Games frequently draw criticism for looking dated if they look even
a year old, but Working Designs has never seemed too concerned with this particular adage.
Instead they seem to focus on a variety of other qualities including story development and
gameplay. Can you tell me something about your game philosophy? What are some things that
you look for in a game? In other words, do you have specific artistic considerations in
mind when looking for your next game?
Ireland: The game can’t be completely ugly or have
horrid control. Generally speaking, the story is the thing. If the story is great, and the
control and graphics are at least good we’ll most-likely do it. A good example of
this is Vanguard Bandits. As an S-RPG, the graphics are definitely average. The gameplay
is okay, but the overall story is pretty great, mostly because you can view the happenings
from three branches with three distinct takes on the storyline. It’s one of the few
games where you can honestly say you got something new out of the game the second and
third time through, and that’s due to the multiple-perspective, multiple-branch
storyline.
Luther: Working Designs publishes relatively few games. This
means you have more invested and more at stake with each title than a company that puts
out several games a month. How much does economic reality dictate what games you are
willing to bring out? Does this make you more or less likely to take chances on games that
may or may not reach a large audience?
Ireland: RPG’s are our mainstay, and every one we’ve
done has done reasonably well. Some, like Alundra and LUNAR:Silver Star Story Complete
have done very well. But there ARE games we’d like to do that we know won’t make
money, but we feel should be seen by US audiences. We generally do one of these titles per
year, under the SPAZ label. Silhouette Mirage was a truly underrated game, but one of
Japan’s premiere developers, Treasure. We lost money on it, but I’m still
satisfied, because the title HAD to be seen in the US. Besides which, our commitment to
promoting these kind of games is one of the reasons we got a chance to publish the
ultra-hot PlayStation 2 game Silpheed, which just happens to be developed by, you guessed
it, Treasure.
While we can’t take chances on every offbeat game or genre that
has fallen from favor in the US, we certainly try to pick the one or two we do each year
carefully. Buy three or four copies of LUNAR 2, so we can afford to release more niche
titles we know we’ll lose money on!
Luther: I have always been impressed with the dialogue in
your Role Playing Games, especially their rich sense of humor. Do you search for games
with impressive writing, or is this a result of how you have translated them? Can you tell
me something about the process of translating video game text?
Ireland: Most RPG games we release have some amount of humor
or witty dialogue, but the overwhelming majority of the text lacks personality when
initially translated. We try to add character to the characters when we do the
translation. Every town has a guy that says "This is so and so village." That
serves a function, but it’s boring. Why is that guy there? Is it his job to greet
people? Is he practicing to get a job at the new Wal-Mart? We would give the guy a reason
to be there, and in the course of talking with him, you’d find out what village you
were in. Of course, that also adds to the amount of text in the game, which creates memory
headaches for the programmers, but generally speaking, it all eventually works out to the
benefit of the player.
Luther: What’s next for Working Designs? Which of the
next generation systems do you have plans to release games for?
Ireland: Our first Playstation 2 titles are action and
shooting games respectively. Instead of putting them on the SPAZ label, however we are
retiring that brand and resurrecting the "Working Designs Ultra Series" from the
TG and SEGA CD days. Gungriffon Blaze is a mech action game from Game Arts, and Silpheed
is an arcade shooting game from Treasure that was produced by Game Arts. Both should be
out on launch day. Just after that, we have the behemoth LUNAR 2:Eternal Blue. We just got
final prototypes of the packaging insides the other day, and I kid you not, people are
going to be blown completely away. It will make the extras in LUNAR 1 look like something
Akklame put out. We should have pics of the final packaging configuration on our web page
in the next few weeks, so check it out. Oh, I should also mention that the free pre-order
Ghaleon puppets are also running out. People who want one should head out to Electronics
Boutique or Babbages/Software Etc and get theirs with a $20 deposit on the game. Very soon
they will be gone, and they won’t be available again.
Luther: What games do you enjoy playing, aside from Working
Designs titles? Are there any games in particular that you’re looking forward to?
Ireland: I like other RPG’s. Vagrant Story was amazing,
I thought. One of only a tiny handful of games EVER that I felt were at or above the level
of our games’ writing. I enjoy playing some of the Nintendo games with my son. We had
a great time completely finishing Banjo-Kazooie, and are looking forward to Banjo-Tooie.
Of course, I want to play Metal Gear Solid 2 like everyone else. X-Fire (Crossfire, known
as X-Squad when it’s released in the US later this year) was a LOT of fun on the PS2.
It came out of nowhere and really surprised me. Very enjoyable game. Oh, and Metal Slug
2nd mission on the Neo Geo Pocket. Great, GREAT game.
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