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Setting Sun - On Final Fantasy And Western Design Philosophies
Thanks to 1UP for its feature discussing the still-declining state of the Japanese videogame industry, despite recent figures showing a small increase in sales for the first half of 2004. Nevertheless, it seems that "Japanese hardware and software revenues [were] down 11% in 2003 and nearly 40% since the peak of the PlayStation generation in 1997". The piece muses on reasons for the decline: "Complex, lengthy, story-driven [Japanese] games demand an awful lot of care and feeding these days, and often offer paradoxically little replay value... [whereas Western developer] DMA Design hit on a formula with Grand Theft Auto III that... offers activities suited to both long stretches of gameplay and short sittings of cruising or random action." In a similar vein, a OPM-reprinted column from Andrew Vestal suggests a solution: "One possible catalyst [for design change] is the upcoming Final Fantasy XII. In an interview, character designer Akihiko Yoshida readily admits that 'many team members are huge fans of non-Japanese games,' and... the game disposes of large parts of console-RPG design expectations." He concludes: "It's possible the game will act as a Trojan horse, introducing Western design philosophies to a wide swath of Japanese gamers and designers."
On the one hand, it is commonly said that the Japanese set the tone and direction of the video game industry (see "the xbox won't succeed without Japanese support" argument). On the other hand, the Japanese video game industry seems to be flagging in its own home market. Assuming the video game industry will continue with or without raging success in Japan, are the previous two arguments mutually exclusive?
I think this formula would sell alot of games: Decent graphics/music, Simple concepts/control, High replay value. EA knows this and it shows in their sports series.
Amigori
"The quality of life is determined by its activites."--Aristotle
Indded this is true. More and more of the RPG games coming out are more like cinimatic movies, only you have to press (x) to see the next scene. (Xenosaga, Star Ocean?)
There are some though that offer a much wider variety of game play; like the recent FF X-2 where you have the choice to travel anywhere at any time, Drakenguard with 4 sepperate endings, and more replayability then a deck of cards, and Sukoden III had lots of extra features as well if I recall right.
The merger of Square and Enix I think will help push the rpgs coming out into a new frontier like withg the upcoming XII. But it is important to remeber that there still has been a wide spectrum of variety and part of the problem is at times there are to many games coming out. Heck, we only get 1/2 or so of the Japanese titles here in the US.
Here's hoping they don't go too far with this GTA-fication of RPGs. MTV-style gameplay is alright, but sometimes it's nice to sit down and get a story too. And considering what seems to happen when Square Enix diverges from what they're actually good at (see Crystal Chronicles) I'm not sure how much I trust their ability to mess with the formula too much before alienating their fanbase and diluting that which makes their games so popular. Final Fantasy doesn't sell the way it does by trying to be all things to all people.
We already saw the beginnings of that with FFX-2 as well, with its mission-centric storyline. And it was an interesting gimmick that was sort of neat for such a non-serious entry in the FF series, but it also seemed to give rise to a far less involving storyline and less sense of 'progression' as the game went on. Hopefully this trend doesn't continue in future FF games. Once you take the story of out FF, there's a lot less seperating it from every other RPG out there.
Sure, the Japanese companies' big-name RPGs are (de-)evolving to embrace the Western design styles. Makes me fear for Dragon Warrior 8. On the other hand, there's some new faces coming into the RPG arena. Namco just brought out Tales of Symphonia(Which I havent played yet), and they'd had the old PSX "Tales of Destiny" series, which had a nice, old-school feel to it. Personally, I was done with FF when X-2 came out. Hopefully the expanding field makes up for it.
Japanese developers tend to be more willing to try weird (sometimes, really weird) things, but overall tend to be less creative than their western counterparts.
In the West however, we have a long tradition of incredibly original games (most of the arcade stuff Atari created, SimCity, Civ, Grand Theft Auto, etc.) that gets drowned by the sea of depressingly ordinary work. The industry has systematically weaned itself away from our legacy of originality (partly by punishing creativity: push away your brightest developers, and soon all you have left are the know-nothing fanboys who think Lara Croft's breast size is a design feature), so even though we *do* have many brilliant developers, many of them find it difficult to do work they'd be proud of.
To me it seems like a case of each market possessing something the other lacks, something important.
As mentioned by others, it seems that the downturn in the japanese game market has much to do with lack of replay value from products that have become simply to reliant on story components and not actual playtime. Much of this, I believe, comes from the fact that the game industry have become fixated on trying to become that which the movie industry is (as seen by the large amount voice acting, scripting, and music talent that is being brought into the mix). But what they fail to realize is that unlike a good flick, games such as RPGs will always have 'downtime' between scenes and higher monetary cost. This then results in a product that is much more expensive in terms of time and money to the game player, but perhaps wont give you much more than an average film would at the theater in terms of storyline and content (which supposedly is the games focus).
Now don't get me wrong, I like a game with an excellent storyline as much as the next person (even if it means sitting through prolonged cinema sequences) but I would hope that the game industry can realize that at the core of any game should be the mechanics that allow a user to interact with the world it presents, not just allow someone to watch it. After all, who would always fire up thier latest copy of Madden 2004, set both players to be CPU-controlled, and just watch a fictional game play out without any intervention from themselves. Not many. Sure we could watch it play out and marvel about the AI, talk about the graphics and observe the amount of play selection and options, but these thing grow irrelevant when all a person wants to do is play the game.
Don't you think Super Mario Bros. or even Pac-Man is original? Or, in the later games, Rez, ICO, Katamari Damacy or Vib-Ribbon? Your talk of innate creativity of the Westerners is BS, IMO. GTA3 was good, because Rockstar was a good house. Not the Westerner (which is even divided, for example the Eastern Europe area has many capable PC-game developers with different concepts from the Americans and others, I believe).
As a big-RPG buff, personally, I don't see where the problem is. Maybe it's that the genere is becoming less popular, whatever. I don't think it is personally.
Is the genre getting old? No, of course not. On both fronts, better things are coming out all the time. Domestically, games like KOTOR are coming out that are probably more ambitious than ever before. I don't particularly like those games, they're too much hack and slash for my taste, but whatever.
On the Japaneese side, there's all the whining..yes whining, about how "linear" they are, no replayablity, whatever. They don't get it. What a JRPG, Final Fantasy style mostly is, it's a new form of book. It gives a story the length of an epic novel, but a graphical representation of that. There was no more replayability in the old days, there never was. Not that there IS no replayability, it's just what you make out of it.
Are the stories getting worse? Not really. Actually, to my mind they're getting more ambitious. The bar keeps rising. Of course, there's the throw away stuff, but then again, there's the great stuff.
For my mind, the whole epic of FFX and FFX-2 (Which is NOT a light happy throw-away game. If they did it without the "light" style, the game would have been too dark. As it is it straddles the line..) is one of the best stories I've ever experienced. Sure the game is linear. But it's supposed to be that way. It's a story to experience wrapped up in an entertaining combat mode.
If you don't like it, fine. But it's always been that way.
I think the real problem is that there is different audiences out there in regards to games.
/w deep fighting system) are the best ones because they should ideally a) rely on skill which ups replayability, if you suck at a game you have a challenge to master the game b) have to make you think and FEEL a certain level of challenge and stress c) you can play through the game again with a different set of skills, weapons which effect how you fight and d) Lastly and only lastly do story and FMV really matter, FMV does not add to the value of a bad game but it will make a awesome game truly great. The only time when this changed was when FF VII came out and people started buying games with more emphasis based on their graphics. You can have just as interesting and memorable moments on a graphically 'deficient' (by modern standards) game. FF3US(FF6-JPN) was a great game without the fancy graphics.
/w monster encounters. So once you know the combat system and the layout of the world you have a problem with replayability because the world is predictable, this does not mean a random world, maps or dungeons are necessarily better (See diablo 2) but they have to be designed well and be "fun". If they don't add to the game they should be scrapped.
Some like turn based and somewhat-to-fully-automated automatically controlled characters or 'managed' characters (i.e. Neverwinter Nights and most other modern MMORPGS automatically attack and do everything for you most of the time). Other's like action or "twitch" based games.
IMHO the 'twitch' based (realtime fighting
RPG's whether you like to think of it or not are built around stories, combat and the level grind. Sure they can 'try to diversify' but what would seperate a modern RPG from an action game like Final fight or a fighting game like soul calibur 2 if they allowed 'realtime' fighting?
Take Final fantasy Chronicles (realtime combat), the play control was all right but the combat system had no depth and the world was very 'disconnected' and had no feel of continuity. Compare it to a game like Diablo II (realtime combat) and you see what Final fantasy chronicles was missing, they needed combat skills, more character classes and different ways to attack and combat characters. This is probably the #1 reason besides the 'phat loot' hook in Diablo 2 that makes diablo 2 such a great game. Even within it's limited skill tree you can make at least some range of different characters to attempt to play them differently. If you want to see an amazing game that no RPG has yet rivalled in the class options department get a hold of Final fantasy Tactics. This game is probably one of the most original games to come out in the tactic/hybrid RPG game.
Now my bit on "interactivity", in an RPG you rarely engage the world other then exploring/revealing it and pushing a button to open/get goodies or get caught up in mini-games or battle. The thing about RPG's is discovering new areas and having an interesting characters/purpose with an good and deep combat, character development and treasure system.
Also RPG's are games about fighting and the old if not tried and true video game conventions (leveling up, next level, big bad boss, etc) take those away and there's not much left of the "RPG" genre. Strip away an RPG's story and fancy graphics and nothing is left but the combat system and the world/map/dungeon layouts
Personally I think most RPG players and buyers are not very good at twitch based games and thats why RPG's haven't changed in forever. They are easy games that are 'gameplay' and interactive light, they are more passive but more engrossing via story/fmv.
But the most engrossing and fun games you've probably ever been hooked on and spent the most amount of time with are most likely simulations/strategy games like Civilization, Alpha Centauri, multiplayer action games, and puzzle ga mes. I can't think of any other game I've replayed a lot besides strategy games, puzzle games and multiplayer games.
1) The market before seemed saturated with Japanese games because there were not that many companies in other countries making games for their systems. This makes sense since their consoles were normally not sold overseas for a year or so after the Japan release. This has changed since consoles now are released in all the major companies only months apart, and all interested game companies can get dev kits faster (thanks Sony!).
2) Japan has never exported that many games. You always here about all the of games that never leave Japan soil, and it's true. As one who just moved back from Japan and went to Akihabara almost every weekend for the last two years, I see no decline in their ingenuity and originality. The problem is many Japanese games are culturally fit, and with the rich/strange culture they have, there are many sides that don't go well elsewhere. Games like Densh de Go, and the Tokimeki series are easy to play for long and short periods of time, offer great fun, and many cases depth. You will never see these games out of Japan, though.
because the Japanese game market was crapflooded a lot more than the US game market? If you ever have a chance to go to Japan(which I recommend, beautiful country) walk into any used game store. I was just stunned that even in the little Tokyo suburb I was living in, the huge number of games for dreamcast, and ps1, ps2, and hell, they even had a huge rack of famicom games.
There probably are a few gems in there, but my guess is that most of the games are probably total crap. Maybe this just turned a lot of people off of video games. Look at the US market, whenever the market got hot, it was usually followed by a crapflood of games(Atari ET anyone?) and then usually followed by a downturn.
The piece muses on reasons for the decline: "Complex, lengthy, story-driven [Japanese] games demand an awful lot of care and feeding these days, and often offer paradoxically little replay value... [whereas Western developer] DMA Design hit on a formula with Grand Theft Auto III that... offers activities suited to both long stretches of gameplay and short sittings of cruising or random action."
Let me guess - this guy's new around here.
Seriously, the guy is going to compare a series that has sold somewhere around 22 million copies in Japan with a series that has sold somewhere around 300,000 copies in Japan and conclude that the latter formula works better? This makes no sense.
The Final Fantasy series is one of the most successful of all time. It has always been successful, and it continues to be successful. FFX sold 1.4 million copies in Japan, FFX-2 sold 1.2 million. FFXI is an online game - doesn't count. But let me tell you, a lot of people are nervous about the changes being made to FFXII - it's one thing to tweak the formula (nobody wants a series to get stale), it's another to throw the baby out with the bathwater. The fact is the FF series is one of the few bright spots in the Japanese game market and it's the absolute wrong series to hold up as a poster child for what's wrong with the industry there.
Thinking Japanese tastes are the same as ours is a rookie mistake. Rockstar is an American company (Rockstar North is based in Scotland, but their ownership was American prior to GTA3) making games for western tastes. GTA3 was #1 in Japan for a week or two, as was Vice City, but neither was a phenomenon and neither sold nearly as well as even the worst-selling Final Fantasy title. This is just a really dumb comparison.
Now, that out of the way, I'll at least concur with the obvious; Japanese game developers have got some problems. If you ask me, though, it's exactly the opposite of what's said in the quote above that's at issue - many Japanese publishers are shunning their home audience in favor of the larger western market, creating games specifically tailored to Europe and the United States that end up not selling well at all in Japan. Metroid Prime, the DOA series, Ninja Gaiden, Dead to Rights, Kill.Switch, SOCOM, etc.... all games from Japanese publishers and/or developers made specifically for a western audience that did not/do not sell well in Japan.
This is a new phenomenon - remember that the Japanese did not even sell consoles in the US until 1985, and it wasn't until the mid-90's that they really even consciously began developing games designed to appeal to both western and Japanese audiences. The primary audience has been slowly shifting from East to West ever since and it's now gone beyond the tipping point.
This has become a vicious cycle that's in danger of reaching the point of no return. Publishers in Japan commission games for a western audience because the overseas markets are larger, which leads to disinterested Japanese at home, which leads to further shrinking of the market and in turn more development specifically for the west.
The danger, of course, is that there are plenty of western publishers out there that know western tastes better than Japanese publishers do. So if you look at a company like Namco, their games have really not been selling well at all lately in either market, despite their focus on the west. If you ask me, the best thing to do would be for publishers like Namco to refocus on what got them where they are in the first place - plenty of Japanese games have sold well in this country without pandering to a western sense of style (practically the entire NES/SNES catalog, for example, along with most of the PSX and early PS2 catalogs), and they obviously sold well in their home country too. Japanese publishers have simply lost their focus over the years, and lost their way.
Bioware already did it with Knights of the Old Republic.
hardware and software revenues [were] down 11% in 2003 and nearly 40% since the peak of the PlayStation generation in 1997 .. in Japan!!
...to stop looking at Japanese games and US gamers as completely different beasts. If you really insist on pigeonholing, there are merely different types of gamers and statistically more of one type lives in Japan and more of another type lives in the US. A lot of people like GTA style games and (now here's the shocker) some of those people live in Japan! Should a software company miss out on this audience because just because they are based in Japan? Also, should software developers cater to a small audience because some of them happen to live in Japan? Maybe the Japanese are getting tired of the more traditional RPG because developers think, "Oh those Japanese love the RPG." and flood the market with them.
Replayability is NOT "hi, play through this 40 hour game and if you do X, Y, Z - which are spread out at the 10, 20, and 30 hour markers, just for giggles - you get to see a different 30 second ending, which differs from the other endings in that it in/excludes $character or has good/bad ending for $character"
Replayability is how much fun I had GETTING to the X, Y, and Z markers. I'm not going to schlep through 40 hours of exactly the same thing - which was mildly enjoyable ONCE, you can imagine how it will be times 2, 3, and 4 - just to see a stupid ending. Oh, and there's the fun part where I, you know, look up at gamefaqs or buy the game guide so i can see what one of the dozens of meaningless conversation choices was the meaningful one that radically changed the outcome of poor $character's fate - you know, like where I decided that Sergio should raise a cat instead of a dog (which is OBVIOUS if you look at the Zodiac, because he was born in year 53, which is obviously monkey, so dog would be an anathama to him.... i mean, what IDIOT wouldn't pick up on that?).
Look, what's fun, and what adds to replayability is toolkits. If I, as a player, have multiple ways to achieve my objective, and they're all fun, then I'm going to go nuts playing your game three or four times. What do I mean by multiple ways of achieving the objective? I don't mean blastgun will open door in 4 hits and quantrogun will open door in 3 hits... I mean I could navigate through this maze which slowly closes in behind me by using the superrun boots, or I could fire freeze bolts at the wall, gaining me more time (even though to me, I'm doing exactly the same thing - walking through the same maze!), or if I went and got an ability I'm going to get anyway (versus ULTRA SECRET POWARRR!!1 that noone will ever find unless they shell out $40 for the guide) but I explored a bit and found earlier than designed for average players, I could use that ability to navigate on the maze edges - not without its own challenge, but safer and slower than literal mazerunning.
HELLO. That is Metroid - although the last option usually required some sort of 'exploit' - paths that look unplanned. That game is replayable.
Sales are down because we're at the lull between platform iterations - everyone owns an Xbox/PS2/NCube who is going to own one, and everyone knows X2/PS3/NTesseract are coming out - why buy a model T when you know that Pintos are due in a month? I said this in another article, I'll repeat it here.
Finally, and if you were crazy enough to read me out.. another failing of current video games is having the game interface get in the way of the game play (ok-cancel asked recently where 'challenge' lie, and if HCI isn't inapplicable or even counterproductive to game design - a sexy proposition on the oversimplifiaction, but let me ramble on). Compare the interface element of "camera angle" in Mario64 and Mario Sunshine - games I'm wagering aren't that much a stretch for a common context - and while they may've done cameras better than the rest, they still reeked something awful. Cameras are interface, for presenting the game. Challenge is timing and placing your jumps. Cameras should facilitate my interaction with the game for timing and placing my jump. The failure of the interface - which is the failure of the game, and upon this failure no amount of content or quality or engineering in the WHOLE REST OF THE GAME may hang well - is when the camera decides to magically change itself (or refuse my directions at changing itself) so that I can create a plane to view and properly communicate how I wish to execute my jump. If the camera suddenly whips to a 235 degree angle shift because of some stupid algorhythm that determines my view will be ideal there because of some clipping issue or something... guess what, I'm going to get screwed mid-jump. Mario is going to do something I didn't want him to do - something I wasn't trying to instruct him to do. I've been bossing him around since he was made of pixels as big as my fist -
So what? Western games don't sell well in Japan, so it's pretty natural that the opposite applies.