Inafune: Japanese "Game Industry is Finished"

[Standby]

What a ridiculous thing to say. Anyway he created Dead Rising? Therefore his opinion is void.

heh, that's a very well done troll statement

My apologies but i just find it slightly rich for him to come up with that statement after creating the overrated pile of garbage Dead Rising was.

 

[hansari]

I mean when was the last time a truly classic game came out from Japan?

Classic like Ocarina of Time or Metal Gear Solid or Silent Hill?

I agree. Western Developers have franchises but are geared towards creating new titles as well. For Japan, it seems to be mostly franchises. (We are at the 13th installation of final fantasy now?!!)

The last creative new project to come out for me was Phoenix Wright...

 

[scotth266]

The man has a point. Capcom has been one of the biggest pushers of original Japanese games for a long time now: see Okami, Viewtiful Joe, Dead Rising, etc. They're not afraid to make games for other cultures: rather, they strive to make games that can be played by ANYONE, regardless of culture. Look at the aforementioned Viewtiful Joe: it's essentially a parody of action films/the Power Ranger gig, and anyone who's played it will tell you it does a superb job of it, regardless of where they've come from.

There's also the point to be made that Japan is sort of self-centric with regards to their culture. There's probably several reasons for this, but I believe one of the biggies was mentioned by Therumancer: the desire to not have their work messed with when it's ported overseas. In fact, most Americans feel the same way: try trodding over to the Anime Fans Group and asking them what they think of the cross-ocean censorship. You'll find that we all hate it, to the point where we refuse to buy anything that's been censored (ironic really, considering that the whole point of the censoring was to try and get more American buyers.)

Another reason for the self-centric idea is that Japanese devs might not think that Japanese games will sell well outside of Japan, regardless of their quality. There's a point to be made there: there are tons of Japanese games that have been excellent, yet when ported to the states were a total flop. See Earth Defense Force, Viewtiful Joe (which quickly sunk into cult hit status), etc. Of course, there's always the grand exception to the rule: No More Heroes, for instance, sold terrifically in the States, to the point where the creator actually recouped losses from the Japanese version, which was virtually ignored.

 

[TsunamiWombat]

Good riddance to bad rubbish if the Japanese game market dries up. I don't mean that to be racist, simply that I don't like Japanese games as a general rule (there are exceptions, like Final Fantasy VI and Katamari Damacy, but on the whole my collection's over 95% Western-developed.)

But your collection is heavy on strategy, simulation, and RPGs, is it not?

The West seems largely incapable of making arcade-style games that are worth playing. Fighting games? I can't name a single one. Shoot'em ups? I can name two.

I have imported three Japanese games just in the last two months, played tens of hours of free Japanese PC games, plus old arcade stuff with MAME. Just a thought - maybe your beef is not with the Japanese developers, but the Western publishers who only bring over a small fraction of the best stuff.

Hmm, can you name these Japanese pc games?

 

[Pendragon9]

You know, he could save it all. How? MAKE MEGAMAN LEGENDS 3!

I mean, pardon me Inafune, but Megaman in general is a quarter of the reason the game industry is still alive today. I truly believe another installment would revitalize the industry if it's truly withering.

And it's Megaman. He deserves an installment more than any other Capcom game in my honest opinion. Yes, I know about 30 sequels and different franchises are alot more than one can handle, but if people keep buying and loving them (like myself) then Capcom must be doing something right.

Just look at Megaman 9 for example. If anything could save the withering game industry, I believe Capcom could do it.

 

[Angel Emfrbl]

A lot of Japan games recently are a shadow of their former selves.

-Take SEGA, Sonic games have been rated down for a while now. This year we have Sonic in a car (again) when they know the fans didn't like it in Sonic Drift Racing.
-Nintendo has milked Mario to DEATH in every way possible they CAN.

And thats two of the old timers there for starters.

At the end of the day, Japan is the mass media captial of the world and their game reflect that. Their good at advertising, great at concepts... Poor at making games. The stories are usually in depth, they dare to go places the west wouldn't dream of and usually have decent sound tracks that bring out the atmosphere. But then you get to play the game and it tends to suck. Their strongest aspects are horror; their poorest aspect is clicking on what worked in a game.

And then theres the characters. Okay guys, confess, you love the bouning boobs... But when you GET into the game does the character actually destract you from your gameplay, or do you just zone out on who your controlling because you've got Zombie no.368 about to eat your brains? I know I've played a lot of great characters, but at the end of the day, once the power button is on and I've got a game started, I forget who I was even suppose to be and focus on the goal of the game.

Hey... It helped with Shadow the Hedgehog make me forget I was playing Shadow the hedgehog in one of Sega worst games they've ever produced.

Maybe in a few years we'll be seeing a change, theres a recession and things always look bleak for a while. I must confess though, every game I've seen recently of intereast has always been a western produce game. This coming from me, a JRPG fangirl.

 

[SimuLord]

Good riddance to bad rubbish if the Japanese game market dries up. I don't mean that to be racist, simply that I don't like Japanese games as a general rule (there are exceptions, like Final Fantasy VI and Katamari Damacy, but on the whole my collection's over 95% Western-developed.)

But your collection is heavy on strategy, simulation, and RPGs, is it not?

The West seems largely incapable of making arcade-style games that are worth playing. Fighting games? I can't name a single one. Shoot'em ups? I can name two.

I have imported three Japanese games just in the last two months, played tens of hours of free Japanese PC games, plus old arcade stuff with MAME. Just a thought - maybe your beef is not with the Japanese developers, but the Western publishers who only bring over a small fraction of the best stuff.

Fair enough when taking my tastes into account---the Japanese aren't really into developing stuff like SimCity. And when they do venture into that sort of genre, compare Harvest Moon to the 1993 Maxis game SimFarm. The former is more a dating sim and JRPG that happens to have a farming element to it, while the latter is a nuts-and-bolts examination of being an actual agribusiness farmer. The difference (and the fact that I think SimFarm's the better game) speaks volumes about why I don't like Japanese games.

For another example, compare Uncharted Waters: New Horizons, an RPG with trade sim elements, to Patrician 3, a straight trade sim. P3 is leaps and bounds deeper (even when you allow for the fact that it came out seven years later and on a PC rather than the SNES.) For games from the mid-90s, consider something like Merchant Prince (a MicroProse game.) Plain and simple, I don't like when RPG elements (especially JRPG elements) get stapled onto games like that.

Aerobiz vs. Efzed's AIRLINE series. Uncharted Waters vs. Ascaron's strategy games. Harvest Moon vs. SimFarm. See a pattern developing here? Japanese games have nothing to offer me that isn't done leaps and bounds better in the West, so my original point---good riddance to bad rubbish---holds.

 

[Nutcase]

Good riddance to bad rubbish if the Japanese game market dries up. I don't mean that to be racist, simply that I don't like Japanese games as a general rule (there are exceptions, like Final Fantasy VI and Katamari Damacy, but on the whole my collection's over 95% Western-developed.)

But your collection is heavy on strategy, simulation, and RPGs, is it not?

The West seems largely incapable of making arcade-style games that are worth playing. Fighting games? I can't name a single one. Shoot'em ups? I can name two.

I have imported three Japanese games just in the last two months, played tens of hours of free Japanese PC games, plus old arcade stuff with MAME. Just a thought - maybe your beef is not with the Japanese developers, but the Western publishers who only bring over a small fraction of the best stuff.

Hmm, can you name these Japanese pc games?

The one I've been playing the most lately, and beat for the first time just days ago, is Every Extend. If you want to dig into Japanese freeware, my top recommendations are EE, Tumiki Fighters, Warning Forever, Strike Witches STG, and I'll also mention one Flash game, Dwarf Complete (*) which is a puzzle/adventure.

Unfortunately I can't read Japanese which cuts off many other games, all the story-based stuff.

* anti-spoiler: there is not one unfair puzzle in it, so if you are stuck for a moment, resist temptation to go for a walkthrough. You'll be glad you didn't.

 

[Nutcase]

Aerobiz vs. Efzed's AIRLINE series. Uncharted Waters vs. Ascaron's strategy games. Harvest Moon vs. SimFarm. See a pattern developing here? Japanese games have nothing to offer me that isn't done leaps and bounds better in the West, so my original point---good riddance to bad rubbish---holds.

I'm not an English speaker, but doesn't that phrase indicate you think it's good that Japanese game development is on the decline?

Not liking the genres of game they make is cause for indifference, not active dislike.

It almost sound like you think they do no quality game development at all.

PS. Your comparisons are weird. The Japanese do not make PC simulations, period. In the absence of such there is no point in comparing random console games they do make to simulations. You might as well compare them to Mario while you're at it.

 

[axia777]

I just want Kojima to work on a PS3 game that has nothing to do with Metal Gear Solid or any of this previous games. I want Kojima to go to the scratch board and start over in terms of ideas. I know he has it in him. He says this kind of stuff all the time. If he just let it all hang out I know he could make something really great.

 

[Ytmh]

Someone already said it (I think), but honestly you never look for creativity or innovation in an industry. You look for it in places where people have nothing to lose/aren't tied to profits directly/doing it for the love of doing it. What Inafune is saying comes to no surprise except for the fact it's a little late to start realizing the obvious.

But eh, this all goes back to what Chris Crawford once said noting that the industry doesn't actually support and encourage independent developers as much as it should, as that's precisely the place they can get fresh people/ideas/etc from. Other industries work on this model, and they sponsor festivals/etc as well.

I mean, it's much better than ten years ago, right? But it's still got a long, long, way to go before actual tangible results are seen, and even then notice that something like Steam that promotes in some way Indie games is not Japanese? Do they even have something remotely similar?

 

[jthm]

I actually am forced to agree with his conclusion. U.S. game developers have always followed the same trend as Japan, just a year or two behind, I'd go him one further and say it's dying here too.

There's nothing new for "gamers". The money now is in catering to Wii sports playing family types. Challenge is rare, overuse of game mechanics from popular games is high. I'm a shooter fan who hasn't played a new shooter since COD4 because they all feel too bland.

There doesn't seem to be any innovation (which was always a strong point from Japan) coming these days, just rehashes of things we've seen before. Gaming as a whole is just becoming less interesting.

 

[raxer92]

I think Tomonobu Itagaki had the best perspective on this. The Japanese game industry is in danger of turning inwards like the film industry there, to the point that they can occasionally create things that reach a specialist audience elsewhere, but most of their output is specialised for the narrow Japanese market.

It's nice that there are people thinking about this though, one of the biggest strengths of the games market has been that development has been a global process, with great games and ideas coming from all over the place, and national boundaries falling away where they wouldn't otherwise.

agreed, theirs a chance that the american cartoon business will come to a collapse soon and so will the japanese videogame business if they dont start expanding into different markets.

 

[boholikeu]

I find it funny that people keep saying Nintendo isn't innovative when one of their best selling games are completely different from anything else out there: Wii fit. Sure the game might not appeal to you personally, but that doesn't mean it's not an original piece of software.

 

[SimuLord]

Aerobiz vs. Efzed's AIRLINE series. Uncharted Waters vs. Ascaron's strategy games. Harvest Moon vs. SimFarm. See a pattern developing here? Japanese games have nothing to offer me that isn't done leaps and bounds better in the West, so my original point---good riddance to bad rubbish---holds.

I'm not an English speaker, but doesn't that phrase indicate you think it's good that Japanese game development is on the decline?

Not liking the genres of game they make is cause for indifference, not active dislike.

It almost sound like you think they do no quality game development at all.

PS. Your comparisons are weird. The Japanese do not make PC simulations, period. In the absence of such there is no point in comparing random console games they do make to simulations. You might as well compare them to Mario while you're at it.

Not liking the genres of game they make IS cause for active dislike when weeaboo-friendly junk clutters up game shelves and takes market share away from the genres I like. It's a cutthroat world in game publishing and if the Japanese are eliminated as a factor in the sales equation that means more for the West.

And you'll notice my comparisons were games in the same genre. The Japanese just love to clutter up their stuff with JRPG, dating-sim story junk (well, except for Aerobiz...)

 

[teknoarcanist]

It does seem like the majority of progress being done is happening this side of the wall nowadays. Britain and America are more-or-less spearheading the whole indie-art-game thing.

 

[LeonLethality]

I agree its dying a bit too many copy & paste games nd fps' are clogging up the pipes like theres no tommorow but there should still be a silver lining untill people get creative again, right?

 

[Blood_Lined]

I really hope that the Japanese gaming industry is not finished, JRPG's are my favorite gaming genre.

 

[bushwhacker2k]

I get the impression people "in the bizz" say some dumb things without thinking.

I would be INCREDIBLY surprised if the Japanese game industry died in the next 50 years.

I DO think that most Japanese games are too similar and originality is somewhat lacking but this is pushing it.