XSEED Games

Hey, guys,

This is Brittany again, Localization Producer at XSEED and lead editor for The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel II and Trails in the Sky the 3^rd. While it’s been a while since we’ve done a blog related to Trails, I’d actually like to save that kind of talk for another day and veer into a more personal direction with both the series and my place in the company as a whole. Get ready for some super deep real talk, friends.

A few months back, I was talking with someone who is currently around the same age as I was when I started with XSEED. He was saying how working in games was a dream job, but he was far, far away from anything related to the games industry, didn’t really know how to make his way in because he felt he had nothing special to offer, had never lived on his own, didn’t have any “real” goals with college…pretty much what anyone at 21 would say. I wasn’t much different.

My start in games was completely by chance. I grew up playing video games and loved them, but I was from a small town in the middle of nowhere with zero connections to anything related to games. I never liked school, but I loved working, and even if I didn’t have any particular goals in life, I figured I’d just stay in the small town I never liked and settle for government work and an easy, stable paycheck. Then, right before my 22^nd birthday, I got completely plastered at a friend’s house, and in my drunk ramblings to my mother as she drove me home (don’t drink and drive, legally-able-to-drink kiddos), I told her I was going to leave home for the first time and move about 3,000 miles to live on an acquaintance’s floor for a few months while I started a new life in California. I didn’t know what I wanted out of life, but I knew it wasn’t what I currently had, so I figured it was about time I go searching. A couple months later, I did exactly that.

Looking back, it wasn’t one of my brightest ideas. The economy at the time was absolutely terrible, and I, a born workaholic who started working at 15 and would work up to three jobs at any time to keep from feeling bored, couldn’t find a job for six months. It was probably one of the more depressing times in my life, and while my roommates at the time were wonderful, I felt like I wasn’t contributing enough, and that made me feel worse. Just as money was starting to run out, I found a job at a local fast food place, but the environment was so stressful and awful that I quit after only three days—something I’d never done before. I thought I blew my only chance at a job and some stability, but it still wasn’t what I wanted.

Between cooking or cleaning or job hunting, I’d often use video games to calm me down. I ended up beating a lot of games during that time—999 and Ghost Trick are two notable ones—and I suddenly thought: hey, I like video games a lot! Why not see if I can work as an unpaid intern at a local game company while I go out and look for a job I was more qualified for? At least helping to get the guys with real jobs coffee or something will get me out of the house, right?

Within a couple weeks, I started my job at XSEED Games, and my life hasn’t been the same since. Within a month, I was a paid intern, and a few months later, I was offered full time–I’ve even had a few shiny titles since then, with the switch from Production Coordinator to Localization Producer happening just last month. Working in games starting from the very bottom in a warm, welcoming environment was more fun and stimulating than any day in high school was because I was constantly learning and improving skillsets that directly affected my work. Hell, I still learn new things daily nearly five years in. Before being hired, I never thought someone in my position would find a real career—and one I genuinely loved, at that!—but this company gave me exactly that.

And now I’m here, getting paid to learn new things that directly apply to me and edit a series I absolutely adore. I’m the happiest I’ve ever been, even if I sometimes forget that between the hair-pulling stress and the multitude of things to do and the deadlines.

Admittedly, taking over the Trails series has filled me with a lot of insecurities and made me constantly question my abilities as an editor. I worked on Trails in the Sky PC and used my general knowledge to help out with both Trails in the Sky SC and Trails of Cold Steel, but all of those had different lead editors. I may be working on different games, but in a lot of ways, I still feel to this day that I’m picking up a project that was unfinished instead of starting a brand new arc that has 100% my personal touch. I’d even initially turned down becoming lead editor for the games because I thought all the shifting around was a detriment to the series’ writing quality as a whole. After all, 3^rd may be its own story, but it’s still within the Sky arc (FC & SC must be played before 3^rd), and Cold Steel II is, well, the second Cold Steel game.

That’s not to say I think I’m a bad editor—honestly, I’m glad I worked my way up through things like proofing and QA to get where I am now, and reviews for the games I’ve worked on have received praise for their localizations (I read them all, and they make me feel very giddy). Going through all that slowly trains you to see the bigger picture and connects the dots in a way just hopping right into editing can’t, and after playing through so many games with the intent of scrutinizing every line, it’s easier to detect and eliminate patterns and tropes that are best avoided for a cleaner, more natural read.

What does often psych me out is that I’m the one person in our humble office that doesn’t have a real college education. What I’ve learned wasn’t through taking classes, studying for finals, experiencing crazy college dorm life, or earning that fancy sheet of paper, but just by reading a lot of books on my own time and slowly working my way up through plain ol’ perseverance. I did try to do community college—a couple classes here and there—but I utterly, completely failed within a semester or two. Even my job at XSEED was mostly a matter of being at the right place at the right time.

Back to that person I was talking to earlier in the blog—speaking with them and telling them my experiences helped me put my current position into perspective and realize it’s these kinds of challenges and insecurities that have helped me improve. Yes, it’s okay to get freaked out in the face of people thoroughly educated in ye olde English once in a while, but sitting around feeling inferior won’t change anything, and I have to think about where I am now compared to five years ago, too. Maybe I started at this job by pure chance, but I like to think that working hard was what helped me keep it.

I’ve learned so much relevant information here, and all of it’s changed me for the better. Right now, for example, I’ve intentionally stopped using other video games as a reference because I worry using only that will result in all the tropes that comes with JRPGs becoming concentrated tenfold in my writing. I’ve started branching out into media completely untouched by video games such as old plays, and because I work with words on a daily basis, I’ve been able to thoroughly appreciate how these playwrights worked so creatively with the English language. It’s made me think a lot about how I should be writing as I continue carving out my own style, too. It’s all very exciting and refreshing.

It’s like a dream to have all of what I have, and best of all, the sky’s the limit with the work I do; I’ll always have new challenges, new things to study, and new things to tweak and improve upon in my own work. I kind of want everyone who’s ever felt aimless when they were 21 to know that it doesn’t stay that way forever, and when you’re feeling lost or unsure about your future, take a few strange, stupid risks and keep trying different things. It may come very suddenly, but you might just find the very thing you’ve always been looking for.