Wired.com: Why did you stop making videogames after that?
Iwatani: After that, I became a producer. Namco was a small company, and because the organization expanded, I was promoted to section chief. Someone had to coordinate the younger developers that we’d hired.
Maybe this has to do with Japanese business culture too? If your supervisor asks you to do something (like, become one of the managers) it would be rude to not comply. "No thanks boss, I'd rather stay coding games" as an answer would be acceptable in western cultures, but maybe a bit problematic in Asia.
Probably he also got a salary raise and higher social standing as a manager; from how he talks about it I get the sense that he wasn't opposed to that.
When you think about things women like, you think about fashion, or fortune-telling, or food or dating boyfriends. So I decided to theme the game around “eating” — after eating dinner, women like to have dessert.
Fascinating. I had no idea that was the inspiration. When I first read this comment of his, it sounded so sexist to my Western ears. However, coming from a Japanese maybe it was far more matter-of-fact. My second thought was, "think of the trouble you could get into in the politically-correct UK, America, Canada, or Australia if a man said this in mixed company." Thoughts?
Iwatani: After that, I became a producer. Namco was a small company, and because the organization expanded, I was promoted to section chief. Someone had to coordinate the younger developers that we’d hired.
Maybe this has to do with Japanese business culture too? If your supervisor asks you to do something (like, become one of the managers) it would be rude to not comply. "No thanks boss, I'd rather stay coding games" as an answer would be acceptable in western cultures, but maybe a bit problematic in Asia.
Probably he also got a salary raise and higher social standing as a manager; from how he talks about it I get the sense that he wasn't opposed to that.