Platinum Games may be something of a hardcore gamer darling right now, with its Okami pedigree and upcoming hot titles such as MadWorld and Bayonetta, but the small developer is humble. Game creator Atsushi Inaba shared his thoughts on international game development, confessing that he feels the West has outclassed the East.
"To be honest, I think that western developers are superior to those in Japan overall," said Inaba, who is responsible for creating Viewtiful Joe. "So we the Japanese developers should realize that we have to work hard to reach the western level. We’re fast reaching a stage where it’s going to be about individual developers and not about what country they are in, globalization is coming to our industry too."
Inaba isn't the first Japanese developer to share these sentiments, and he probably won't be the last. I don't want to agree with him, but having been forced to play Onechanbara this past week, I really have no choice.
Jim Sterling serves as reviews editor for Destructoid.com, head of the Podtoid podcast, and produces a number of news stories, original features, one-of-a-kind videos. With his passionate argumentative style, controversial opinions, harsh delivery, and dedication to brutal honesty Sterling is a name that you can't help but recognize.
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Contest:
9:00 AM on 02.20.2009
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There's so many reasons why this inferiority complex isn't justified.
Square-Enix, however, really needs to get their shit together.
The way they see it, they aren't meeting their sales numbers, and the reason why must be that the games simply aren't good enough.
I'm not saying it's true, but that's how they're seeing it. Western-developed games, shooters in particular, rule the gaming world. That's just how it is.
I think somebody decided to miss the joke?
It's not strange at all I think. Very different culture. Modesty is still a virtue there. Traditionally, Japanese don't really beat themselves on the chest and shout about how awesome they are like people do in the west. It's considered inappropriate and rude by many.
...unless they're a narcissistic douchebag like Itagaki that is. :P
Exactly. However, I'm not as optimistic. After FF12, I can't even trust reviews of FF13. I really don't know how I will respond to it.
My problem is that I see nothing on the technical level of recent tour de forces like BioShock, Fallout 3, Mass Effect, or The Orange Box. Even when games receive big budgets, they still feel decidedly limited and lacking in polish. Obviously, there are probably some counter-arguments to this, but this is the general feeling I've been having for a while. That, and the fact that while I love many anime, its influence on games has been mostly negative, leading to horrible anime-inspired bullshit in games, with cutscenes that aren't nearly as good as their inspiration that sound unnatural and go on way too long.
As of today, the only Japanese developers that I've seen embrace both HD consoles and "worldwide gaming" are Capcom and Konami, both of whom have made excellent strides that I wish the rest of Japan would follow. And stop making so many JRPGs. With the notable exception of Atlus JRPGs, they're as annoying as endless FPS games here in the States.
And to the West: less FPS games as well. At this point, they're the equivalent of fighting games in the 90s (usually Japanese) or SHMUPs in the 80s.
GIVE ME YAKUZA 3 SEGA!
I love games from east and west. I've swayed from love one side to the other and now both.
The japanese are behind for a few reasons. The first is their lack of investing 3d tech from the west over the years, or better yet creating their own tech. This has left many of their games looking like PS2 product for far too long, with only the big developers like Capcom and Konami breaking the mold.
They are great game designers, but lack of creative vision can sometimes hurt their games before they get out of the gate.
Now, Dtoid might have reviewed Onechanbara, and given it an avearage to low score, which is fair enough. The amazing thing, that no one seems to mention is that Onechan is an amazing piece of low budget software, the likes of which would never see the light of day in the west (unless on PC), where only large money backed games make it. I doubt it was made by a huge team, but its nice to see it on sale. I do think in the west, beyond Valve, many in the industry do not sing the praises of the mod/homebrew developer scene enough, if at all. If we did, we'd be able to make budget games like Onechan.
The MS incursion into japan with Xbox and Xbox 360, is a fine way to bring about change and oppurtunities, for small japanese devs to reach other markets, and vice versa for western devs.
Think about this too. Japan's game design schools more than likely focus on game design and development, but probably a lot less on 3d graphics, whereas in the west things are more about 3d engines and programming. I feel for japan to strike back to the top, they need to learn more about 3d engines and how to build them, as well as other game design philosophies not taught. When their games start to look better, they'll be more inspired to break the androgenous character chains and try something superb (or so I hope). They also need to break that 8/16 bit cycle of rehashed game creation, and kudos to those that do.
There's hope out in japan though. Atlus done wonders with Persona 3 and 4, Platinum Games seem to show that perhaps smaller japanese development maybe is a better way to go, so more ideas can be tried out. The recession might bite into this though.
As for Square, they are successful like Blizzard are. many in japan want to copy their success, but seem to not want to adapt much. For Square, I hope now that they have Eidos, that they learn how to make other types of games. they are not strong at.