Visiting NAMCO BANDAI Games America Inc.

Feb. 5th, 2009, Students in ETC-SV visited NAMCO BANDAI Games America, which located in Santa Clara, California.

About NAMCO BANDAI Games
NAMCO BANDAI Games is a combined company aiming at developing video games to inspire and entertainment people to the full. In 2005, Japanese toy giant BANDAI and game publisher NAMCO(Pac-Man developer) joined operations to leverage their core strengths to increase their competitiveness in intense entertainment industry. Earlier this year, they announced their new manga-based action game Afro Samurai, which was developed in U.S. headquarter.

Talks Given by Company Managers
Our tour around NAMCO BANDAI started with Diana Ross, Director of Human Resources, giving us a general introduction about company business. She also told us some interesting back-stage stories on developing Afro Samurai.

Later on, Makoto Iwai, Executive Vice President and COO, explained to us how NAMCO and BANDAI decided to merge and shift their focuses to western market. As Japanese video game market shrinking and development cost increasing, two companies figured out to merge their operations in order to make more competitive and profitable products. Meanwhile, the company began to open up new studios in US and Europe, expanding into larger entertainment market. Moreover, Mr. Iwai mentioned NAMCO BANDAI America is in really good shape hiring more talents while other companies are undergoing a lot of laying off. He encouraged us all to apply to NAMCO BANDAI Games.


Lastly, Roger Hector, Financial Manager, also a video game veteran, gave us a talk on evolution of character design for video games. In his talked, he showed us how artists designed characters on paper in old days versus nowadays sophisticated 3D technology. Besides, Roger told us how Toru Iwatani created the character Pac-Man. Mr. Iwatani got the design of Pac-Man when he was looking at a one-slice-off pizza. With the thought of everyone loves eating, he designed Pan-Man an eating game with this cute yellow character.
During the second half of Roger’s talk, he went through all NAMCO BANDAI games with us. It is interesting to see that most of NAMCO BANDAI games are manga-based. Roger explained to us this is a strategy to build company image.

Tour the Working Space
After the talk, Veronica Guzman toured us throughout their working space and gave us NAMCO BANDAI goodies. People working there are very welcoming. We can also feel the various cultures blend very well there. It is an especially friendly place for foreign students.

At the end of the day, we learned a lot about the company and got nice gifts. It was an amazing visit.