Me and a friend got into a heated debate over this. I’d like to hear your thoughts, especially people who are well in tune with the japanese culture. Discuss, please.
My opinion:
Hideo Kojima’s line in that article just asks for a stifling of creativity. And most of the time, that’s what it seems like in Japan.
Cars were originally made in america, but nowdays made better in japan and europe. tvs made in america and vcr/betamax/dvd stuff too. cell phones? you betcha. animation? disney first.
pc games don’t seem to be popular in japan for that reason, that japan doesn’t like creating or inventing things. FPS and RTS are so freakin popular here and nonexistent in japan. instead people play stuff that’s extremely based on memorization and timing. just look at IIDX or DDR… i could memorize all that in due time and get good, there’s no creativity at all. i really wonder how great games like The Sims or RCT or something goes over in Japan.
i also heard a story about a teacher in Japan. he gave his students an assignment where they had to write down what they wanted to be. nearly all the students were confused by this and had no idea what to write. the lazy slacker wrote the most original answer: “I want to be a Gundam pilot!”
at the same time, you can see the opposite here in america. like my favorite guilty-pleasure, dating sims. if you’ve ever played one, it’s really just like reading a book or watching tv. the entire “game” is just click click click click click, and every hour or so you make a decision or a conversation choice. they should be called visual novels. and they’re REALLY not popular here. there is probably zero appeal here, because you simply don’t do anything. memorization games aren’t doing too well here, look at the whole shoot 'em up genre. beatmania didn’t do too well because it wasn’t active enough.
Have you ever been to Japan, or does all your information come from gaming magazines?
*PC games aren’t all that popular in America either. Certainly not as popular as games for the various flashy home video game systems.
*They are not nonexistent in Japan. They just aren’t as popular as in the US. Good for Japan, I say. I hate first-person shooters, and lost most interest in new computer and video games once first-person shooters came to dominate the American market.
*What’s so creative about first-person shooters? I always found them insanely boring. My tastes run more towards the fantasy roleplaying games…which Japan produces quite a lot of. Most of the Japanese kids I teach go in for the martial-arts fighting games. And of course there’s always the various Mario Brothers games. I only hear of people playing the “Song and Dance” stuff when they go out for karaoke with their friends (the more high-end karaoke boxes are outfitted with game systems).
*The Sims, known as Sim People over here, seems to have been fairly successful. I’ve seen it for sale in the shops, and everyone I’ve mentioned it to has heard of it. And I mention it a lot…I’m addicted to that game.
*Probably because they had no idea what he’d said. Sounds like a lousy teacher who didn’t explain things clearly. My kids tell me they want to be doctors, baseball players, actors, singers, manga artists, fishermen, interpreters, or even “The Queen of England” (she plans to marry Prince William).
Stifling creativity? If anything, Japanese style games are more creative than western style games. I’m not a fan of anything realistic, so sports games, most first-person shooters, Grand Theft Auto, etc, don’t appeal to me at all. I just don’t find playing around in our own world that fascinating, I can do that without video games (sure I can’t go around killing people on my own, but the basic setting is still there).
Give me a completely made-up fantasy world. Now that’s creative. What makes you think first-person shooters are more creative than something like, say, Pikmin, where you’re a spaceman the size of a quarter who has to control a bunch of little radish-like creatures to defeat bugs and gather treasure. You say Japan doesn’t like creating and inventing things? Have you even played a Nintendo game?
The closest thing to a realistic game I enjoyed was Eternal Darkness, and that’s because the setting was realistic but the theme and characters and plot and all that was mostly fantasy (evil demons, magic powers, etc).
I find some FPS very appealing because they can be quite a cinematic experience, more so than other types of games. When they are done well, they can be very engaging and quite thrilling, such as the classic “Clive Barker’s: Undying”, which bombed but which I found excellent – to date one of the most atmospherically engaging and cinematic games I’ve seen.
So I like FPSs like that, the Jedi Knight games, Star Trek Elite Forces, etc. On the other hand zero storyline items like Serious Sam or Unreal Tournament I consider suitable only for multiplayer gaming, no matter how good a product, simply because they don’t really draw you in sufficiently.
It’s also interesting to note that the FPSs I mentioned seem to be appealing to watchers, e.g., my wife, who enjoys navigating while I’m at the controls. She jumped several times during “Undying”! I think she liked it even more than me (I invested in a powerful PC, big speakers, and large LCD monitor).
But the Japanese aren’t exactly novices at engaging the audience either. The Resident Evil series was great fun on the PlayStation, though I know they’re old games for all the PS2’ers out there.
I like types of games other than FPS as well, including RTS and RPGs, but the cinematic potential of the FPS system is a big draw. Currently I don’t think Japanese game companies work much on this particular format, so in this area I think it’s fair to say they are behind.
The only trend I’ve ever notived in Japanese games is that they very nearly always make you play the game on rails, with absolutely one storyline, sometimes with multiple endings, the triggers for which are hidden. US games tend to be more open-ended; there’s a lot more experimentation with multiple-path games and open-environment ones.
This trend is most noticble in the RPG genre. Japanese RPG’s… aren’t. They have a movie-like atmosphere, one correct story which you must follow, and little choice. American RPG’s, by contrast, tend to be true role-playing games, wherein you build and play a specific character n your own preferred manner. See Baldur’s Gate, etc. They’re both enjoyable, but I feel that the American model has a lot more to offer in the long run.
Part of the problem is that people tend to want to see the same sorts of games that they already know and understand. I am a gamer and I love to try new types of games, and wish more would be imported, but I’m a victim to what’s available. I also bloody well hate FPS games, with the exception of Counter Strike (playing against humans, combined with tactics instead of a bloodbath).
On the other hand, I am like the American gamers in the article - I don’t like direction. I love open ended games where you have to work at finding the plot and what to do. My favorite game on the PS2 has been King’s Field: The Ancient City, which is open-ended. But, I’m finding a lot of Americans buy only the “interactive movie” type of RPG, and I don’t like them. I won’t play Xenosaga, for example.
I can think of examples that seem to support and not support the OP. There are certainly differences between japanese and american game developement due to different cultures, I just don’t think you hit it with the originality idea. Fun to think about though.