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Mega Man Designer Explains Japan's Waning Video Game Influence
eldavojohn writes "As one of the creators of Mega Man, Keiji Inafune remembers the days when Japan redefined video games. He believes those days are long gone as he reveals much in his criticisms of Japan's ailing game economy. Inafune says Japan is five years behind — still making games for older consoles with 'no diversity, no originality.' When asked why, he responds, 'A lot of designers, if they find a genre that works for them, they stick with it. A lot of designers just stick to a set formula. That doesn't work any more. You can't just tweak the graphics, work just on image quality. You can't compete on that. The business side is not keeping up with investment. You need to be prepared to invest 4 billion yen or more on a game, and then spend 2 billion yen more to promote it. But Japanese companies can't do that. So we're losing out to the West in terms of investment in games. It's a vicious cycle, a deflationary spiral. Because you don't invest, you can't sell games, and because you don't sell games, you can't invest.' He compares making games for Japan and the US to Sushi and basketball — two popular things but each done in distinctly different ways by the two nations."
no diversity, no originality
sounds like every other copypasta shooter, sports game, racing game we have from the mainstream devs/publishers here in the states. If you ask me, Japanese games have some of the most diversity and originality. America's latest Shoot 'em Up? They aren't that unique. Call of Duty maps being released as free downloads for PC, then being re-released as 'map packs' for money a couples years later. Mainstream here is mostly movie spin-offs, sequels, prequels, and rehashes. And Madden 19xx-20xx, but nothing new under the sun there either. Sims games? NCAA games? Comic-book games made after movies? Games made after movies made about games? Intellectual property my ass. More like unoriginal crap-ware extortion.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
"You can't just tweak the graphics, work just on image quality."
In general, that is what has been plaguing the entire gaming industry since the late 90s: graphics over gameplay. That being said, the rise of casual games these past few years has been a welcome change over shiny 3D graphics with dull repetitive gameplay formulae.
http://twitter.com/object404
Seriously.
If anything, the vast budgets of U.S. game makers are what's killing creativity and innovation in game design -- it's way too expensive for them to take much risk these days, and pretty much everything coming out of the U.S. these days is the same old tired formulas with better anti-aliasing and more accurate physics...
If Japan's economy is ailing, then that might kill off some developers (which is bad), but on the other hand, it might also mean that the focus shifts to lower-priced and lower-budget games. Even if such small-budget games tend to often be formulaic as well, the simple fact that they're much faster to develop and involve much less risk means there's actually a lot more room for experimentation. If you actually look at the selection of games available in Japan, I'd say this is true: despite a few "whales" like FFXIII, there's a vast range of quirky and interesting games for the DS, wii, etc. -- and these are what actually get the most shelf space, and seem to account for the majority of traffic in the store (well, judging by "where people are standing looking at games," anyway), even if the big monitor at the front of the store (paid for by Sony of course) is showing off the latest whale-of-the-month.
We live, as we dream -- alone....
I don't blame them for not branching out into other as it seems as though the audience doesn't care too much about anything new and wants more of the same. That might not be healthy for the industry, but why should a company invest massive amounts in flashy graphics, new tech, and marketing for something that's probably going to flop when they can just push out something using the same engine as their last game, reuse some of the art assets, and have an install base that will probably pick it up without a huge marketing push? If there's money to be made in something new, someone will make it, even if it's not the established players.
If anything, the vast budgets of U.S. game makers are what's killing creativity and innovation in game design -- it's way too expensive for them to take much risk these days, and pretty much everything coming out of the U.S. these days is the same old tired formulas with better anti-aliasing and more accurate physics...
I've been a PC gamer since the early 80's, and people have been making that kind of claim for almost that long. I prefer the same kind of games now that I did back then; long, immersive (western) RPGs--and they have gotten better and better as the industry has matured and spent more developing them.
The company that had so little faith in their mind numbingly mediocre Halo games to get decent reviews they sent out 900 dollar 'gift packages' to reviewers...
Microsoft: Bribing Halo 3 Reviewers
http://www.gamegrep.com/other/5422-microsoft_bribing_halo_3_reviewers/
Dean Takahashi: Halo 3 press kit "nothing less than a bribe"
http://www.qj.net/qjnet/xbox-360/dean-takahashi-halo-3-press-kit-nothing-less-than-a-bribe.html
Way to go Bungie! No wonder their bunny hopping shiny green Power Ranger games are the laughingstock of the FPS world...
Why even try when you have Microsoft's billions to throw at the gaming press?
I get tired of the "Get off my lawn, the past was so much better." No, not the case actually. Games are great these days. You can have graphics AND gameplay and indeed there are games that do. Name the kind of game you like, I can give you a few examples of ones that do it really well. There's more crap out there too, of course, as you get a bigger market you get more of everything. However if you don't think there are any good new games it is only because you are walking around with your hands over your eyes.
In reality, there are a few things at play:
1) We remember the past through rose coloured glasses. This is just a human condition. You remember the good and forget the bad. Psychologists think it is part of our coping mechanism. So you remember some of those games as being a hell of a lot better than they were. Go back and play them some time. Whip out an emulator and try them out. You'll discover many were not nearly as good as you think. Like Final Fantasy 2 (in the US, FF4 in reality). Loved that game as a kid, and it was hard. My friends and I would sit around and play it together to figure things out. Story was really good too... Well, not so much. I've played it now as an adult. The story is pretty cheesy when you get down to it and difficult? Shit I can knock it out no problem. The enemies are so simplistic, easy for me to figure out. I can practically play it with the turbo speed button in the emulator held down all the time. It can't hold a candle story or gameplay wise to the new RPGs.
2) You remember the good games better because you spent more time on them. You probably bought mostly games you liked, and if you got one you didn't, you didn't play it much. As such you don't remember all the pure shit out there. Consider that there were almost 900 NES games released in the US. You really think they were all good? Did you ever play the Barbie Sports game? How about Bible Games (a religious 3-pack game)? There are bunches of crap games out there, you just didn't play them much if at all so they didn't leave an impression. The good ones you played a lot.
3) General curmudgeon/hardass syndrome. For some reason, people get all tough guy about the past. "Oh games back then had shit graphics but they were REAL GAMES. We didn't NEED graphics, they were so good!" It is silly, so don't do it.
4) When videogames were brand new, it was easier to be "innovative" because nothing had been done. In reality most weren't, they were just doing things in games that had been done in other mediums, but it was still a "game first." Well when something matures, it is harder to do something truly unique that has never been done at all before.
So seriously, don't be a stick in the mud, open your eyes, and discover that there are many, many good games being made these days.
Now if you'll excuse me, I want to go play Dragon Age, which is a really good game.
A few more for your list:
Minecraft isn't American, but is really good and so popular these days that the guy behind it has flown to talk to Valve and had to shut down his registration and payment system (which also means it's free to play right now!).
Dwarf Fortress, of course.
Lugaru HD is another classic indie title, and I think the non-HD version got open sourced as part of the Humble Indie Bundle deal. The game is a bit sparse at times, but for me the gameplay was top-notch.
Darwinia will make you more attached to little green pixel men than should be right.
These are some of the well-known ones. Really there are too many to list, but I HIGHLY recommend buying fresh, innovative indie games. They don't have the polish of AAA big-budget titles, but they make up for it in interesting gameplay mechanics and sometimes genuinely good storytelling that wipes the floor with the "everything you do must be epic to the extreme!" plots that the AAA titles have. I've gotten more hours of fun from VVVVV (look for it on steam for $5) than I got from playing Gears of War 2 which cost 10x that much.
Seriously, support your indie developers. The more people who buy their games, the more they get to make. Here is a good place to start looking.
I am become
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
Ugh, too often I see this statement. If everyone followed this advice, *nothing* would ever be improved simply because it isn't completely broke. Don't bother with that new groundbreaking invention that you just thought up, what we have now isn't broke, so don't bother! Sorry, not too much to do with your comment, but I just don't like that sentence.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Japan, seriously, how many times do we need the protagonist to be a 13 year old boy with no fashion sense and spiky hair? Also, would it kill you to have the story make some goddamn sense for once?
Seriously, when I find out that the main character is the dream of a ghost and the answer all along was that we needed to combine all of the feelings of love throughout the world to break the time loop or something I just want to kick the writer in the nuts.
That's why I tend to prefer western RPGs, even if they do spend way too much time stealing ideas wholesale from Tolkien, again. I'd love to see more studios go the Mass Effect or even Alpha Protocol route just to freshen up the genre.
I read the internet for the articles.
it's way too expensive for them to take much risk these days and pretty much everything coming out of the U.S. these days is the same old tired formulas with better anti-aliasing and more accurate physics...
How many counter examples would I need to cite before you'd admit you're wrong? Is one enough? Portal. Two? Mirror's edge. How many? Red dead redemption fits too much into the "Sandbox western themed formula" that have been all you see on shelves these days?
Too much budget is the problem you say? So is there a reason we're overlooking smaller releases, downloadable games, and indie games? Those don't count for the US? Because it seems odd to make an argument that games in the US are too big budget and not innovative enough, by specifically overlooking the low-budget, innovative games like limbo or braid. Look at the xbox live indie games or whatever they're calling it now. Last time I checked, those were mostly near zero budget games. Most of the top selling ones were apps to make the controller vibrate. None of the demos I tried seemed worth the time it took to download them.
The vast majority of games coming out are going to be shlock. That's a given, and is true for all art, painting, music, books, movies, is true everywhere, and has nothing to do with formulas or budgets.
BS - it's the "westernization" of games (and movies and so on) that is at least partially to blame for making people not interested. When they watch an Asian movie with a terrible English dub, that's all they think about - turns it into a joke. Same thing with games if they do a ham-fisted "westernization" - even just a bad dub, again, can ruin it completely.
There are games that are essentially just translated from the original Japanese, and they're plenty popular. The parent's example of the Katamari series is an excellent one (if you've played any of them, you'll know they're chock-full of Japanese cultural stuff, most of which makes no sense to anyone else, but the games are still fun), and there's the Dead or Alive series (they leave in the Japanese dialog as an option, presumably because they realize the English dialog is so terrible), Fatal Frame series (again lots of cultural stuff) and more...