this is a day in the life of a Japanese
game programmer
this is masa 23 year old programmer
living in Tokyo and working for one of
the largest video game companies in
Japan and this is how he starts his work day
he lives alone in a typical
Japanese apartment which are known for
their efficient use of space like this
enclosed unit bath with built-in sink
facilities
masa how long does it take
for you to get ready for work?
[Music]
like most salary men in Tokyo he
commutes to work by train door-to-door
about 40 minutes so it's not bad but
more than half of this trip is walking
to and from the train station not
pleasant on rainy days like this
all right so masa should be coming soon
but the Typhoon's these months have been
a really really crazy crazy
dang! look the trains are super packed!
crazy typhoon, right?
so Masa works for Bandai Studios which is the network
entertainment unit of bandai namco group
they're known for developing popular
game titles like Tekken Mario Kart and
even pac-man and there's about a
thousand employees in the Tokyo office
spread across five floors
[Music]
that's his digital timecard he's
also, common in many Japanese companies
is for employees to changer into slippers for their work day
so this is Masa's office
very common Japanese style desks
with low dividers
so Masa keeps his desk area simple, like many of his co-workers
its very differently compared to western desks
which are often littered with decorations and family pictures
first thing in the morning, he checks his emails
as well as the internal company's social network for updates
while also having a quick breakfast
Masa, where did you buy your juice?
What is that?
so Masa is doing his morning tasks right now
its gonna be some time before he has kind of like a break
because he's pretty focused
so let's go walk around the office
and see what kind of facilities they have!
so right behind Masa's desk, they a game corner
kinda placed right here
and they have the Switch, they have Playstation
they have Xbox, and they even have some virtual reality gear
I guess you get to play some games any time you want
which is pretty cool
oh wow, and just below here
there's a big big computer
I think it's an alien war computer
looks like one powerful machine
alright so, this is their break room area
on the second floor
let's see what they have
they separate all the trash
they have your burnables, you have your cans
and your bottles,
and you also have your non-burnables like plastic
they have a hot water pot and a mircowave
so this behind me is their snack corner
but it runs on the honor system
so basically, at the top
you have a place where you deposit money
other different chocolates or candies
they have a price for it
and even the refrigerator has frozen treats
like ice cream, and what not
and you just need to pay on the honor system
and you take what you actually paid for
I don't know how this would do in your country's office?
Alright so, let's check what's down here
so this place says Library
but in fact, its not a library of books
its a library of games,
check this out
so they have all these different consoles
all the way from like nintendo
to PC Engine, I don't even know what that is
game cube and the original SEGA
Sega Saturn
even a family computer
they have, like, every single game ever!
and it's not just in this aisle
they have this aisle
and they have this aisle
and then they have this aisle
but this aisle actually looks like books
they even have all kinds of game cartridges from back in the day
Nintendo DS
they even have like a baseball game
Sim City
I wonder how many years, it would take to play all of these games
What's your favorite old school console?
Because I'm sure they probably have it here!
so this area here, is their administration section of the office
it's kind of like the business side of the company
and this behind me, is where all executives stay
so this area is a lot lesser than the common area
as you can see, the offices are fairly reasonable
with the president's room is fairly the same size as the other executives
Finally!
Lunch time !
so he is Masa's Douki
which means a co-worker who started working at the company
at the same time
In fact, it's common for many Japanese companies
to do mass hiring once a year for college graduates
Just outside is their cafeteria
Food trucks come during lunch time
apparently, the trucks vary each day
but damn! that doesn't look like a pleasant experience
waiting in line during this typhoon
Masa, do you always eat here?
so, is this the only office in Japan
that's a decent option
for lunch
ITADAKIMASU is a customary
term used by Japanese before each meal
meaning let's eat or thank you for the meal
looks like they have a little time
before their lunch break finishes
I wonder where they're going
what is that
oh wow, they take their pac-man serious here
and like all the games here it's also free to play
anytime
Masa, so what are you doing now?
so I've kinda got some free time while
Masa is working so why don't we spend
this time and maybe go meet some people
so apparently they have all their
different teams of working in different
parts of the office we're actually on a
different floor right now
excuse me so what kind of work do you do?
What's Code Vein?
so Code Vein is a dramatic
exploration action RPG with animated
characters in a challenging and
dangerous dungeon environment
so can you show me?
I don't think he's ready to show anyone the game right now but he's just asking
some of those guys to prepare the game
for me and they're gonna put it on the
screen so yeah I'm kind of excited to
see what kind of game it is
wow this is an attractive looking game
how long did it
take to develop this game?
he also said that at one time there was about 200
people involved in developing the game
and even when it's released
development is still not complete as they update the
game based on user feedback and create
new downloadable content
alright, this is kind of fun let's go ask more people
what they're doing it looks like just
over there and people having a meeting
let's see what they're doing
excuse me can I ask you guys some questions?
so what do you do you?
what were you guys doing just now?
can I get a peek at where you're working on?
oh wow, they have a real deal tekken 7 machine
right next to their work desks
I guess testing character functionality
as part of a day's work for these
developers or maybe this is how they
settle arguments in the office
so it looks like, Masa is not at his seat right now
he's supposed to be here but I guess not
maybe he went somewhere let's go find
out where he is
oh there's Masa he's having a scrum
meeting I believe he has this meeting
every day for 30 minutes they review
what they programmed the previous day it
needs to be done today
and share and discuss problems for the future
and they use software to manage all the
tasks and display it on the screen
during the meeting
oh are you going to code again?
so where are we now?
okay so Masa has a full-om employee nap
space at his office and he even brought
his own heated steam eye mask he sure
doesn't mess around when it comes to his naps
What is that?
now he's back to this coding again so
basically this is what Masa does all
day I mean from morning till the
afternoon until the evening before he
goes home he is programming like this in
front of a black screen
oh, he's going to the finance department to ask about expenses
so this is the second scrum meeting
the Sprint review held once
every two weeks
usually they combine it with their first
scrum meeting but due to scheduling
issues with one of the other members
they have to break up the meeting today
it is interesting though that they use
post-it notes to do their final review
I guess sometimes analog is just better
by the way, the meeting rooms can be booked from
this digital panel here that's pretty
convenient
now he's finishing up his tasks checking
emails that he missed during the meeting
and writing a log of today's activities
yay finally work is done just a little
over 8 hours but Masa says he does have
to do overtime once in a while during
large projects overall though that's
pretty good for a Japanese company as
many other places require their staff to
work a lot of overtime hours which is
often unpaid now masa's meeting up with
his work friends for dinner
OTSUKARESAMA-DESU is another customary office term
often used to greet your co-workers
a difficult translation loosely translated to mean thank you for
your work and today is payday and it's
Friday as well so time to let loose a bit
usually in Japanese drinking culture
everyone orders drinks at their own pace
while everyone shares the food
groups split an entire tab equally at the end
no matter how much each person drank
or ate, also smoking indoors in Japan
is fine as long as the restaurants are
okay with it which is usually the case
with izakaya drinking restaurants
so masa what else do you do in your free time?
even at work his PC desk is his go-to spot.
Masa do you watch YouTube?
well, I don't know much about Gundam but
I can tell from looking around he sure
loves it
so what are you gonna do for rest of the night?
so Masa's gonna be doing this for
another couple hours it looks like
he'll be doing this until midnight so
yeah this is what he does at the end of the night
alright, that's a day in the life of Japanese game programmer
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