Our Planning Department here at tri-Ace deals with a wide range of services from planning to specifications, data and scenario creation right through to direction. Planning is the department that prepares the foundations of "the Works" that the designers and programmers produce, and it is also the team that ultimately takes on the editorial role.

Our work depends on the ability to think "the Game" all the while being aware of "the User", and so here in the Planning Department we are looking for people with those abilities. The games field remains to some extent a unique one even though there is a wide range of entertainment fields out there. Games give people the chance to enjoy "Entertainment" that is "Interactive" through the interface such as the controller. This is a characteristic that only games allow for. Yet this is not limited to game systems, because the same applies to scenario and direction. Here at tri-Ace we think that scenario and direction for games are different from scenario and direction for novels and movies. The interactive experience is only possible in games and for that very reason we want to produce the kind of enjoyment that can only be created in games. That is our goal and that is what sets the Planning Department apart.

We cover a lot of ground and so it might be difficult to conjure up a specific image of just what it is that we do. The short answer is that we take a bunch of ideas and turn them into a single concept. In the work that is required to get that far, the Planning Department pretty much takes on all the work outside of what should be done by the programmers and designers. Planning is about the work of thinking up a reason for the game, and so the job is about preparing and readying any material required to do that. Planning here at tri-Ace is the "handyman" role in game production.

We create presentation documents when we fix a general synopsis after the initial generation of ideas in planning. Then we do internal and external presentations and, once we get the go-ahead, we make the transition into the actual work that we need to do in order to ultimately produce the game.

The sequence that actual work takes differs according to each production title, but it is basically about lining up the necessary specifications for the different jobs that the designers and the programmers must do. We go about writing the various specifications including the scenario specifications, sound specifications, level design specifications, and the fighting system specifications, making the necessary adjustments between each part, and ultimately putting the whole thing together in order to create "the Game," and that is the workflow.