Michael-Christopher Koji Fox

Fox was born in Oregon. He was inspired to study Japanese by From Oregon with Love [ja], a Japanese drama that aired locally when he was a child, as well as a desire to play imported games earlier than his friends, including The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.^[1] After high school, he spent time in Japan as a foreign exchange student where he gained a desire to become a teacher. He received a teaching license from Hokkaido University of Education and taught English and homeroom at a junior high school.^[1] In his personal time, Fox was an avid player of Final Fantasy XI (2002), joining during the beta test. When he saw a recruitment ad for a localization position at Square, he decided to apply on a whim and was placed on the Final Fantasy XI localization team under Richard Honeywood.^[1][2] His first day was on April 1, 2003, the day of the merger between Square and Enix.^[3] During the development for the North American release of the game, he worked on text from the Windurst area, including Shantotto's rhyming dialogue, as well as phrases for the auto-translation feature.^[2][4] He was praised for starting the trend of playful item descriptions to the English version of the game.^[4] Fox served as a drummer for the Star Onions, the Final Fantasy XI band, for a number of in-person fan events.^[5] He also worked on lyrics and lyric translation and is credited on "Distant Worlds", the ending theme for Chains of Promathia.^[5]

Fox was a translation director for the original 2010 release of Final Fantasy XIV, which was widely panned for its software bugs and poor gameplay.^[6] He was retained in the role after Naoki Yoshida took over as producer and director for subsequent releases. He described the rapid development of Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn (2013) as a "weird euphoria" as the team was unsure if the new game would meet players' expectations.^[6] The story of the original game was one of the few aspects that garnered praise,^{[7][8][9][10]} so the story and localization team continued the same high fantasy tone, inspired in part by A Song of Ice and Fire, for the revamped story. In contrast to the speech patterns based on the fantasy races of Final Fantasy XI, Fox focused the differences in dialect on characters' region of origin for this game.^[6] For the first expansion, Heavensward, he incorporated an unused fictional language for the dragons which he had created during the development of the 2010 release.^[11]

Due to the ongoing nature of live service games, the localization teams for Final Fantasy XI and Final Fantasy XIV work collaboratively with the development team on the story, lore, and world of the games to ensure that patches are translated in time. For certain aspects like item and attack names, Fox and his team would contribute text in English, French, or German and translate it back into Japanese for those versions of the games.^[12] For Final Fantasy XVI (2023), the script was written in Japanese but recorded and motion captured first in English.^[13] Fox, who served as localization director, saw this as an opportunity for ensemble recording, in which multiple cast members would record their lines together in the same room and benefit from playing off each others' acting. This allowed more opportunities for ad-libbing and exploring the relationships between characters.^[14] The adjustments made for the English script were then integrated into the final Japanese script.^[15][16] He also arranged for a character who provides recaps of the game's story to be sung in the style of a bard.^[17] Another goal of the localization was to preserve the historical fantasy tone. To this end, he tried to avoid any vocabulary or turns of phrase invented after the 18th century. He further reinforced the history of the world by assigning different British accents to each nation to emulate how language evolves and diverges naturally even within one language.^[16]

One of Fox's major responsibilities is the lore and worldbuilding for the English language versions of the games he works on and ensuring consistency across the work.^[18][19] He pushed for a hub for players to discuss the lore on the official forums for Final Fantasy XIV and uses it to post articles that expand on the game's world.^[12][20] He worked with Banri Oda, one of the main writers, to translate the Encyclopædia Eorzea books, which document the lore of Final Fantasy XIV in detail.^[21][22] In Final Fantasy XVI, his approach was to integrate the lore throughout the fabric of the game, including item descriptions, side quests, and ambient dialogue, rather than solely through explicit exposition. He took inspiration from Alex Pheby's Cities of the Weft trilogy to write the in-game "Active Time Lore" entries.^[18][23] For the lore book, Fox served as lead writer to transform creative director Kazutoyo Maehiro's notes into Logos, an encyclopedia written from the perspective of Harpocrates, a historian within the game.^[24] He invited voice actors like Ben Starr to write letters and journal entries based on their characters.^[24][25] He also invited Pheby, a fan of Final Fantasy, to contribute as well.^[25] The book was written first in English and translated for the Japanese release.^[24]

Fox has contributed lyrics to many songs in Final Fantasy XIV and is the lead vocalist and rapper for The Primals, the official band for the game.^[1] Sound director Masayoshi Soken first asked him to write lyrics for "Good King Moggle Mog XII" and "Under the Weight" and, due to a tight deadline during the development of A Realm Reborn, Fox ended up singing and rapping for the tracks as well.^[26][27] For the 2014 Final Fantasy XIV Fan Festival, Soken roped him into joining The Primals because of his familiarity with the lyrics on the setlist.^[27] He has performed at Fan Festival events ever since and toured with The Primals across Japan, including shows at Makuhari Messe, Yokohama Arena, and Nippon Budokan.^[28][29] He is scheduled to perform with The Primals at Download Festival at Leicestershire, England in 2026.^[30] In addition, he works as an interpreter for Naoki Yoshida in media appearances and interviews.^[12]

• Localization of Square Enix video games