Naoki Yoshida, the producer for Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, published a “producer’s letter” yesterday, in which Mythic’s own Jeff Skalski and Bonnie Armstrong merited a mention. The duo had the opportunity to visit the Square Enix studio in Japan on a recent trip there:

As we returned to working around the clock preparing for beta, two very special guests paid us a visit: Jeff Skalski from EA Mythic, who’s been a great friend since I joined the FFXIV team, and Mesanna, the current producer of Ultima Online, which celebrates its 15th anniversary this year.

Jeff got into the gaming industry as a level designer for Dark Age of Camelot, which I am a huge fan of and played to bits and pieces. He then moved on to Warhammer Online, and is now executive producer for the >Ultima Online franchise. He’s a big fan of the FF series, and during our visit to Germany, he wasn’t ashamed to tell me how FFVI made him cry (lol). He played quite a bit of FFXI as well, and naturally he’s attained legacy status for FFXIV. (Jeff was selected for phase three of alpha testing, and was so excited he filled my inbox with screenshots.)

Since they were kind enough as to drop by on their trip to Japan, I showed them around the office and gave them a peek behind the scenes, from the development process to the managerial side of things. There was also time to talk shop and compare notes, and over dinner we discussed the future of the MMO market.

No mention of Ultima Forever, sadly, but it’s cool to see this sort of friendship and exchange of ideas between developers at different studios. Not all industries can boast the presence of such a dynamic.