When Masachika Kawata gets up in the morning--5 a.m., precisely--he makes himself a cup of tea, gazes out the window to the west, and thinks of all the lazy Americans lying on their sofas. They're probably sleep-sweating, and covered in spilled Cheez-Its.
The day the
Resident Evil producer met with
Slant Six about developing
Operation Raccoon City, he was suspicious. And it didn't matter that the dev was Canadian, since the Great White North is just America with rounder bacon. "To be honest, I had my own impression about Western people," Kawata said, "being laid back and sitting on sofas."
Admittedly, we do love our sofas. They provide a perfect cushion to our increasingly rotund, moon-like asses while we stuff our jiggling gullets with corned beef hash and pork gravy. Most of us have given up bowls entirely, and started eating with children's pail and shovel sets. But Slant Six knew a thing or two about impressions, and set aside their five-course poutine platters to go the extra mile. Naturally, Kawata was indeed impressed:
"[The Canucks] came in early, on a Sunday, and gave us all sorts of recommendations. They wanted to do it, rather than being dragged out of bed if you like. So they've completely changed my perception about working with Western developers.
"I didn't find any differences to any of the Japanese developers I've worked with before. Besides the time zone and language, I've had no problems working with them at all."
Since the meeting, Capcom says it's content with the direction
Operation Raccoon City is progressing in, and feels that Slant Six really "gets" what
Resident Evil is all about. The SOCOM developer is scheduled to have the four-player corpsefest out for Xbox 360, PS3, and microwave clock displays by year's end. But that's only if they can stave off their productivity-sucking addiction to lying face down on sofas, sipping gristle drippings from a Big Gulp.
No guarantees there.
