East meets West: Capcom's Lost Planet 3 blueprint

Years of language lessons and game design training later, Szymanski's name has made the credit rolls of Japanese video games, including fare produced by Tecmo, Microsoft and Capcom — and his own last name's jumble of consonants and vowels might seem fake to a new generation of gamers. Szymanski now calls Tokyo home, but his role can't be what he expected as a wide-eyed "Eff Eff" fan. He's a project lead at Capcom for Lost Planet 3 — but that means overseeing the efforts of Spark Unlimited, a game developer in Los Angeles. Capcom has hired the company to put a Western spin on an already Western-friendly series.

For the past few years, as the West has outgrown Japan in game consumption, more Japanese game companies are following suit, hiring Western firms or focusing squarely on its shooter-heavy sales charts.

Lost Planet 3 is a particularly interesting case study in East-meets-West game design. Language and culture barriers are obstacle enough, but theirs is an attempt at double-redemption. Capcom had a critical failure in Lost Planet 2, while Spark's last flop, the first-person shooter Legendary, was followed by canceled contracts and unfinished games.

While Lost Planet 3, over three years in the making, constitutes a massive, bicontinental effort, Szymanski slips at one point, saying his "ass is on the line for the whole shebang." Though, in the end, you can't blame him for feeling that way. Just like in his favorite opening sequence, Szymanski — with a lot of people on his robo-suit's back — has jumped into Lost Planet 3 to stomp through showers of snow and unexplored territory.

But Lost Planet wasn't shopped to American firms with a "more of the same" mission. Quite the opposite. The words "Lost Planet" would be the only series constants not poked, prodded and shuffled into new — and hopefully improved — shapes. That sounded just fine to the design team that eventually got the job, Spark Unlimited.

"In early stages, our fear was that we'd make compromises, they'd make compromises, and something in the middle would be something that nobody really likes," Spark lead designer Matt Sophos says. "After that, we realized that they came to us for a reason. We were afforded the freedom to spin [Lost Planet 3] in a Western-centered way."

It's not exactly bucking the president's orders, but there's something a little cavalier — sure, Western — about the process, at least as far as Capcom is admitting. As such, Szymanski takes indirect credit — and admits to a motivation of pride about the Western search.

"Our first and foremost goal is to show people that this isn't just outsourcing, or farming it out to the lowest bidder," he says. "We wanted to make sure that it was understood that we're working with Western developers. We're trying to create something more than the sum of its parts. We needed to create a really good test case — a really good representation of, 'here's how we can work with Western developers.'"

When asked just why Capcom picked Spark Unlimited for the job, Szymanski launches a pre-emptive strike: "You don't have to mince words. We can take it. 'Why would they choose the developer of Legendary and Turning Point?' I get it!"

The Spark games in question had first-person gunplay in common, but also dismal sales. Both games launched in 2008 with a thud, and the next year saw Spark try to right itself in a particularly pre-Kickstarter way. After the company sent a few game idea pitches to publishers, one seemed to stick, and a new team formed to pound out a prototype.

The prototype remained just that; the contract fell through, as did the funding. Spark had gone to the trouble of reorganizing its development process and hiring a bunch of people. What now?

Around that time, Szymanski flew to the States with a Lost Planet 3 mission and a number of game studio visits. He focused on those who'd built first- and third-person shooters, especially those who'd made games that never saw the light of day.

Fitting that bill, Spark received permission to show off its prototype to Capcom. Szymanski stopped by.

"There was a certain amount of trepidation walking into Spark," Szymanski admits.

At Team Ninja, that indoctrination meant sleepless nights, verbal abuse, and having work "thrown into your face." Szymanski endured the "spartan culture" by reminding himself that Japanese game makers, at the time, still dominated the industry; as far as he was concerned, he had no other path.

Szymanski says the experience primed him for his continued growth in the industry, building him up to work better with large design teams and thickening his skin. He eventually took on a contract producer job on a Microsoft-funded third-party title, and though the game never saw release or even announcement, he had finally been tasked with "bridging the gap between East and West, if you will" — something he'd been held back from doing for years. [Editor's note: We originally reported that Szymanski worked as a producer for Microsoft itself. We regret the error.]

"I remember one of the first days on the job [at Team Ninja], my boss, [Tomonobu] Itagaki, came over and said, 'I heard you want to be a game designer.' I'm like, 'yeah.' He said, 'you're also American. That'll be really useful.' I said, 'yes.' He's like, 'you're not allowed to speak English for the next two years when you're at work. Don't bet on the fact that being bilingual gives you a free pass, or you think you're special. You have to be as good as any other designer on my team.' That was a wake-up call."

After a year and a half working on a project for Microsoft, coordinating the efforts of Japanese developers and the American publisher, Szymanski came to Capcom to do the opposite. Having the figurative snot beaten out of him at Team Ninja proved useful with the new gig, because it forced him to see the potential downfalls of East/West game collaboration.

Szymanski points to a huge potential schism: the concept phase. "My job is to get the creatives, the artists, and the designers to speak the same language," he says. "I don't mean English or Japanese — I mean the same game language. The actual language barrier? That can always be overcome. All you need is a good amount of resources. But the lost in translation aspect, with different philosophies of game design, that's harder."

On Japanese teams he's worked with, the moment-to-moment experience has come first, like the way players jump or swing swords, and a narrative comes later to execute on those mechanics: "We have a character who traverses the environment by swinging on poles. He's got a giant sword on his back. We need an ice level, a fire level, and a giant space station. How do we tie that together?"

Western teams he's worked with, conversely, have focused on narrative, story and environment portions at the outset, only to build gameplay beats afterward. Szymanski saw that split rear its head at the beginning of Lost Planet 3's concept phase: "It was never people getting upset, but definitely times where those gaps had to be bridged. People had to understand they were coming from fundamentally different points of view in order to see what the other person was bringing to the table. That was one of the most exciting times for me personally. I could jump in there and be that glue, right?"

We'll have to wait and see how all of the pieces fit together. Everything from the third-person on-foot gunplay, to managing resources, to the massive utility rig and its latest upgrades (like a grabbing wench), is still up in the air. At the very least, the end result teeters on the Western-friendly side, which shouldn't be too shocking for a shoot-first series like Lost Planet.

Still, this can't be what Szymanski expected when he studied Japanese and game design as a kid, nor when he graduated college and took his lumps at Japanese game studios. Who goes to all that trouble to make games that are less Japanese?

But Szymanski isn't blind to a changing game industry — if anything, he's eager to capitalize on the transition. He namechecks mobile and downloadable trends, adding that he will "do his part" to ensure Capcom remains relevant on those fronts. Heck, as a bridge between cultures in a rapidly changing game industry, he can't be blamed for rethinking his old boss Itagaki's condemnation, that he wasn't special. Maybe here, in Japan, as a nostalgic, Nintendo-weaned game maker from America, in a unique position to redeem Capcom's Western-minded fare, his role is special.

"The Japanese game industry is on the decline," he says. "The domestic market is shrinking. We're seeing a lot more ... not only the emergence and domination of Western pubs, but also situations like Lost Planet 3, where Japanese publishers are figuring out what they can do to remain relevant. In a twist of irony, a lot of guys, including myself, fell in love with Japanese games and wanted to work in that industry.

"They come over to Japan and realize Japan is looking to figure out how they can spread out to the West, to fill out a niche that is necessary there. In our hearts, we long for those nostalgic days when we played those classic games. I'm sure there’s gonna be things down the line that'll bring that nostalgic feeling back."