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Japanese Game Developers Go West
donniebaseball23 writes "More and more Japanese game studios and publishers are looking toward the West. But as the industry becomes more global, is this really such a bad thing? From the article: 'Gameplay is an art that transcends borders, and it simply makes good business sense to keep your eyes open for opportunities no matter where they present themselves, as Zenimax, EA and THQ clearly have. Far from ruining the Japanese gaming industry, it may in fact save some of the best Japanese developers from considering retirement or a career change. They'll be able to make games on their own terms with their own original IP, and shouldn't it ultimately be about these creative types being able to realize their visions?""
This is a good thing, just so long as we don't have to play another "war of the three kingdoms" game, I'm utterly sick of those.
Japanese franchises barely evolved. Final Fantasy ran into that trap.
Why do articles about the video game business have to refer to law by saying "original IP" when they can call it an "original setting" and be understood by more readers?
Technically the physical relocation involved is via a plane flying east over the Pacific. I mean, westward is really the rest of Eurasia here.
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mmmmm.... "these creative types"
Hacking code for a living is an art and is a creative endeavor... but calling me a type... sheesh.
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I find it funny that I, as an American game developer, want to go work in Japan.
I wonder if I can trade apartments and jobs with one of them or something?
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
China?
It makes me wonder if it's worth learning me Japanese these days. I've been at it for about a year, alongside doing a lot of video game related development work as part of a team of friends doing some indie development. In an ideal, wonderful fantasy world I see myself becoming fluent in Japanese and taking my game-related aspirations further with it, but I'm beginning to question that these days.
Is that something like this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NZ04BG7TfA
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Having a Japanese developer making a Western game actually is a stupid thing... it's like if we would be trying to make a porn game... wait we have done some like 7 sins and playboy mansion, witch SUCKED HARD!
The thing that they should be doing is:make your own games... if you make good games, export them, don't try to clone the games we've been doing for 10 years straight and hope to make something that will outsell everything!
I didn't know china was good enough at making video games that anyone would want to look on them for ideas o:
in reading it he references most of the stuff that got a port
misses the fact that there are any number of japan only games
yes, opening up to a 'western' audience means more money
but i'm pretty sure those guys are more focused on making a game
(kind of like the indie scene in the 'western' markets)
in the us the giant studios are there to follow formulas
which means they're there to serve their shareholders. nothing more
if you're looking for innovation or something new / different it usually comes from japan first
as introverted and conservative as they are, they do get creative
they're just not as boisterous about it as westerners
From the article: "One, the percentage of the worldwide market composed of Japanese titles has shrunk, and if you exclude Nintendo, would be shown to have drastically shrunk worldwide." Okay, where is he getting this supposed information, or did he should pull it out of thin air? He didn't even cite any numbers either. So that's bunk.
"...major Japanese game publishers have become much more conservative and sequel driven". Uh... and this is a recent trend? Square has been milking Final Fantasy like a cow since the 1990s. Westerners didn't know because they skipped on releasing a whole bunch of games in the series. Same deal with Capcom and Rockman on the NES, except we actually received Mega Man game after Mega Man game outside of Japan. Heck, Konami released a good number of Akumajo Dracula/Castlevania games, some of which were just different versions of the first game.
As for the globalization that the whole article is about. Um... we've had that for years. Sega was founded by an American guy for goodness sake. Namco worked with Bally/Midway to release Pac-Man games (which was supposedly a tumultuous relationship). Japanese companies have founded American divisions who've screwed up countless localization jobs. Action games like some of the ones in the Mario and Sonic series have been developed with Western audiences in mind, because, well, you can make lots of money catering to the West.
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...but culture has a worse reception. In the words of the average 20 y/o American college student, "Those Japanese and Korean games are gayer than Frodo and Sam in a musical duet."
Like into China? Or West as in the Western world? The title, at least, is a bit confusing, and we certainly can't expect everyone to read the article. :p
I think it's great that Japanese game developers are working with Western publishers (western as in American). Anything to provide cross-pollination of ideas and styles is always a good thing. I'm not a big fan of the art style or the grinding that seems to be in vogue for a lot of the Japanese games, but there's plenty there to love, as well.
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To be honest I hate it when these Japanese company purposely tweak their game to try and make it more "Western friendly." I enjoy Japanese games, I like Nintendo, I like Squaresoft, and I like Western games for what they are.
Studios need to focus on what they are good at. A lot of American gamers like Japanese games, I'd much prefer if Western games and Japanese games stayed good at their own thing instead of trying to copy each other.
What's better, one great Japanese game, and one great Western game. Or a single sub-standard Japanese/Western game?
So Japanese games will now have revolutionary western game ideas like hit points, potions, oozes/slimes, experience points, levels and the idea of using a single unit on foot instead of an army to complete a series of quests? Oh wait. Japan has been using that forever. Now if your talking about setting like the article seems to imply...no wait, most Japanese games don't actually take place in Japan (if you ignore the indie dating sim developers, since most of their games never get official ports). From Final Fantasy to Zelda, most Japanese games have always been very "western" in almost every way...
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While I understand the history, I've always found the terms "East", "West", "Middle East" and similar non-geographic geographic/cultural nomenclature to be arrogant at best. West of Japan is China, and they may end up being the new west if the arrogant USA doesn't get it's intellectual act together.
The world is not some flat map that some idiot in the 1800s drew on paper. I agree that using the pacific was probably a pretty good idea for a separator there on paper, but the general terms of "East" and "West" as used by most talking heads is just shallow-thinking.
Sort of like the words/terms "perfect storm", "actually", and "blog" really annoy me.
Now get off my lawn.
More and more Japanese game studios and publishers are looking toward the West. But as the industry becomes more global, is this really such a bad thing?
Are we supposed to assume that's a bad thing? What's the connection between the first sentence here and the second? I'm so confused...
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Gameplay is an art that transcends borders, and it simply makes good business sense to keep your eyes open for opportunities no matter where they present themselves, as Zenimax, EA and THQ clearly have.
The thing about borders are that not all are lines on a map. Cultural for example.
Is slashdot broken? There's supposedly 49 replies, why can't I see any of them?
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The Japanese have done fine without using western developers for decades and in fact most of the bigger successes still come from Japan. Nintendo alone proves that.
The only area where Japan may be weak is catering to the Xbox crowd which is also the ex-PC crowded and insecure teenager crowd. I don't want to see Japan knocking boring shit like Halo year after year. If they feel they're not doing as well it will because they're getting less imaginative and lowering standards just like western developers.
Because "original IP" is technically correct
VortexCortex made a good point that "intellectual property" conflates the distinct purposes and scopes of copyrights and patents. To that, I wanted to add another defect of the term:
"Original intellectual property" overemphasizes the fact that it is property, or something to which exclusive rights are attached, not commons, or something for all to use in moderation. Furthermore, the abbreviation of "intellectual property" as "IP" carries an implication that people should already know that the best way to treat a setting is as property, not as commons. Conflating a setting with the exclusive rights attached to that setting causes problems for cases where the exclusive rights aren't in the normal pattern of exclusive control by an established company. For example, if someone were to make a film or video game adaptation of The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi, which has entered the public domain due to age, would this be an "original IP" because no license was involved, "3rd party IP" because it was created by someone else, or not an IP at all because it is commons?
if "original setting" were to be used, then to obtain the same scope of statement, one would also have to include a great deal of other concepts, such as, characters, monsters, plot devices, powers and items.
All these elements exist within a setting, and due to treating settings and elements within them as property, your "characters, monsters, plot devices, powers and items" won't appear outside the setting. I will grant however that there are a few exceptions, but these are rare enough to be billed as the top bullet point in a work's pitch. These include crossovers like Kingdom Hearts, mascot fighters like Super Smash Bros., and public-domain settings like those that were fused into the Shrek setting.
I don't get it, aren't video games in Japan a lot more open-minded? It's always in the U.S. that we're stuck with the same type of titles, most of the interesting, oddball, creative games come from Japan (Okami, Katamari, etc.)
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They must have had shitty travel agents...
Going east would have been sooo much quicker.
In time you'll see that phrase disappear, hopefully along with the overuse of the term "content".
RMS agrees with you about "content" and "intellectual property".
Along with "SKU", these always make me grind my teeth.
Perhaps I'm biased because I work for an e-tailer, but what's wrong with "stock keeping unit" to refer to a particular, distinctly sold variant of a product?
Either that or the hymn written by Henry Smith in 1978 that they both allegedly copied: Give Thanks.
I can certainly see Japanese gaming industry readjusting to what gamers want nowadays. Square needs to rethink FF series because the last installment was garbage (IMO); in fact, I think FF gameplay needs to evolve a bit, become more open-ended, providing more possibilities with the story and characters (would've been nice if the last FF had those at all though).
I've been a gamer for a long time and have even dabbed in game development when I was younger. And the absolute best game I've played in recent years was Demon's Souls from "From Software" which happens to be a Japanese title from a Japanese developer. Some may claim it is a western action/rpg, but it was so unique (in so many ways) that I think it deserves its own style definition. Furthermore, is it fair to restrict Japanese gaming to JRPGs? I personally feel linear games are passe.