Platinum never loses its lustre
There's a story I've heard passed around a few times over the years about PlatinumGames. It's about how, so industrious is this Osaka-based studio, it never really stops working; how its employees are put onto shift-work, one working through the day while the other toils away through the night, ensuring a never-ending 24-hour production cycle. It's a myth, sadly - though that's fortunate for the studio's 190-strong workforce, you'd figure - but like all myths there's surely a kernel of truth in there somewhere. How else to explain how the studio has produced some 14 games in just over a decade? How else to explain the exquisite craft that's almost always on show?
Maybe you'll find the answer in PlatinumGames' headquarters, spread over two floors of the Umeda Sky Building. It's not the tallest building in Osaka, but it's certainly the most ostentatious; built just before the economic bubble burst in late 80s Japan, it looks like a space invader squatting over the Osaka skyline, its two 40-story towers joined by an outrageous atrium that hangs high up in the air.
Inside, the building is a study of quiet industry. Take the lift up to PlatinumGames' floor, and you'll be surrounded by neatly dressed workers heading for their days behind desks at pharmaceutical companies, multinational automakers and consulates. Follow the one person not in a suit and tie - the guy in his mid-forties, perhaps, sporting an oversized hoodie and oversized skater shorts, his hair falling down to his shoulders - and you'll know which floor to get off at.
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