Yamaoka: Japanese game development 'is in trouble'

Fidlious

You say Psychonauts is basically Mario 64, but with an imaginative setting. To that I ask, how is Okami not Zelda with an imaginative setting? You paint the abilities on the screen, rather than selecting from a window? That has been done before, but, in either case, it just changes the method of selection, not the resultant gameplay itself.

You're comparing the crazy setting and characters Japanese games to gameplay innovations on the Western side--"Thinking-outside-the-box" and innovation are not the same thing. I was arguing the latter. Ouendan isn't a terribly innovative rhythm game--it's just got a crazy (and funny) backdrop (which, correct me if I'm wrong, was changed when they brought it to America?).

Which is basically the argument I have about the whole thing. Most games aren't actually inovative, and those that are are in very small ways. If I have to suggest a difference (and this is a bit of a stretch), Western games tend to be more innovative on the inside-the game AI becomes more advanced and responsive, or Physics engines are better, etc... But, it's not that either side is more or less innovative, or cultures are just foreign to each other. So, their settings seem weird to us, but, I would be the reverse is true as well.

Personally, one of the biggest selling points of a game for me is immersion and internal coherence. Rarely can I really enjoy something that completely destroys the fourth wall and comes together in some illogical way. This is the reason I've never really enjoyed jrpgs: they string you along some predetermined story line, and they have combat systems that don't even come close to the internal coherence of d20.

On an unrelated note, when will joystiq get a better discussion system. There are enough people posting here now to justify real threading. It's kind of silly to have to type @blank before starting a post.

"I only feel the need to point out Tim Schafer, really: Psychonauts, Escape from Monkey Island, his upcoming Brutal Legend. These games do exist, but, since they're American, they don't count?"

Now name 10 more and you'll have a point.
There's always exceptions to the rule. Schaffer's games are one of them.
I need look no further than any Japanese dev's employee roster to come up with 10 game designers on the creative level of Tim Schaffer.

I DO think Japanese developers are stuck in their own box right now, too, though, albeit for completely different reasons that the American developers. A lot of Japanese games are starting to feel same-ish, which may *in part* account for the slumping sales of consoles over there.
But I think they're more likely to break out of their rut sooner than their counterparts BECAUSE they are more prone to naturally thinking outside the box.

Ultimately, I think that it would do American developers more good to think like the Japanese do and take bigger risks with concepts...but I wouldn't want to see Japanese devs take a page from Americans and get stuck in that box too, because that would simply compound their problems and destroy a lot of them.

I feel exactly the same way you do on this topic.

'rebirth'? US gaming hasn't changed at all, the only thing that's changed is hardware. I really couldn't tell where you were coming from in that post... There has always been great US titles, mainly on PC and some on the original Xbox. You're probably only seeing these kind of games from the US now because Microsoft is really pushing the 360. You can't blame others if you were playing the wrong kind of games.

Of course it's changed. Maybe it hasn't changed in style, but it most definitely has taken a larger role in pushing technical boundaries now that it's come a little more into prominence lately. For years and years now, the big budget technical awe-inspiring games have featured kids with weird names and weirder hairstyles. By your logic, nothing is ever "reborn" really because through every phase of the growth/recession cycle every product and industry goes through, there are people still working and producing that which everyone has forgotten about. I'm saying that now Western (or, American) games are readily available, technically innovative, but most importantly, profitable. This has changed the face of gaming here in the US, because Mario, cooking mama cookoff and FF (insert roman numeral integer here) could not ingrain gaming into the coveted 18-24 year old demographic like Microsoft and the 360 have.

Wait... what? I mean, aside from a couple standouts (WOW, Bioshock debatably, Mass Effect), majority of western games are very bland and flavorless. But then you go on to bash anime as not being very varied in their art style, like everything is Dragonball Z, clearly showing a sheer lack of exposure to that world. It's like me saying every american cartoonists looks the same. It's not accurate and not even remotely based on any kind of exposure to the medium itself.

Not defending anime (since a ton of houses do copy from one another) but I AM attacking ignorance.

I agree with Sheppy. If the japanese gravitate towards anime style, American devs simply gravitate towards uncanny valley

Of course, i have a bias against realistic games, because i like color, not necessarily fantasy all the time, but i like color and colorful games (like Halo, that is definitely colorful compared to gray-fests like Gears)

I used to think that way, too, bigsofty.

But then I realized how stunningly foolish I was when someone showed me a variety of manga art styles.
Yes, a lot of artists and studios copy eachother or have a "house style"...but then, Marvel Comics was famous for having a "house style" for decades, too.
Yes, you can usually kind of tell that it's Japanese-based, but that doesn't mean anything. You can also tell just as easily that it's western-based.

You simply haven't been exposed nearly enough to it to make an informed opinion.

@fidiliswong,

Aren't you in turn doing the same thing about western games? Come on man, lets be honest, it's no different in Anime.

Most of the artstyles are the same and just like here when someone comes up with something new to do, you have 20 clones a year later. Your not the only one who watches anime in here.

Creativity isn't nearly as abound in Japan as people here are led to believe, but then again it's cool to not like America nowadays so why am I not surprised.

See, that's the thing though, i think it's the American industry that'll drive gaming into the ground. Big budgets, low returns, Microsoft's business strategy for consoles can't last, nor would it have (it was Sega's strategy too for Dreamcast) if they weren't the company that gets as many new customers as people buying PC's each year

"Nintendo came along and saved gaming if you will. MS and it's Xbox brand is doing now for gaming what Nintendo did then."

Even if you were right (which...you aren't), Nintendo didn't implement a business plan that would inevitably lead to a massive collapse.
Microsoft has managed to breathe some life back into the incredibly small (but loaded) "hardcore" gaming audience, but they've done so by focusing intensely on them and ONLY them.
The problem is, to appeal to them they've had to spend insane amounts of money to do it. That can't be sustained. If a game studio's game fails in the market place, that's more than likely the end of them.

Microsoft's "innovation" is going to cause a collapse, ironically for the exact opposite reasons Atari did.

..what?

"I want to be the guy too!"

"Ha ha! Pan pan sat on you! He's fat!"

Let me jump on the crapanimation bandwagon. I don't get it, and I don't think it's ignorant to say so. It's ignorant if you've had no exposure, but it's certainly not ignorant to have absolutely no desire to play or watch games/shows that are decidedly japanese in flavor and design after being made aware of their existence.

@samfish,

You missed the point. Were not talking about business models and the like, on that point your right, allthough MS can play the game and loose the money for the end result, but I digress.

The "innovation" that you put in caps is your own imagination at work as usual. The comparison being made is that Atari failed becuase they were on top, had no quality control and the games sucked. Again the topic is about western/japanese games, not corporate business models. The reason the Japanese games market as far as consoles go simple, no one likes there games, that's why they sell in Japan.

Not to say japanese games all suck but again, for every katamari (of which I have all 3 console versions, well I sold my ps2 but I still have my 360 version) there are a pleothera of "me too" FF wannabes, and FF isn't anywhere near as good as it's made out to be. 7 was the last monumental one but before that IMO 3 was and is the best.

Like I said quirky metro sexual males and ridiculous plot lines are cutting it anymore, especially when almost all your games strive for the same thing, at least on the western side of things, we try and top whatever game is king for that genre, not the same for japanese games by and large. I love my japanese games, but western games have been kicking there ass for a 7-10 years now IMO. Case and point, look at Capcom, where is there success coming from? From thinking outside the box. Japan is not a place of unbridled creativity, some of you have no idea about Japanese culture, if anything it's very stifled, better now than it was but, to us it's unbridled because you don't have any point of reference, it's a different culture, plain and simple.

Certain games that get made over there that don't get released or wouldn't get released here is simple, it's a different culture, most people don't want to play shit they don't understand, it's no different than what every other country does, IMO the japanese developers are so stuck inside of a box it's almost sad. Some of you have no idea what your talking about, sheesh.

How one can type so much and still say and know nothing is hard to believe, but you've managed to do it, chief.

People DO like Japanese games, and I never said that the Japanese weren't stuck in a box. I said the opposite.

You're believing your own made up history, is your problem. Nintendo saved gaming by forcing quality control...something Atari never had. This is correct.
The problem is that you're assuming that there is now no quality control coming out of Japan for games.
This is completely incorrect. Somehow you've managed to equate crap like E.T. to a "generic FF clone" like the Tales series. You have the EXACT same thing happening in the west with shooters (and to a lesser extent GTA clones).

But to suggest a sizable plurality, at the very least, of Japanese games are crap in the vein of E.T., hence why people aren't buying them as much anymore? That's fucking absurd.

In my experience, there's a MUCH higher standard of quality control coming from Japan. Proof? How many western developed games end up needing patches? Now how many Japanese games?

The ONLY thing that's happening here is that Japan-styled games aren't as popular or trendy as they once were. Western styled violent shooters (seemingly 80% of which have to do with WWII) ARE. This is a case where the pendulum will inevitably swing back.
Western devs should absolutely be commended for pushing the technological edge as far as they have...but the end result has been an explosion of (mostly enjoyable, so far) "Me Too" games because when you're spending that much money, you're NOT going to take financial chances. In other words, western dev stagnation, if it hasn't already, has set in CONSIDERABLY faster than it did in Japan.


If YOU don't like "quirky metro sexual males and ridiculous plot lines" then that's fine. Lots of people do (I, however, generally don't).
But don't assume Japanese gaming is dead. It's far, far, FAR more vibrant there than is has been in the west since...forever, really. It's simply on the lower end of the scale, at the moment.

@eddie

Not appreciating something does not equal ignorance. Assuming that because you have experienced a sample of something that you know for a fact that it is all bad is ignorance. Assigning your personal opinion based on said sample and stating it as an objective and defining fact of an entire country's creative output is ignorant.

Also, recall Dead Rising, what some consider to be the first game that actually took advantage of current-gen technology, and wasn't just "last-gen with more of teh shiniez"

That was made by Capcom...

Aye. People wonder how the 5 * 10 ^ 10th Gundam game sells so well, but then ignore it when junk like Carnival Games tops the American charts