A Day in the Life of a Japanese Game Programmer

08:15 – The young Masa, 23 years old, wakes up; he works in Tokyo for one of the largest gaming companies in Japan. He lives alone in a typical Japanese apartment, which are known for their efficient use of space, meaning they are small. Like most Japanese, he does not take a shower in the morning, to save time, he prefers to do it at night – Japanese people bathe not only to stay clean but also to relax, often in an ofuro. Thus, he washes his face, brushes his teeth, takes off his pajamas, and gets dressed for work, a routine that takes no more than 10 minutes.

09:10 – He is already on his way to the train station to go to work – it is raining and Masa is using an umbrella. He arrives at the company around 09:50. Masa works for Bandai Namco studios, which is the entertainment division of the Bandai Namco group, a Japanese company famous for producing games like Tekken, Mario Kart, and even Pac-Man. The company has about 1,000 employees occupying 5 floors in a building in Tokyo.

Masa starts working – he spends most of the day programming

Upon arriving on the floor where he works, Masa clocks in and goes to his desk, turns on his computer, takes off his shoes, and puts on comfortable sandals.

Before starting to program, Masa checks his email, as well as the company’s internal social network, doing all this while eating something – his breakfast.

Next to Masa’s desk, there is a ‘video game corner’ where the staff keeps some consoles like: PS, Xbox, Switch, and virtual reality glasses, in addition to a powerful computer.

On the second floor is the staff lounge. There are at least 4 trash bins for different types of waste; there is also a hot water pot and a microwave. There is even a snack corner and a refrigerator with ice cream and other treats, and any employee can take since the products are restocked according to the amount deposited in the cash register – the system used there is ‘take-pay’ based on honesty. Would this work if it were here in Brazil?

The work environment is similar to that of any other company – we might imagine that since it is a game production company, it would have a Facebook or Google-style environment, but that is not the case; if it weren’t for the posters with game characters and some other details, we wouldn’t imagine that games are produced there.

Library of consoles and games

On one of the floors of the company, there is also a library of electronic games and classic consoles, everything you can imagine: Nintendo, PC Engine/TurboGrafx 16, Super Nintendo/SNES, SEGA Master System, SEGA Saturn, Family Computer… There are more than 3 shelves full of games (cartridges and CDs) and consoles.

Lunch time

12:00 – Masa goes out to lunch with his colleague –同期・どうき – who started working at the company at the same time as him. In fact, it is common for Japanese companies to hire in bulk once a year from young graduates from Japanese universities.

“同期・どうき: someone who started working or studying at the same time as someone else. Ex: Students who graduate from different colleges but start working at the same company at the same time.”

In the building, there is a cafeteria, and some food trucks come to the front of the building every day, but it is not always the same truck; it varies each day. The line to order is huge, and with the rain and cold, the situation becomes even less pleasant. However, Masa says that he doesn’t always go to the food truck; sometimes he goes out to lunch or buys something at the nearest convenience store.

Question: Is this the only Bandai Namco office in Japan?

Answer from Masa’s colleague: There are many (different) companies in the Bandai Namco group, so if you consider all the companies in the group, they are literally everywhere.

For lunch, Masa ordered a bowl of roasted duck; before they eat, Masa and his colleague join their hands and say: いただきます… which means: let’s eat or, also, thank you for the meal.

After they finish eating and just before returning to work, Masa and his colleague go to a space with an arcade machine with their ‘beloved Pac-Man’ – the screen is huge, bigger than they are, and the controls seem very comfortable. Employees can play the games available there at any time for free.

‘Code Vein’

13:00 – Masa returns to his desk and continues programming. Meanwhile, on another floor… Apparently, there are different teams working in different parts of the office; let’s talk to one of them:

– Excuse me, so what is your role here? – I am the director and development producer of Code Vein, which was recently released. – What is Code Vein? – Code Vein is an action RPG with dramatic exploration featuring animated characters set in a dangerous cave. – Can you show me? – Ah, the game? I will show you in another place after the console is set up and the game is loaded. – The main characters of Code Vein are all Draculas, so you can customize your own Dracula. – Wow, the graphics are amazing… How long did it take to develop the game? – Since the planning… it took, um, about 5 years. – There was a time when we had 200 people working on the game’s development.

Even when the game is released, development is still not complete; the game continues to be updated based on user feedback, and new content is created for download.

It seems there is a group in a meeting; let’s go talk to them.

‘Tekken 7’

– Hello, excuse me, can I ask you some questions? – Ah, hello, sure… – So, what are you working on? – We are developing a game called Tekken 7, and I am the director of this game. – What are you doing at this very moment? – Well, here we have downloadable content called ‘season pass 3’, and we are checking it. – Can I take a peek at what you are doing? – It’s a secret! (laughs)

Nearby, there is a station with arcade machines featuring Tekken 7 where people test the characters and their functionalities; this is a very important part of the work.

Some meetings and a nap break

14:00 – Masa is not working at his desk; he is participating in a ‘scrum’ meeting – they hold this meeting, which lasts about 30 minutes, every day; in the meeting, they review what they had planned the day before, what needs to be done today, and discuss potential problems that may arise; they use software to manage tasks and show everything on a screen during the meeting.

‘Scrum’ is an ‘agile methodology’ for managing and planning software projects. Projects are divided into monthly cycles called ‘sprints’, the sprint represents a ‘time box’ within which a set of activities must be executed.

14:30 – Before returning to his desk and continuing to program, Masa, who is already a bit tired, goes to the company’s break area to take a nap… shortly after, he goes to the company’s drink machine – the drinks are free – there is tea, soda, and juice.

17:00 – Later, Masa goes to a second ‘Scrum’ meeting – in this one that occurs every two weeks, they review the ‘sprint’. The meeting room can be booked through a digital panel, which makes everything more convenient.

18:00 – Now, he is finishing his tasks, checking the emails he couldn’t see during the meetings, and writing a summary of everything he did today.

Masa is going to meet his friends, so he will leave work a bit earlier. He is hungry, so he can’t wait to have dinner.

Masa is almost finishing his work for today, then he will go out with some friends

19:07 – Masa is leaving, a little over 8 hours later, but he says that every now and then he needs to stay and do overtime when he is working on big projects. Overall, this is good. Japanese companies often require their employees to do a lot of overtime, which is not paid!

Masa meets up with his friends to go have dinner: おつかれさまです – is used to greet colleagues; the literal translation would be something like: ‘thank you for your work’.

Today is payday and, on top of that, it’s Friday, so they will be able to relax a bit more.

In Japan, people usually order drinks on their own while sharing food; in the end, the group splits the bill equally regardless of how much each person drank or ate; many restaurants allow their customers to smoke indoors – in ‘居酒屋・いざかや’ bars, it is common to see people smoking.

In his free time, Masa builds GUNDAM models, watches videos on YouTube, and plays

21:30 – Masa says goodbye to his friends and goes to the subway station to return home. Even after work, the place where Masa spends the most time is on the computer. He says that during his free time, he likes to play and do other things.

– Masa, do you watch YouTube? – Yes, recently I have been watching this channel about GUNDAM・ガンダム that SUNRISE launched. I can spend the whole day watching GUNDAM. You can see several boxes and GUNDAM models in the apartment.

– What are you going to do for the rest of the night? – I am going to build a GUNDAM model until it’s time to go to bed; there are several models that I haven’t built yet, today I’m going to build this one – model: MS-06R-2 JOHNNY RIDDEN’S ZAKUII.

So, it seems that Masa will spend a few hours building the GUNDAM model; he should go until around midnight. That’s it, this was a day in the life of a Japanese programmer.