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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."
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.
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.