Director of localisation firm 8-4 joins Mizuguchi’s Enhance Games

Mark MacDonald, executive director of localisation firm 8-4, has left the company to join Tetsuya Mizuguchi’s studio, Enhance Games.

MacDonald joined the Japanese language service outlet in 2008 as one of three partners alongside founders Hiroko Minamoto and MacDonald’s former EGM editor John Ricciardi.

He announced on Facebook (subsequently posted to Twitter) that he had actually stepped back from his full-time role at the company six months ago but had continued to help out with projects including bringing Shovel Knight to Japan.

MacDonald said he had originally left to focus on studying Japanese and work on “freelance passion projects for a year or two”, but was subsequently approached by Rez developer Tetsuya Mizuguchi to head up business development and production at his indie outlet, Enhance.

"Miz is an old friend, and we’d been helping him behind the scenes with Rez Infinite since the beginning, so when he offered me the chance to head up production and business dev at Enhance a few months back, I jumped on it,” MacDonald recalled.

"The job requires a lot of new skills, and uses a lot more Japanese, but in most important ways it feels just like 8-4: a small, tight-knit group of friends who are willing to go the extra mile out of love for their games."

MacDonald added his thanks to the 8-4 team, and revealed the localisation firm would take on two new employees following his departure.

If you're curious, here's full story on what I'm doing/why (screenshot of fb post I didn't want open to all 🙂 (3/3) pic.twitter.com/xDBr8hmtUU

— Mark MacDonald (@markmacd) September 1, 2016