Discussion of the Japanese Gaming Industry... there will be cake...

[Wolf Kanno]

So a friend of mine brought a certain issue of EGM to my attention recently. The whole issue discussed the Japanese industry and how it has fallen behind in Western development.

Some cited that Japanese gamers have become too fickled, while others feel its more about the gaming companies fear of trying new ideas and branching out to foreign technology. What are your thoughts on the subject?

[Roto13]

I can post that article tomorrow, if anyone wants to read it. :P

[Karellen]

What sort of time frame are they talking about? As in, the last 5-10 years or just this generation? Either way I would be interested in reading the article since I think that's a pretty hard claim to back up. Unless they were purely talking about RPGs or something.

[Nifleheim7]

The whole issue discussed the Japanese industry and how it has fallen behind in Western development.

I have read this statement a couple of times in the last 2 years at sites like Gamasutra and Kotaku,coming mostly from Japanese developers themselves (Yamaoka and Kojima are the first to come in mind).They were talking about technology and not game design though.Even so i find this statement a bit exaggerated.
If it's possible i'm curious to read the article.

[Aerith's Knight]

No cake!?

ZOMG How could you betray me like that! >:[

*shakes head and leaves*

[Croyles]

I dont think they have fallen behind technologically, design wise possibly.
The area in which they seem to be really behind is market variation.
Ever wondered why a high minority of western gamers like eastern games, but eastern gamers know scrap all about western games?
I think thats a real shame and sort of shows you that japanese developers are shy of branching out. I get the feeling that japanese people instantly dismiss a game if its not made on their home soil, which bothers me...
Well ok the west churns out FPS after FPS but theres still variation in other examples...

Is anyone else bothered by this?

[Dreddz]

The increase in costs for developing big elaborate games for the PS3 or 360 have spiraled out of control these days. Most Japanese devs who aren't Konami or Capcom don't have the money to make these type of projects. Plus Japan have turned more to casual gaming so most Japanese devs have turned their attention to making games for the Wii or DS, and for the most part they have surpassed other regions in terms of innovation and quality in their games.

I think both Sony and Microsoft are to blame as well. They have made it clear that its the western market they are focused on and that's why they spend their money funding games like Killzone 2 and Gears of War 2, giving Japan the cold shoulder. They need to sort their stuff out and start giving Japan a lot more attention. Sony actually do a good job when getting Japan to make interesting games for them, Team Ico is a good example and games like White Knight Chronicles are also good examples. Shame they don't help Japanese devs a bit more.

[Roto13]

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[Nifleheim7]

Well ok the west churns out FPS after FPS

You saved your post right there!:p

I always thought of Japanese developers to be more innovative than western studios (with a few exceptions once in a while like LittleBigPlanet).I don't think they lack designwise,it's the hardware and technical knowledge in which (in some cases) they're left behind.
Just look what Nintendo did in this generation.Love them or hate them the fact is that they opened the industry to a whole new market.I think variety helps to make the industry more mature.I don't want games to follow the example of the Comic book industry which is about the same fanservice over and over again.
Like Dreddz said many Japanese developers have limited budgets compared to the big western studios but that doesn't stop them to be creative enough to compete with the west.Hardware limitations forces them to be more inventive.

[Croyles]

Well I can actually think of a lot more examples where the west has been creative and innovative.
Yeah the west produces too many FPSs. The same can be said of japan of making too many RPGs. While different RPGs may offer more variation between each other than FPSs between each other, the west still does a lot more than FPSs while the east in comparison, while doing things other than RPGs, not as much. I am not including the Wii into the equation here because while things like Wii sports and those sort of inhouse games are innovative in a way (though they dont appeal to me a lot), thats only nintendo and the rest of the stuff they produce, like Mario, Zelda etc etc is MOSTLY using the same formula, thats if you count SSBB and mario kart already as old school, which I do (great games btw, but thats not the point).

And that thing with budgets, im not sure if that is really all that truthful. If your comparing little east companies with little west companies then yeah the west has all the kaching.
Yet Japan has Konami, Capcom, Namco, Square Enix and others that all have huge budgets and probably all fall into the top 10 biggest publishers/developers in the world, not just Japan.
Oh and what about Nintendo? By now every single employee must be about as rich as Bill Gates lol, I think they could be doing a lot more than they are, despite whether or not they are already great.

Yet with that much manpower/womanpower and money, they hardly ever look to the west for inspiration while the west does take inspiration from the east, that was my main point.

This is probably because of the japanese market, where most people rather play smaller games. This brings me back to the market variation point.

I love Japanese games. Patapon, RPGs, etc etc are all great.
Their game design is flawed in that it doesnt take inspiration from the world, but only from itself, while the west does it differently. If they could look at more games for inspiration, their games would now not only be slightly better than most western games, they would probably tower over them and urinate on them while up there.
Thats what I was TRYING to say.
I dont even know if im bringing my point across well, but it makes sense in my head.

[Bolivar]

Their game design is flawed in that it doesnt take inspiration from the world, but only from itself, while the west does it differently.

I don't know about that one. How many JRPG's have you played with Churches with Crucifixes over them and monsters from greek mythology as bosses?

I think the main focus should be what the hell happened to the Japanese leading the industry? Reading the article, it just made me so sick of the rhetorical mutterings of how "western games have deep character customization and open-ended worlds" while "japanese games have linear storylines" - it's such a cop out. Mostly because it fails to account for just how boring so many of the most open world games are, and how disappointingly western developers with "innovative" ideas have failed to deliver. Peter Molineaux, that's all I have to say.

Man, I really can't wait for Valkyria Chronicles. Owning a next-gen system, I really felt for the first few months after the shine weared down that there really weren't many titles interesting me. And I damn sure attribute that to Japan's absence. With the current consoles being dominated by westerners, I feel the same rehashed mediocre gameplay, lackluster stories, and safe & proven formulas/genres are all that has been churning out. Please don't take this argument to the extreme - I could go down the list of western games that entertained the crap out of me in the last few years, but I feel like I haven't played anything as effective as Metal Gear Solid 3 until.... well, Metal Gear Solid 4...

[Croyles]

Their game design is flawed in that it doesnt take inspiration from the world, but only from itself, while the west does it differently.

I don't know about that one. How many JRPG's have you played with Churches with Crucifixes over them and monsters from greek mythology as bosses?



None if you count out FF, but that wasnt my point anyway. I wasnt talking about the stories, i was talking about game design.
How could you call that inspiration from western games? Its inspiration from the west, but not from western games...

[Vyk]

I actually agree and that might have something to do with why I stopped playing Japanese games. I never really analyzed it. But I guess that could definitely have something to do with it. I never really cared for simple pick-up-and-play games. Sure you can play a lot, but its so simple it hardly qualifies the price tag. Which really only leaves me with cheap adventure games (I don't like Mario and Zelda anymore, too cookie cutter. Their own fault, for copying themselves too many times. Which is what is being discussed I presume). Metroidvania games. Which suffer from the same things. And JRPGS. Which... suffer from the same things... Its true. Though you can change the storyline, the characters, even the battle mechanics. All JRPGs seem too similar to me. Same with everything else. I've maxed out on japanese adventure games and platformers. Its all the same to me. The differences are only skin deep. Its all lather rinse repeat. After playing Fable, KOTOR, and Oblivion I've seen true differences. Though they don't have the character and charm. They have the innovation and depth though. And real, not forced drama. The differences are unquestionable. Whereas I tried demos of Blue Dragon, Tales of Vesperia, and Eternal Sonata and they all seemed so bland to me... So very... old. I've played those games before :/ Too many times. I -want- to enjoy a JRPG again. But not the same one I enjoyed when I was 10 with just more spit and polish

[DMKA]

Pretty much all gaming, regardless of country, seems pretty blah at the moment. You've got Japan which is doing cool innovative stuff with consoles but doesn't seem to be doing much of anything in the way of actual games, while you've got America that keeps making the same first person shooter over and over and over and over.

So I dunno.

[Vyk]

I don't even count shooters when I consider games anymore. So maybe my perspective is a little off kilter

Everyone used to say XBox was nothing but shooters and sports games. And I was always like wha? I never touched either. In the end I bought DOOM once the system was dead. But that's it. The only shooter I have for my 360 is ... Mass Effect? If that counts. Though I've played Halo 3 (Didn't like it, because it was just a Halo remix. Not a new Halo) and Jericho (which got horrible reviews, but I'd actually recommend it, because it does try new things and I think it succeeds in a very comic-booky fake kinda way)

[Wolf Kanno]

I'm actually agreeing with the article here. The biggest innovations from Japan that are doing well are simple "anyone can play" type games. There fun but its like we've jumped back to the late 70s. The real trouble the article doesn't stress but you can read almost anywhere eles is that mainstream gaming is doing rather poorly in Japan. The article cites Okami and alludes to The World Ends With You; hell we might as well throw FFXII in there cause the game did poorly in Japan compared to the rest of the world.

I remember once reading that the most popular game system in Japan was the cell phone, seconded by the Nintendo DS. Simple (and quite a few not so simple) cell phone games are more popular than major console franchises in Japan. My friend feels that Japanese developers have just lost touch with their target audience. I sorta agree. I feel that Japanese developers have done more innovation with their games (like the titles I mentioned above) but it doesn't change the fact that many of these innovative and interesting titles are not doing well in Japan.

Western Developers have improved quite a bit while the most successful Japanese titles have only been doing well cause they stick to a formula with little changes (Mega Man syndrome). The Japanese developers don't like major changes, even when a game does make a drastic change, it doesn't guarantee success. For every RE4, there is a FFXII. Both excellent games that changed many of the traditions of their respective series, but while RE4 was a success, XII wasn't so fortunate despite being one of the most favored reviewed games in Japan. Course I feel RE4 did well cause Capcom had all but run the franchise into the ground by sticking to the same formula. RE0, RE3, and RE:CV are all basically RE2 with a graphic change and a few minor extras. RE4 changed everything up and finally fixed many of the problems the series always had. Yet the irony is that RE5 looks like RE4 with a graphic update and a different setting. The gameplay, for the most part, looks almost identical to RE4.

Zelda:TP for the most part played and felt the same as Wind Waker, Majora's Mask, Ocarina of Time, and Link to the past. Even the Metroid Prime series feels like the same game just tweaked to be better. Hell, most of Nintendo's main line games are basically the same as their 64 incarnations just with minor tweaks. Fighting games are probably the worst offenders when it come to lack of major innovation, next to FPS and Racing Genres of course. I can sorta understand the idea that "if it ain't broke don't fix it" but Capcom and a few other companies have shown that stagnation doesn't help anyone.

I found it interesting how the article says part of Japan's problem is that they don't like to reuse technology or use foreign design engines. Perhaps this is the primary fault that Japanese gaming budgets seem so much bigger.

[Croyles]

I feel exactly the same as Vyk and Wolf Kanno. We have the same points on this...

[Bolivar]

Their game design is flawed in that it doesnt take inspiration from the world, but only from itself, while the west does it differently.

I don't know about that one. How many JRPG's have you played with Churches with Crucifixes over them and monsters from greek mythology as bosses?



None if you count out FF, but that wasnt my point anyway. I wasnt talking about the stories, i was talking about game design.
How could you call that inspiration from western games? Its inspiration from the west, but not from western games...

That's strange. And to answer your question - you commented on inspiration from the world, not western games, so I was confused.

As far as your point, it's odd that you claim western games borrow from "the world" while the Japanese stick to their own... I think it's a generalization to say that certain techniques definitively belong to either, considering we could each sit here listing examples of exceptions to that generalization. Not to mention there are plenty counter-examples to your point itself. I'll just leave two big ones: Metroid Prime and Metal Gear Solid 4.

[JKTrix]

I think the main issue preventing 'innovations' in Japan stem from the fact that the Japanese in general are kind of averse to change--especially from sources outside of Japan. It's been like that throughout their history, so it's nothing new.

For game developers, I'm sure they want to (and do) make things different, but the problem is that consumers are rarely going to welcome these new things with open wallets as W.Kanno alluded to. Even just looking at Square Enix this week, they released a new and unique DS RPG called Sigma Harmonics. It didn't do so hot, (http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/08/soccer-titles-s.html) considering its direct competition was a DS football/soccer RPG (which in itself is a unique game and deserves success). The traditional gamers of Japan are/were not only decreasing in number, but they only come out in droves to support familiar franchises. Making new things is risky for the Japanese market, especially if there is little intent to release the game outside of Asia.

I can't say definitively that the US is 'better' than Japan when it comes to development, but there are two key differences between the US and Japan. For one, the US is just plain bigger. This means more potential consumers for a game, with more potential sales. There's more money floating around in the US to go to both the cost of development and the buying of the actual product. Both important for the success of a game.

The second one is that I don't think western folks are as closed-minded as Japanese folks are, both the game companies and the consumers. Companies, particularly the big ones, have little fear of creating and releasing decent new franchises since they know it won't be entirely shunned by the public. As such, we see things like Assassin's Creed become incredibly successful over here, where things like Valkyria Chronicles perform modestly at best over in Japan (though this particular example can be attributed to a low install base).

I think Capcom was the first Japanese company to really capitalize on the ripe western market, releasing Dead Rising and Lost Planet early in the 360's life (while the 360 was/is still both Dead and Lost in Japan). It certainly paid off for them, both games did respectably well. Square-Enix's first attempt at specifically targeting westerners comes next week with Infinite Undiscovery, so it will be interesting to see how that works out considering it's head-to-head with its recently released step-sibling Tales of Vesperia. I don't, however, think the answer lies in 'targeting western audiences', but rather bringing us more in sync with their development plans. People who like Japanese games like Japanese games. People who like Japanese games don't like waiting up to a year or more (if ever) to play Japanese games. I think if more Japanese developers, regardless of size, would be more willing to swiftly release their games out in the west and have them be fairly successful, they won't have to be limited by the claustrophobic gamer mentality of their home market and be more willing to innovate.

Also for what it's worth, Metroid Prime was made in Texas.