Westerners In Japan's Game Industry

Gamasutra has a fantastic feature up this week interviewing Westerners who work in Japan's video game industry. Q-Games' Dylan Cuthbert, Gregg Tavares ex. of Sony, and Japanmanship blogger JC Barnett have pages upong pages of insight into what it's like to work in the Japanese games biz as a foreigner. Especially interesting is Tavares' point about long hours coupled with "slacking":

Japanese don't 'work' long hours. They just stay at work for long hours... It's mostly a cultural thing... Culturally you are generally not supposed to leave work until everyone above you has left, so if your sempai
(senior workers) or your boss has not left, then you should not leave... If you don't follow the guidelines, you are less likely to get promoted. Although, because of Japan's economy, most companies can't offer lifetime employment anymore, (though) most Japanese still act like that's the system.

Really, you should read this. And I say this not only because the author quotes Power-Up on the first page.

Made in Japan [Gamasutra]