Why does SE believe that people don't like JPRGs?

[metagloria]

What is this delightful looking spectacle and how can I play it as soon as physically possible?

[Mirage]

To me, when I look at the cover of something like Tales of Xillia and see it covered with anime characters I am immediately put off because of the expectation that it's going to be dumb. Maybe I'm missing out, but likewise I doubt I'm the only one.

What doesn't help this attitude is the price of JRPGs, because of limited releases.

Tales of Vesperia, for example, many many months following release was still over £40. Preowned prices are still huge compared to other similarly aged games. People are not going to take a chance on a game they're skeptical of, despite hearing good things, if they're pouring a lot of money into it. The same attitude comes with a lot of games, but most other games will significantly drop in price after a period so even if people are a little bit wary, they don't have to worry about throwing down over £30 on something they might not like.

I have picked up some terrible games and some fantastic games, games I wouldn't even look at normally, because they were like £5 preowned. With JRPGs you often do not have that luxury (if you even spot a JRPG in a high street store, they're like gold dust unless they're FF or DQ).

@Psy: You are, actually. The story is actually not nearly as "anime" as you'd think it would be. I thought it was very good.

@Shauna: I greatly enjoy cheap second hand games, but for a publisher, it doesn't make all that much sense to oversaturate the market with game copies, and then get no money from the second hand market when the prices plummet. I think digital releases are very helpful here though. They don't have to deal with the risk of printing way too many copies, and when the interest for the game dies down, they can sell it for nearly as cheap as a second hand market would put them at, and still get all the profit from the games. See also: PS Plus.

[Loony BoB]

To be fair, I'm with Psy in that I disregard a lot of anime-esque games. Grandia is probably the most anime-esque game I've purchased. Anime is a style that doesn't appeal to me in a video game. I've played a few, but the style does indeed tend to be rather peppy and cutesy more often than not based on my experiences and my watching of things on YouTube. I would also say that a lot of the gameplay featured in the YouTubes I've seen has left me going "Eh, not for me." I don't think they are in line with the kind of thing I want out of a JRPG.

Style is important in setting an atmosphere and in appealing to an audience. It's clear from the get-go that people looking for a cute game will be more likely to buy a Tales game, while people looking for a darker game will be more likely to buy Skyrim. Appearance of a game is possibly the most important thing in marketing in today's age. People judge how likely they are to purchase games based on screenshots and skipping through YouTube videos.

[Shauna]

@Shauna: I greatly enjoy cheap second hand games, but for a publisher, it doesn't make all that much sense to oversaturate the market with game copies, and then get no money from the second hand market when the prices plummet. I think digital releases are very helpful here though. They don't have to deal with the risk of printing way too many copies, and when the interest for the game dies down, they can sell it for nearly as cheap as a second hand market would put them at, and still get all the profit from the games. See also: PS Plus.

Yeah, I entirely get why it happens, it just doesn't help bring in people who are one the fence. :3

I admit I don't look into the digital market, so I can't comment too much further there. I imagine that most individuals don't have a browse through the catalogue online though, and only hit up the PS Store etc when there's something they actually want to buy.

EDIT: Haha, people looking for a cute game will pick up Xillia AND THEN ARE EXTREMELY DISAPPOINTED

[Loony BoB]

EDIT: Haha, people looking for a cute game will pick up Xillia AND THEN ARE EXTREMELY DISAPPOINTED

Honestly I don't think they'll care so long as they can have things like this on their screens. I speak from knowledge of these kind of gamers. They don't mind if the story features death and political debates or if it's about how to knit rainbows, so long as they have stuff like this gracing their screen every now and then.

[Mirage]

That's actually all pretty expensive dlc costumes, none of them, or anything like it, is included in the game. And for some of those, I'm glad they're not.

[Shauna]

Ugh seriously, those are terrible.

[Mirage]

The milla one in the second picture is... tolerable. None of the others are.

[Spuuky]

RPGs are extremely successful still. "J" is a meaningless connotation to me. I guess it implies that certain elements are PROBABLY (but not necessarily) present.

What makes Dragon Age an "RPG" but not a "JRPG" except that it isn't made in Japan? If Square-Enix had produced that exact game in Japan, are you telling me that people would say it "wasn't" a JRPG?

And if your only qualification for being a JRPG is that it is literally Japanese, then I don't care about your qualifications or the JRPG genre.

[Pumpkin]

What is this delightful looking spectacle and how can I play it as soon as physically possible?

Hyperdimension Neptunia (maybe Victoy? It's the only one I've played :P And yes I do like it )

Anime style does nothing to dissuade me from buying a game. Like people have said, games like Tales of Xillia might have a more cutesy anime look, but the story is interesting, the gameplay is fun, the characters are well written and its just overall a good game. I won't not play it because it looks more cutesy. I would have missed out on some of my favourite games ever if I skipped some of the more childlike less adult looking games (FFIX, Majora's Mask for starters...)

[Wolf Kanno]

I'm not surprised Operation Rainfall or SMTIV don't register with BoB, Operation Rainfall was purely an American thing because Nintendo of Europe was smart enough to just release the three Wii RPGs over there whereas Nintendo pretty much felt the American demographic doesn't like those things but surprisingly both Xenoblade and The Last Story proved to be better sellers than Nintendo or XSeeD had anticipated. As for SMTIV, it still hasn't come out in Europe yet but this largely because Atlus doesn't have a European branch so it was difficult to get their games out their but now that Sega owns them it looks like that issue might be going away in the future. Sadly Europe always gets the short end of the stick on these things and I think that might be why some members are confused about these damn Nintendo RPGs and Persona game because they are actually marketed better on our side of the Atlantic but then again I think Americans have the bigger stigma of being anti-JRPG over the PAL regions so we have to try to build a community that gets these games noticed more even if its mostly word of mouth.

I have mixed feelings about the over-animefication of the JRPG genre but it's kind of always been there I mean VII's art style was chosen for its manga visual appeal, VIII is filled with anime high school cliches, and so forth, even the older games have elements strongly borrowed from anime so I wouldn't say its a new thing, just more likely that players exposure to the medium makes the cliches more noticeable whereas in the 90s only a handful of Westerners probably knew what anime was from watching crappy dubs of Sailor Moon, DBZ, and maybe the Akira movie.

I do feel the genre needs to grow, hell I've been saying that for years but I don't really know who is going to go first with it. I don't feel it will be SE, largely for the reason BoB mention which is that the new games always bring in new fans while disenfranchising the older fans. This model allows them to basically not ever have to bother appealing to the older fans. I mean XIII was a trashy terrible spectacle but it doesn't change it was the fastest growing entry in the franchise. It had two unnecessary sequels that didn't sell nearly as well as the first but they both sold better than the average JRPG meaning SE can choose to franchise out every numbered sequel if they choose and they'll have an audience willing to throw money at it. What XIII will mostly do is create the new business model for SE on FF, they have already spoken about making sequels to XV and its not even finished yet, Type-0 also got a mobile sequel but SE is still holding onto the names Type-1, Type-2 and so forth s if the HD version does well we may sequels of it as well in the future. Frankly, SE doesn't need to grow, they have created for themselves a model that will perpetuate the FF brand until people just stop playing JRPGs and the genre dies in obscurity. They don't need to grow.

Atlus feels like the best contender with the MegaTen franchise since it has always pushed more mature themes but its a franchise that is niche within the genre itself and I doubt the main franchise will ever be mainstream. Persona has gained great popularity in the JRPG scene but Atlus is a small company the series is still relatively obscure to all but its rabid fanbase and even it may have fallen victim to the formulaic trappings of other high profile genres. Tales is pretty much in the same boat as FF where each new installment brings new fans so they don't really need to appeal to older fans as much and even then the series is much more guilty about using heavy anime cliches than other genres.

Suikoden and Breath of Fire are basically dead and many of the most prolific designers in the genre are not interested in the continue growth of the established form and are more interested in evolving it in ways for a future generations through things like mobile. It's more exciting for them than trying to make a new console entry that will probably sell extremely well on brand/name recognition alone as opposed to its own merits as a game. The Last Story was the most infamous entry of Operation Rainfall but I doubt the game would have done as well if it had been made by an unknown developer instead of Hironobu "Father of Final Fantasy" Sakaguchi and some of his former FF team. On a similar note, I don't believe XIII would have done as well if it had been marketed as a new IP as opposed to an FF.

I don't know about the genre, in some ways I feel my thought on the Cinematic-RPG Square promoted back in the PS1 days, I kind of feel its an evolutionary dead end at this point especially since other genres can easily pull it off and the genre has kind of fapped around in the last 20 odd years without pushing the whole medium instead focusing on one aspect of it all. Worse is that pushing nothing but story has left nothing but a generation who doesn't really appreciate or care about the core game mechanics while simultaneously helping other genres that sport a heavier emphasis on plot and characters. Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us are better cinematic story based games than what SE churned out this past generation. Why drop $50 on an RPG with clunky dissonance between its gameplay and plot when I could use the same money to pick up Uncharted which offers great characters and story and gameplay tied into the narrative experience?

The question I would ask is what would/should a Console-JRPG bring to the medium that can't be better served by another genre? RPGs were popular in the PS1 generation because most games didn't have real stories, mostly excuse plots and shallow player avatars. FFVII, Metal Gear Solid, and Tomb Raider kind of changed what players need but more importantly MGS and TR proved you could get the same strong character driven narrative without dealing with old-fogy genre of RPGs. Part of why I feel WRPGs have grown in popularity is simply because they can offer more to the player as an experience that most AAA games can't. Games like GTA and InFamous are working towards bridging that gap but it may be another console generation before other genres catch up.

It will be interesting to see where the genre goes from here but I don't really believe we'll see a resurgence of the old days.

[Bolivar]

I agree the anime-dominant art styles signals creative stagnation; while older games were certainly influenced by anime, they by no means imitated it to the extent that their successors have. JRPGs previously introduced and pioneered unique art styles which did not exist, even in other mediums at times, which fed into their popularity.

Valkyria Chronicles was perhaps the last JRPG to really do that, hence why it's such a revered cult favorite, in addition to revolutionizing the SRPG formula, predating the X-Com remake, and all that jazz.

[Wolf Kanno]

I completely disagree about VC, while it's game design was certainly ahead of its time its character designs, art direction and general cast, story and themes are all taken from anime. The plot is basically a hodge-podge of Gundam tropes and part of the reason I feel I could never get into it.

[Bolivar]

Never mentioned anything about its "general cast, story, and themes." Sega's CANVAS Engine was near universally-praised for its unique "watercolor painting in motion" aesthetic, and the Japanese take on the World War II pastiche was likewise cited as particularly fresh, especially after everyone thought the Western FPS market had run it into the ground.

[Wolf Kanno]

Its art direction is nice but I just find it amusing you say you don't like the heavy anime nonsense in a lot of JRPGs and then cite a game that is guilty of it as though it didn't.