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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?""
Experimenting is right. Question: "How much can we slack before the customers realize that they're playing a movie?" Hypothesis: "A whole f*#&ing lot." Results: FFXIII Conclusion: In conclusive.
iburnaga.blogspot.com
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.
Freedom is drinking a beer in the park when you're supposed to be at work.
The problem is that there's only so many times you can do the whole "evil demon-zombie tries to take over the world and humble scruffy hero with funny-looking friends acquired along the way run FedEx missions to get the ultimate sword of NecroNegro to vanquish the evil Demon who becomes MegaDemon at the last minute which happens in heaven/hell/memoria/the end of time/the beginning of time. Fuck, man. How many have they made?! They should have called it quits after 8, and even that was full of trite emo-kid shit. I knew the series was going to shit the second I saw the preview of the characters for FF9. The best part of FF12 was listening to the theme in the intro screen, the rest was just fucking boring. The problem with a lot of titles on the newer consoles is that they seem to concentrate on eye candy rather than better gameplay.
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?
My friend worked as a translator for one of the big Gaming companies for a good while. He left because of the endless long hours, I asked him about the devs. "Oh, them? I've never seen any of them entering or leaving their office".
Sweet, the devs never have to show up for work at all? That rocks, Sign me up!