Famitsu - Eorzea Tsushin Summer 2011 Vol 1 (Cleaned up thread)

[Reinheart]

Rein thanks for the trans you always do these trans when you are busy w/ work and kids so thank you

P.S Rein you think you can post in the jp forums about he evade on PGL Simian Thrash we would like to see it removed

Sure will post that one on the JP side to see if we get any response. I might get slapped with a green wet and slimey tentacles called Bay if we get a response but sure

Edit: posted http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/20702 I didn't post how much Gath is awesome since my subligar (not me, my subligar) is greater than him. (Just made it look better for post to get response from the Rep)

[Firon]

Sure will post that one on the JP side to see if we get any response. I might get slapped with a green wet and slimey tentacles called Bay if we get a response but sure

Edit: posted http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/20702 I didn't post how much Gath is awesome since my subligar (not me, my subligar) is greater than him. (Just made it look better for post to get response from the Rep)

Thank you so much rein we rly want this changed

[Gunghir]

You are superb, Reinheart! Keep it up man

[Biggs]

You sir are a Prince among men Rein. Thankyou for this.

[Embers]

Thanks, great job on translation

[Reinheart]

To all playing Final Fantasy XIV, and everyone who bought this book Eorzea Tsushin, Hello, this is Poekichi, no Yoshida :P

I would like to present this special edition of producer letter with Eorzea Tsushin, every producer letter is regarding in-game goals or next patch information, release timing information but for since it’s special edition want to change that and would like to report Yoshida and dev’s one day.

Will unveil how the dev/management spends throughout the day.

Right after arriving to it’s already busy !?

FFXIV dev team starts working at 10 AM. For Yoshida it’s bit special and start meetings from 9 AM. Development goes till midnight so starting time is bit late compared to other companies. It doesn’t mean we’re slacking so please understand J

FFXIV devs and management are build up on many sections and staffs from different countries (We have translators so it’s natural)

We use foreign members for center of asset [not sure here] but mainly the members are made within the office.

Upon arriving Yoshida and each staff are busy, technical director Hashimoto gives out plans for each sections and starts the morning meetings. Ever day we report which tasks has been taken care of, and if there is any trouble; report those. If there is any delay; that also gets reported and we immediately look into making task adjustments.

Yoshida on the other hand has morning meeting with management representative and new dev team representatives. We talk about upcoming patch status, checking current progress, reporting any problem areas and adjustments, checking current situation on long-term change which doesn’t rely on the patch; checking the methods; looking over the schedules. Morning times are spent this way.

Arriving to work, drinking coffee and checking mail…. It’s not that kind of loose image, it’s already busy (laugh)

Communicating with the Community Reps

After the morning meetings, it’s about time I want to get a cigarette and coffee; community reps shows up to Yoshida booth. They look at the forums everyday till after midnight and requests for devs comments, they got used to the devs also.

Some players comment/suggestions make us go “hmmmm” or some that makes us say “That’s interesting” it depends on day by day.

[Reinheart]

Yoshida’s booth is strategic conference room?!

Will show just a little of Yoshida’s booth (shows picture here)

Yoshida’s booth is like a individual room but this doesn’t mean it’s like this because he’s Producer/Director but wanted a conference room which can be accessed/utilized anytime and wanted a whiteboard so had it prepared in middle of the development.

Performing both producer and director at same time, for Yoshida is first time and probably for this type of game dev/management at this scale, I don’t think it has happened before.

Because of that everyday get around 230 e-mails (when started the first 3 month was about over 400) meeting demands keeps coming from each divisions and not only from the devs.

Anyways to avoid myself being the bottle neck, I need to clear my task as fast as possible. And same time wanted to save time on looking for conference room in the office made the booth into a conference room like booth. Also Yoshida loves the white board. Everything from explaining the methods, entire design, parameter structure, flow gets written down. That way it’s easier to present the information and people around will have faster and better understanding. So it’s taking down two birds with one stone.

Also the booth door is open wide; the blind is also open fully so from outside it may look like looking through a cage with animal inside….. dev members also got used to it and when Yoshida is away they use the booth for conference (laugh) later when looking at the white board I smile noticing Matsui and Gondai had a meeting.

Development enters into the raging afternoon

It’s about little over 12 noon, supplied with coffee and cigarette, for Yoshida its time for meeting rush. Depending on the section and position the dev changes their movement. Design sections such as art section, character model section, BG section, animation section, VFX section, cut scene section gets all into their main tasks. The planner will check that days task and run around the booth to check the current situations. It’s the time it’s most lively.

Dev takes lunch around 1 PM but for Yoshida meetings comes in at all times so I don’t take much food, I can survive with cigarette and coffee (laugh)

At 2 PM each staff will dive into their work. Scenario team does the text work, same with world setting team. Quest team runs a script to run the quest and economy team concentrates on new recipe, new content representative prepares reports and methods to present to Yoshida. Programmers are programming intensively.

At all this Yoshida doesn’t have any time to sit, and running around doing meetings. Sometimes own booth isn’t enough so going back and forth conference rooms.

Each section leader, presents new content, and method confirmations, for long-term system discussing the goal and steps, meeting with the president, recently the long spent material craft method was finalized.

Like this it goes on till 7 PM, meetings go on without even a minute of free time. Between meetings is about 2-3 minutes, dashing to the smoking section to smoke. People say “If you want to catch Yoshida, go to the smoking section.” It’s not good….. around 7 PM there is about 30 minutes free time so I drink little bit sweeter coffee and take a brake, and check some mail. Skipping lunches or eating bread during conference, this time is when it finally turns.

[Reinheart]

Development into the night

Around 8 PM the final meeting starts, even if there was opening in schedule when arriving to work, by night it’s all filled up. People who couldn’t catch me during the day comes around this time. Community reps comes again, or confirmation on method additions, or core staff comes, or project manager bring the daily report, this goes on till about 10 PM. When there isn’t any meeting to check the implementation playing FFXIV. Around 10 PM it becomes overtime work so development booth lights turns on here and there.

Oh yeah this year been adjusting the cooler, or saving energy on the PC, development is also helping to save energy (due to the earthquake)

Mail check and Forum Check!
Starting full on mail check at 10 PM, mails are transferred to the companies iPhone so while running around conference I reply to few of them but full on mail check starts when I come back to the desk. For mail category for FFXIV there are 28 folders and it auto distributes to those folders. For that reason Yoshida is really noisy about how the mail subject is written. If distributed wrong it may lose the mail so subject miss is fatal. Sorry about that dev team. While replying to the e-mails starting to check the forum, keeping an eye on notable threads and replying to them in one post is the way it’s becoming.

When making responses because of my personality I can’t stop responding if I start here and there.

When leaving the mail is almost 100% completely read, responded. When you keep mail it becomes too much and causes miss and also becomes hard mentally. So before going home will make it all read. When writing the specification documents directly it starts here. And secretly play FFXIV, it’s about 0AM sometimes the security peeks into the booth and caused me scream couple of times (laugh)

Creating specifications and posting on forum and heading home….
Making detailed checks and responses to the mail, making Yoshidas conference requests, and creating methods to things Yoshida himself is working on.
When making posts for forum it’s about 1-2AM usually. (Also this letter is being written at 1 AM on Sunday) sometimes I go out to drink lightly (laugh)

On the forums players say “go home and sleep!” on the forums and head home, by the time I get home it’s around 3 AM, I don’t watch much TV, mostly just the news.

Stretch with Wii Fit (exercise bank is over 80 hours) and take a shower and by the time I get in bed it’s little over 4 AM. If reading it will be over 5AM. Also since 4 years ago stopped eating much at night, at home don’t even drink much. Wake up around 7-8 AM best sleep is about 4.5 hours. I think its structure for developer :P

Now that’s about one day Yoshida and Dev team goes through. Patch category or new contents goes through this type of procedure and been built up. Of course it’s not like this 365 days but development team is like this mostly. Might say that’s busy but for Yoshida personally I enjoy it like developing and managing. When getting scolded by the players I feel down but mainly I am positive thinking so by the time I go sleep I say “I will try harder so they can speak well of me” (laugh). Will continue hard to development and management so please continue to play!

See you in next The Lodestone’s producer letter, or in Eorzera. See You Soon!!

[Reinheart]

It's not game related (well technically yes... its about the dev team and YoshiP) so was not sure if I wanted to translate but today was slow day at work after morning + I know some people like reading stuff like this so thought might as well + good learning for me translating (being able to read harder kanji's lol) this stuff. Enjoy... hope you guys understand the dev team is really working hard for us players in FFXIV. I hope they can keep it up and make FFXIV better for all of us...

Really wanted to be programmer damn it... If I only didn't have to move so much during my childhood could of been possible orz... I admire their work

Sorry if translation is bit rough, co-worker suddenly decided to give me history lesson again.... have old old chinese lady here who's really nice but when she starts talking about something... it takes forever... anyways have to go pick up my son now laters.

[Coombah]

It was a good read to get a since of whats going on over at Square. I would love to sit in on those meetings to see what they have in store for the game. Thanks again Reinheart for translating this for the NA players ^^.