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No one would of imagined Working Designs, A widely known RPG developer, was in the process of closing its doors forever. The company was a dream come true to hardcore fans of JRPG (Japanese Role Playing Game) due to company”s diligent effort to bring Japanese RPGS that would of never made it to the U.S market. Working Designs is famous for bringing Lunar, Arc the lad, and Cosmic Fantasy (Turbo Graphic 16).
This was truly a sad day and a huge blow to RPG market. There are many gamers patiently waiting for future release of JRPGS for PS3 and hoping that these games would be imported and developed by Working Designs in the future.

In an interview with Next Generation, Victor Ireland explains why Working Designs fell victim to corporate failure and talks about the possibility of importing/developing again. (Hopefully PS3 JRPGS titles!)

Did you see this coming? What was the first indication that the situation was dire?

Looking back, the first clue was getting both Growlansers and Goemon rejected the same day shortly before E3 2001 (or was it 2002?). We had never had a single rejected title out of all the games we”d ever submitted to NEC, Sega and Sony. To get three in one day was a shock–especially when they were right down the middle of the kinds of games we always did that sold well and were well received. We spent years picking the seeds out of cotton in the efforts to get the games approved, and eventually succeeded in two out of the three, but the cost in both time and money was too great. I should have seen what was happening and cut and run to another set of titles, but I believed in them 100% . I still do; Growlanser is one of the
freshest RPG series out there.

What was Working Designs” ultimate undoing?

Me, probably. If I were Mr. Corporate, I would have cut and run when those three games were rejected. But I believed in them strongly, as I do all the games we licensed, and was convinced that if I could just show them what was special about those titles they would approve them. That belief led to three years burning money and stagnating when we could have been doing other games. It was quite hellish. That said, I did manage to get Growlanser II and III out here, and hopefully left the door open for I, IV and V, all of which are even better than II and III.

You can read the rest of the interview at next-gen.biz

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