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Discussion Was there ever any truth to when Phil Fish and Keiji Inafune (plus others) bashed Japanese games back in the PS3/360/Wii era?

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Phil Fish was rather notorious for when he "spur of the moment" said that Japanese games just sucked, later saying "modern Japanese games sucked". Around that same time Keiji Inafune, himself Japanese, was hammering on Japanese games being "behind the times", at one point backing up Fish's comments as honest. And others like Jonathan Blow and Hideo Kojima were backing them up.

Now I know that Fish and Inafune have become disgraced for different reasons nowadays, but this still makes me think. Were Japanese games really outdated back then? Since then they've made a huge comeback in the eyes of the gaming audience, but I'd argue even that was due to a lot of idea sharing and Japan catching up in some ways.

I honestly think the crux of the argument was that western games were trying to make steps into de-linearizing to achieve open world design, while Japan stuck to linear design, a paradigm that was seemingly broken by quite a bit of open world and exploration-oriented Japanese games after the PS3/360/Wii era. Jonathan Blow even used Zelda: Skyward Sword's "straight line" design to describe modern Japanese games as "joyless husks".

Just to be clear, I think "linear bad" is a deplorable mindset that ignores the real issues (this for example) that are shared between linear and non-linear games, but I can at least accept that there's a sliver of truth to "linear bad" since humans are wired to dislike having their options taken away.

And while I can't find anything through Google now, I do see a little bit of the "Japanese games have outdated design" mentality if rarely.

Still, some consider it racist nationalism or xenophobia, and I do remember around that time people were trying to stereotype Japanese media as "ero-kawaii" while Western media was more "epic".

So was it really just some "linear bad" soapboxing? Actual game design issues? Stereotyping? I need to get this question off my chest.
 
Quillion said:
So was it really just some "linear bad" soapboxing? Actual game design issues? Stereotyping? I need to get this question off my chest.
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It should go without saying that Japanese devs and publishers got hit the hardest during the transition from the PS2 era to the HD era. Some were things that they couldn't do better with, and others that made a lot of questionable decisions along the way. For example, I always thought it was funny that Inafune was throwing these stones, when his various "westaboo" initiatives that came about when HE was in charge of Capcom's R&D either fell flat on their faces, or didn't even come out.

Then there a lot of good houses that were shuttered during or soon after this time period, and various others struggled to find their paths. It was all too easy to be kicking someone when they were already down.

So in that light, I definitely agree it was a lot of racism, xenophobia and other bigoted behavior that was able to run rampant in the mainstream audiences and the press that catered to them. Overall, that era in gaming sucked if you were a fan of Japanese games.
 
I remember being disappointed with those comments because I liked Fez and I liked Japanese games of the time. Later it became clearer that Phil Fish had some problems with saying silly things.
 
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Nah it was absolutely thinly veiled xenophobia. I could go on and on about how fans of certain long running series can act like spoiled brats when criticizing the games. At the time, pretty much every big Japanese game series were arguably at one of their lowest points, meanwhile Western games were thriving compared to past gens. Therefore, it was easy to assume that Western games were better, a lot of them were new IPs as well. This still isn’t a reason to make the claims that these guys have made, it’s especially embarassing when you consider that the dude’s game took Super Paper Mario’s core mechanic.

While some Japanese devs absolutely chased certain trends that were popularized by Western games, at large I think you could argue that Japanese games were still overall better. I don’t think it’s a question of linear vs open world, a lot of Western games were definitely very linear, plus most open world games at the time barely ran on consoles. I think if you directly compare the two, Japanese games can still easily be on top. For example it’s easy to pick on Skyward Sword since you can compare it with how past games in its series are not as linear, the fact that Fi is this robotic companion is also prone to the claims of “insulting the player’s intelligence”. However, I don’t wanna hear anything about Red Steel 2 doing it better while Nintendo is washed. That game has every single interactable item glowing, before dropping it I thought I was still at the tutorial but I was already halfway through. Again SS is still a Zelda game, not many games in general offer a similar experience to that series. The list goes on and on. MGS4 has very good gameplay when you’re not sitting through cutscenes, and even then most other AAA blockbusters have a comparable amount of them. Even Metroid Other M, a game that chased the worst trends, is still more fun than most AAA schlock of the time, I mean it’s a much worse version of Fusion but it’s still a Metroid game. Meanwhile on the other side, you had people giving free passes to series like Assassin’s Creed which missed the point on having good and engaging game design from the get go, but had free passes because they were new IPs. Bioshock Infinite had many accolades yet it’s a very linear and repetitive arena shooter. The list goes on again, how many of the hyped Western games at the time still are discussed today, not much.
 
As a life-long fan of Japanese games in particular, this was a bad period that can see seen as a transitional one in retrospect. The success of Western games really went to some people's heads, including journalists. As a fan I did my part and supported the great Japanese developers that apparently got overshadowed. And yeah, I do think xenophobia played a key role in the negativity from that era. Glad it's mostly over.
 
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Quillion said:
Just to be clear, I think "linear bad" is a deplorable mindset that ignores the real issues (this for example) that are shared between linear and non-linear games, but I can at least accept that there's a sliver of truth to "linear bad" since humans are wired to dislike having their options taken away.
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I just want to focus on this a bit...I don't think there's any sliver of truth to "linear bad" to be honest. Linear games allow for a much more tightly balanced experience. For example, I love Dark Souls, and I loved the first one for its combat and it's interconnected world. But I also loved Sekiro, precisely because it was a much more tightly designed game. I loved Mario Oddyssey, but while playing it I missed more linear platforming challenges. And I loved Tropical Freeze even more!
In a way, I think linear vs open design is a good example of the differences in design philoshopies between the west and the east. Nintendo for example takes away a lot of player options, sometimes even too much (why can you switch the jump and run buttons in BotW but not configure the rest of the controls???), but in turn you get an incredibly polished, bomb-proof game. Why do we get incredible action games from Japan, but there are no western games that can truly stand toe to toe with the likes of DMC and Bayonetta? More linear design allows you to focus on the core of the game and squeeze it to the max.

Open games give you a thousand of options, but instead you may end up ruining the experience for yourself by overlevelling and making everything too easy. Or you may visit areas in a way that may make one area much harder than it should be and the next one too easy. And what's worse, sometimes designers use all these options as a clutch to finalize an incomplete design. Instead of balancing everything, they just throw more and more unlockables and skills. Not to speak of those games that just have 3 instances of different gameplay systems that you can experience in 20 minutes and that they then proceed to copy paste over a huge map so that you can have content for 60 hours.

IMHO, a good spot is a mix of both: Open world with handcrafted, linear segments (BotW is plagued with these). Something like what Roguelikes do now (Spelunky, Dead Cells, Enter the Gungeon...) where they author some challenges and then use level randomization to mix these handcrafted pieces in different ways. And this is why I think Japanese games are back in full power, because they have understood it, they have never forgotten that the gameplay was the basics of the experience, while the western developers keep on focusing on more content, more life-like experiences, more realism...and I think that players are catching up to that. For example, Horizon and its' sequel got a poor reception in comparison to BotW and Elden Ring.
 
These people, Phil Fish, Johnathan Blow, Keiji Inafune and Hideo Kojima just played there role when it came to the products they served. Phil Phish was some Xenophobic fool, Keiji Inafune a "business man" with clearly no business sense seeing his post-Mega Man-output, Johnathan Blow a pretentious fool being held up as a genius indie darling and Kojima? Don't know what's up with him.

Yes, the HD-transistion was hard for the Japanese industry, but the games being "outdated" and "soulless husks"? Come on, that was always dumb. And also very assholish towards the designers and devs working on those games.

Also, I had so much fun playing Japanese games back then so I don't even know what they are talking about.
 
It's no secret that Japan struggled with HD development in the late 00s because there was not enough documentation in Japanese among other things. So, the output was reduced and games that didn't quite live up to the standard were singled out.

The whole Fish incident always left a sour taste not because he thinks Japanese games were bad, which I disagree, but because he came across as making fun of the person asking the question.
 
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I doubt so. Diferent times and different problems i guess.

I think the entertainment ndustry will always be home to unstable people. Nowadays there is still that constant fight of weebs vs westaboos, western design vs japanese design and there are so many people from both sides trashing hard work because it differs from their vision. From games to animation, films, series, takes on genres, etc.

Crazy.
 
Nah not really

Inafune was kind of crowned as the new king when Mikami left, but despite having some success at first with things like Lost Planet and Dead Rising. However afterwards he started experimenting with outsourcing to western developers and other bad decisions led to him leaving Capcom. Took some time for them to recover, but hey after 2017 Capcom has been firing on all cylinders.

Phil Fish, while a good creator/developer, made himself look quite selfish and shortsighted. Especially how he behaved himself, he sounded like an edgy teenager posting on Gamefaqs.
 
This sentiment still exists, though it has mostly shifted to a sort of "narrative vs. gameplay" debate. You still see many Western fans complaining about how "gamey" Japanese releases are, as if it's inherently inferior.
 
The "fall" of Japanese developers that generation was pretty much confined exclusively to Square Enix; who were used as a microcosm for the entire Japanese industry, because they were Sony's most important partner during the PS1 and PS2 generations (and their "fall" lined up perfectly with the PS3's terrible start to the generation).

It was absolutely racism, mixed with the rise of western developers on consoles; migrating from PC to console.
 
Its no secret that many japanese developers struggled with hd hardware for a few years. Even nintendo went through this with the wii u to an extent. This is part of the reason the 3ds, psp, ds, wii, and ps2, were such a haven for jrpg’s even well into the life of the ps360. Thankfully many Japanese studios did manage to adapt, and now we have a treasure trove of great japanese content across the xbox one/series (yes the xbox has quite a few jrpg’s available now), the ps4/5, and the switch
 
I try to not think about Phil Fish if I can help it so I can't really answer your question OP
 
There was a lot of truth in regards to the phenomenon they were reacting to. There was not much truth in regards to what they actually said.
 
Its funny that the main stars of those conversations (Blow, Fish, Inafune) either quit game development, are outed as frauds or are pretentious, garbage human beings.

Its for you to decide who is what.
 
So, Fish said that in 2012, at the tail end of the PS3 / 360 generation, and I think there was certainly a kernel of truth to it. Which is why it got picked up. If he had said that in the PS2 era, people would have just chuckled and moved on, because it would have obviously been false / a joke.

But Japanese games had utterly dominated console gaming from the NES onwards, through to the PS2. Anyone who can't see how Japanese developers fell from the forefront of game design trends and from the technological cutting edge too would have to be willfully blind. It was an entire meme at the time how hard it was for them to transition to HD.

"There were still some great games coming out of Japan" isn't really the point. Of course there were. But they had been the world leaders, and then they very suddenly fell behind, due to changing public desires and tech debt etc. The quality output of companies like Konami and Capcom felt like it collapsed, and Nintendo had been struggling through the second half of the Wii's lifespan, which wasn't pretty.

I'd also argue that Japanese story-telling worked far better for most people in 2d or simple 3d visuals, where you could fill in the blanks with your imagination. Once you started animating and voice acting that stuff out, cultural differences that had been hidden by simplicity suddenly became very apparent and many Western people realized they felt alienated by those differences. I really believe that was a big part of Japanese games falling down the charts as tech progressed and fidelity improved.
 
The entire industry struggled with the transition to HD, a lot of teams all over the world went out of business failing to adapt. It took almost a decade for Japanese publishers/developers to stop try to emulate western studios and get back to what made them popular/successful before and, surprise, those things (largely) never stopped being popular.
 
Well sad. Some publishers and developers where stuch in old ways (digital rights management, onlien culture, late localization/ignoring outside markets, the to be expected higher cost of development for higher fidelity...)
But there was a lot of xenophobia and a lot of that hinged on different taste, where people that liked western style games more where like "japanese style games are obsolete"...instead of realizing that there are different audiences.

Western developers also had the benefit, that PC gaming was (especially in europe) even back then existing and alive, so they had their eyes earlier on skaling and more demanding tech. And the company structures did lend itself better to grow fast enough to compensate the higher workload.

But that had all less to do with the type of games that where made... and many of the worst japan duds there where where games that tried to incoperate western influences by force without realizing why they worked in western games...

TreIII said:
So in that light, I definitely agree it was a lot of racism, xenophobia and other bigoted behavior that was able to run rampant in the mainstream audiences and the press that catered to them. Overall, that era in gaming sucked if you were a fan of Japanese games.
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Just to add there: MANY of those aspects are specific influence of Anime culter on storytelling, and how games that where like anime seemed to fair better for them in japan. And anime culture is not japanese culture. But the more excentrik presentation / acting of some characters is. The stoid coolness is not the default go to character type i feel, like it was in western gaming (which, to be honest, also does not reflect the whole "western" (fu*ing bad term) culture)
 
There were definitely figures in that era that not only exaggerated the decline of Japanese game dev, but reveled in it with a xenophobic glee. Fish wasn't really xenophobic in that instance as much as it was his tendency to let his mouth run and cause trouble.

Inafune absolutely latched onto the notion as a way to puff himself up as the savior of Japan's game dev scene. We all know how that went.

What was more embarrassing was how members of the western press responded to the struggles Japanese studios endured in that era, and the absolute batshit takes that came from things like Ninja Theory's DmC, and how the studio tried to paint the original Dante as a flamboyant gay cowboy loser. There were people in the press that couldn't wrap their heads around the fact that Devil May Cry fans would hate a DmC that not only played worse, had worse characters, and had a story that was just dime-store satire of current events.
 
Last 5 GOTYS

2017 Zelda BoTW (JAPAN)
2018 GoW (USA)
2019 Sekiro (JAPAN)
2020 TLOU II (USA)
2021 It takes Two (USA)

Next 2 GOTYS

2022 Elden Ring? (JAPAN)
2023 Zelda ToTK? (JAPAN)

Right now Japanese game dev is in very great shape, they are competing side to side with American game dev.
 
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SMALLVILLE BOY said:
Last 5 GOTYS

2017 Zelda BoTW (JAPAN)
2018 GoW (USA)
2019 Sekiro (JAPAN)
2020 TLOU II (USA)
2021 IT takes Two (USA)

Next 2 GOTYS

2022 Elden Ring? (JAPAN)
2023 Zelda ToTK? (JAPAN)

Right now Japan is in very great shape.
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I feel like you have to go depeer than that to get a sense of the zeitgeist, but I don't disagree at all with your conclusion.

I'd probably look at the top 10 selling games (globally) each year and the top 10 games on metacritic or similar. I'd bet you'd see the rise and fall of Japan there pretty clearly.
 
To be completely fair, obviously it was a wide generalization which of course did not apply holistically, but those comments were made at a time a lot of Japanese developers were trying to pivot their franchises to more "western tastes" very unsuccessfully, making them gritty and shooty and realistic, not realizing the existing appeal of the franchises is what made them popular in the first place.

Since then, it seems they've realized the detriment of that pivot and many have returned to embracing the foundation of the IP and evolved it naturally, rather than awkwardly make it fit a niche to which it wasn't innately conducive.

Capcom may be the best example of this.

So was Fish wrong? His statement was certainly hyperbolic, but it wasn't 100% devoid of truth. The seventh gen was a rough time for Japanese devs. The west was taking bigger and bigger bites of the console pie, while they were trying to find a new identity for their projects, often taking the wrong cues.
 
Heron said:
I feel like you have to go depeer than that to get a sense of the zeitgeist, but I don't disagree at all with your conclusion.

I'd probably look at the top 10 selling games (globally) each year and the top 10 games on metacritic or similar. I'd bet you'd see the rise and fall of Japan there pretty clearly.
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Most recent TOP 5 Metacritic:

-Zelda BoTW (JAPAN 2017)- 97
-Mario Odissey (JAPAN 2017)- 97
-RDR 2 (USA 2018)-97
-Elden Ring (JAPAN 2022)- 96
-GoW (USA 2018)- 94
 
Pflaumenmus12 said:
Its funny that the main stars of those conversations (Blow, Fish, Inafune) either quit game development, are outed as frauds or are pretentious, garbage human beings.

Its for you to decide who is what.
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BTW I don't think Inafune is a fraud, he was just way out of his depth with the Might No9.

But yeah he didn't do himself any favors and possibly burned all bridges in the process.
 
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Jencks said:
This sentiment still exists, though it has mostly shifted to a sort of "narrative vs. gameplay" debate. You still see many Western fans complaining about how "gamey" Japanese releases are, as if it's inherently inferior.
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Oh yeah, that's the sentiment I do see sometimes.

It's just unfortunate that western games still rely on conventional storytelling though, something that makes the cracks in their "immersive" worlds show hard.

Zeal543 said:
Western games were suffering just as much with the exception of wRPGs which strangely had a renaissance in an otherwise abhorrent generation
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I know western games were trending towards the "linear cinematic shooter" around that time. Which is weird considering so many people criticized Japanese games for being linear too.

SMALLVILLE BOY said:
Most recent TOP 5 Metacritic:

-Zelda BoTW (JAPAN 2017)- 97
-Mario Odissey (JAPAN 2017)- 97
-RDR 2 (USA 2018)-97
-Elden Ring (JAPAN 2022)- 96
-GoW (USA 2018)- 94
Click to expand...

We're talking about back in the PS3/360/Wii era, not right now.
 
Quillion said:
Oh yeah, that's the sentiment I do see sometimes.

It's just unfortunate that western games still rely on conventional storytelling though, something that makes the cracks in their "immersive" worlds show hard.



I know western games were trending towards the "linear cinematic shooter" around that time. Which is weird considering so many people criticized Japanese games for being linear too.



We're talking about back in the PS3/360/Wii era, not right now.
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Yes I know, Im talking about how Japan rise from their ashes to compete side by side with America.
 
I've always believed the whole "Japanese games just suck!" attitude came from people uninterested in handheld gaming or gaming on hardware that isn't cutting edge in some way. Because if there's one thing that gets ignored about that generation, it's the change that occured in the Japanese market with handheld devices becoming so much bigger than consoles ever were.

As a result, some of the more prestigious series effectively became handheld only. Dragon Quest and Kingdom Hearts come to mind. Then you have series like Monster Hunter becoming big, only for it to be ignored because "silly handhelds". That caused a lot of influential series to disappear from a lot of folks their minds.

New IP? Japan generated plenty that generation, but most of it was handheld so it got ignored. MGS4 was a massive launch and had lots of coverage from outlets, but Peace Walker? Handheld, so nope. For that whole generation, most of my gaming news came from gaming forums because most gaming outlets have always treated anything handheld related as an afterthought. Those sentiments bleed through to the development community as well, I believe. A lot of that still hasn't changed even with the Switch, sadly.

But was there any truth to those sentiments? Only if you focused on the HD-twins that generation. Which most people in this industry do for some bizarre reason. Everywhere else you saw Japanese design changing and improving in all sorts of interesting ways. The DS especially was a delight in so many ways because so many JP devs took chances on that system with games like 999, Ghost Trick, Layton, Etrian Oddysey or TWEWY.
 
Jencks said:
This sentiment still exists, though it has mostly shifted to a sort of "narrative vs. gameplay" debate. You still see many Western fans complaining about how "gamey" Japanese releases are, as if it's inherently inferior.
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Yeah, additionally now instead of saying something is “too Japanese”, people say it’s “too anime”. This sentiment never really went away, not completely.
 
Looking back, the 360/PS3 era was such a fever NIGHTMARE dream. I'm so glad it's behind us. I do not miss it one bit.

Their comments are so funny because, excluding WRPGs, I think games were as homogeneous and as linear as ever
 
Marizza Pia Spiritto said:
Looking back, the 360/PS3 era was such a fever NIGHTMARE dream. I'm so glad it's behind us. I do not miss it one bit.

Their comments are so funny because, excluding WRPGs, I think games were as homogeneous and as linear as ever
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That gen gave us Brown Overload. Clothes? Brown. Landscape? Brown. Water? Brown. Sky? Brown.

Thanks, western devs!
 
It's funny to me that at the time, Japanese games were ragged on for being "linear", when almost every other game coming out of the West was a very linear affair, usually to do with the obsession over games needing to be "movie-like" at the time (which also makes the "joyless affair" comment so funny, because some of these games were taking themselves way too seriously and had this dour tone all over). Yes, I had issues with Skyward Sword and the linearity was one of them, but I wouldn't have minded it if it wasn't such a bloody slog while also bashing me over the head with information about what just happened all over again after loading up the game each day.

And no, I don't think there ever was any merit to what Inafune specifically said. I could go on and on about it, probably, but the last thing we heard of the dude is that he's an N/F/T huckster now, so I believe we can leave it at that. And I'd go so far to even say that the stuff coming out of Japan on the "HD twins" was, across the board, way better that it was made out to be at the time. Yes, that includes the stuff game reviewers especially ragged on back then.

EDIT: I'll say this about Kojima, I believe at the time he was sort of sick of the way Konami was beginning to lock him in to MGS and when Silent Hills fell through he decided to quit.
 
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Ctrl+F "Itagaki"

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REALLY? Tomonobu Itagaki was perhaps the most famous for how he slagged off on Japanese development culture, design, you name it. Probably the most prominent voice on the subject, even before Inafune joined the chorus. And of course, both being Japanese developers, it was like what they were saying had an inherent air of legitimacy.

But yeah, it does not escape my notice that nearly all of the critics of Japanese game design in that time have mostly vanished now.
 
Reminds me when a guy on a french retro gaming forum was the only one claiming that Inafune was terrible and everyone mocked him.

Boy, if only we knew…
 
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I'd say practically speaking, none.

Granted, the late 2000s/early 2010s "early HD Era" wasn't the best time for Japanese studios. The PS3 in particular stumbling early out of the gate and the rising costs of HD costs just left many stranded. There was a real phenomenon to what Phil Fish et al. were reacting to, but the discourse never felt honest to me. I'll be frank, the queerphobia--think Ninja Theory's "Dante Isn't Gay" Conference--rather than linearity is always what sticks with me over the years; in no small part because my own coming out was also in the late 2000s and how bishies/ikemen--e.g. images like these, and by extension many anime/JRPG/manga series--were downright formative to discovering my queer self. Nor do I really agree Ninja Theory's is a sentiment of the past; why do Western studios or character designs specifically for Western audiences (E.g. Papa NieR) try so hard to avoid prettyboys, for example?

That particular "prettyboy" discussion symbolizes how I see the bigger picture: that 90s Western Gamers(TM) just wanted more games catered uniquely to their interests or fizzle into nothingness--interests which at that time included a lot of hyperrealistic brown/bloom graphics, hypermasculine character design, online+multiplayer, nonlinear games, and narrow focus on handhelds over consoles. Chasing those trends is emphatically not the solution; where studios have found success in recent years, it's been leaning into their strengths instead. And also, so many Western developers struggled just as hard in the early HD era. All those comments managed to successfully spur is a lot of xenophobia and racism while simutalneously not providing meaningful insights. That's how I see it, anyway.
 
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Japanese games on consoles saw a slump as they struggled with the simultaneous curveballs of the HD transition, the Cell CPU, and wrapping their heads around the Wii.

Hardware closer to their traditional wheelhouse (the DS and PSP) saw an incredible showing from them, but handhelds often tend to be ignored in western discourse and retrospectives.

The answer is that on consoles, Japanese games definitely suffered that gen, but the specific rhetoric that was being spewed, about how those games were obsolete, how the market had grown out of Japanese games and developers, about how Japanese games and developers could never hope to catch up with western ones and never regain their market importance, all that? That was bullshit and vaguely xenophobic/insecure (depending on who was saying it).

In the end it was a moot point because they came roaring back on the PS4 and then the Switch as far as consoles go.
 
Terrell said:
Ctrl+F "Itagaki"

0 results found

REALLY? Tomonobu Itagaki was perhaps the most famous for how he slagged off on Japanese development culture, design, you name it. Probably the most prominent voice on the subject, even before Inafune joined the chorus. And of course, both being Japanese developers, it was like what they were saying had an inherent air of legitimacy.

But yeah, it does not escape my notice that nearly all of the critics of Japanese game design in that time have mostly vanished now.
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Itagaki had his bones to pick with Tecmo brass, including getting hit with a sexual harassment suit by a former coworker that he successfully defended himself against in court. But he was also a blowhard with a very theatrical public persona. It's part of why some western outlets tripped over themselves to talk to him.

Of course, he left Tecmo/Koei Tecmo over a payment dispute, but everything he's done since has fallen flat, including Devil's Third and the PC stand-alone release of the DT multiplayer. His most recent venture is a super-shady development of an NFT game. Not unlike Inafune in that regard.

sir_AnGer said:
It's funny to me that at the time, Japanese games were ragged on for being "linear", when almost every other game coming out of the West was a very linear affair, usually to do with the obsession over games needing to be "movie-like" at the time (which also makes the "joyless affair" comment so funny, because some of these games were taking themselves way too seriously and had this dour tone all over). Yes, I had issues with Skyward Sword and the linearity was one of them, but I wouldn't have minded it if it wasn't such a bloody slog while also bashing me over the head with information about what just happened all over again after loading up the game each day.

And no, I don't think there ever was any merit to what Inafune specifically said. I could go on and on about it, probably, but the last thing we heard of the dude is that he's an N/F/T huckster now, so I believe we can leave it at that. And I'd go so far to even say that the stuff coming out of Japan on the "HD twins" was, across the board, way better that it was made out to be at the time. Yes, that includes the stuff game reviewers especially ragged on back then.

EDIT: I'll say this about Kojima, I believe at the time he was sort of sick of the way Konami was beginning to lock him in to MGS and when Silent Hills fell through he decided to quit.
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Kojima's story is a lot more complex than that. He was the VP of Konami's video game division. If you look at the output of the company's console/handheld games in the later part of his tenure, his games (i.e. MGS4 and 5, etc) were huge blockbuster games that demanded massive budgets while the rest of Konami's output, including Castlevania, was left with smaller budgets and scraps, or were outsourced.

Koji Igarashi and his team did great work with Castlevania on the DS in that era, but Judgement on the Wii was very obviously a title with budget issues. And Igarashi was working on a proper PS360 Castlevania when it got canned, and he was moved over to Konami's mobile game division while Kojima took Castlevania over and gave it to MercurySteam.

So there were certainly things Konami did that screwed over Kojima, but Kojima shared responsibility, and part of the situation was a result of his own actions.

On the other hand, I have never heard a single negative piece of news regarding Igarashi or his leadership, and Bloodstained turned out to be a fun game and ode to the genre and franchise he's most known for.
 
There is some truth.

While in that era there were many amazing japanese games, often hidden gems at the time, the big ones had some stumbles or rather they went in different troubling directions.

If you think FF XIII as good as it is, it's also the least popular Final Fantasy, Resident Evil 5-6 while huge successes the quality dipped there, Dragon Quest went full MMO with X and never to the west, Ninja Gaiden 3 vanilla was a bit of a mess, and yeah Zelda also with Skyward Sword was a bit too formulaic in some aspects.

So they needed to reinvent themselves which i think it happened years later with a true reinassance for Japanese games if you look at publishers like Capcom before vs now.

Where those dudes failed is on how they acted like Western games were way better which are not, especially in the big productions: from big super janky and buggy open worlds that will get fixed maybe 2-3 years after launch to this obsession for realistic graphics that inevitably won't age as well as something more stylized games.

Also look at their careers now: Inafune has achieved nothing since he left Capcom, Phil Fish is too proud of himself he's not making games anymore (after making only one), Jonathan Blow also hasn't released anything in years (and i also feel The Witness while great it's really a modern take on Myst, he didn't exactly reinvent the wheel).

At the time indies were the new hot trend, so that allowed few as...les (sorry for the insult but yeah that was their behaviour) to rise up and start acting like gods, until someone eventually put them in their place.
 
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@Hailinel Oh, I didn't know that about Kojima. Yeah that kinda changes my view on his involvement with things at Konami.

RenHojo23 said:
Dragon Quest went full MMO with X and never to the west
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There was more to this than just the MMO bit. Right after the DS port of Hand of the Heavenly Bride came out, Square Enix all but dropped the series's publishing in the West, leaving Nintendo to finish publishing the two DS games that followed (Sentinels of the Starry Skies and the port of Realms of Revelation/Reverie) after which the series lay dormant until around 2015, 2016, when the series resumed publishing in the West with Builders, Heroes and the 3DS remakes of Fragments of the Forgotten Past and Journey of the Cursed King. The reasons are unclear and Square Enix has stated that series's lack of popularity in the West was due to its "outdated systems" (until ofc they ended up proven wrong), but another hypothesis I have picked up is that SQEX was unhappy with the sales of DQM Joker 2, probably brought on by people wanting to wait for an announcement of the expanded "Professional" edition in the West, which either was announced for or already out in Japan by the time DQMJ2's regular release made it overseas, which was a key factor in the series being dropped (and Nintendo likely not wanting to or not having the expertise in setting up a MMO).

RenHojo23 said:
If you think FF XIII as good as it is, it's also the least popular Final Fantasy
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I wouldn't call it the least popular, I'd say that's either II or Mystic Quest. It also had some development troubles that were very apparent in the final product, likely brought on by a fairly hands-off production style and Toriyama's lack of experience as a director as well as trying to fit into a multi-game universe.
 
Not really, no. A good chunk of the Japanese industry went through a slump at the time (made more apparent by the difficulties of transitioning to the HD era) but not nearly to the degree of claiming that it was over for them.

In hindsight, the whole thing reminds me of when a popular/elite sportsperson goes through a bad streak and both fans and experts alike start claiming that they peaked, that they're through and that this is it. Then the next week they play as usual once again and everyone shuts up.
 
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My feeling has always been that the era was a low point across the board, so the focus on Japanese games was weird. Low-key xenophobia, yes, but I also think American exceptionalism plays into it - you see it across lots of media, people can't conceive of foreign products or media being on the same level (consider Academy voters not watching foreign nominations or getting angry at The Lego Movie being snubbed while "obscure Chinese fuckin' things that nobody even saw" got nominated).

Stephen 776 said:
I'd say practically speaking, none.

Granted, the late 2000s/early 2010s "early HD Era" wasn't the best time for Japanese studios. The PS3 in particular stumbling early out of the gate and the rising costs of HD costs just left many stranded. There was a real phenomon to what Phil Fish et al. were reacting to, but the discourse never felt honest to me. I'll be frank, the queerphobia--think Ninja Theory's "Dante Isn't Gay" Conference--rather than linearity is always what sticks with me over the years; in no small part because my own coming out was also in the late 2000s and how bishies/ikemen--e.g. images like these, and by extension many anime/JRPG/manga series, were downright formative to discovering my queer self. Nor do I really agree Ninja Theory's is a sentiment of the past; why do Western studios or character designs specifically for Western audiences (E.g. Papa NieR) try so hard to avoid prettyboys, for example?

That particular "prettyboy" discussion symbolizes how I see the bigger picture; that 90s Western Gamers(TM) just wanted more games catered uniquely to their interests or fizzle into nothingness--interests which at that time included a lot of hyperrealistic brown/bloom graphics, hypermasculine character design, online+multiplayer, nonlinear games, and narrow focus on handhelds over consoles. Chasing those trends is emphatically not the solution; where studios have found success in recent years, it's been leaning into their strengths instead. And also, so many Western developers struggled just as hard in the early HD era. All those comments managed to successfully spurris a lot of xenophobia and racism while simutalneously not providing meaningful insights. That's how I see it, anyway.
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Really good points, especially regarding the queerphobia and desire people had for hypermasculine 'realism'. That's something that stretches back into previous eras as well (Vaan had the straight boys losing their minds), but I feel it's really come home to roost and informed a lot of resistance to some art styles and character designs often seen in Japanese games.
 
sir_AnGer said:
@Hailinel Oh, I didn't know that about Kojima. Yeah that kinda changes my view on his involvement with things at Konami.
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Yeah. Regarding Kojima specifically, the story was always more complex, but it was very easy to paint Konami as a villain when all that news started coming out in 2014-15. Kojima has the benefit of the cult of celebrity, where his fans could defend him and people like Geoff Keighley were eager to defend him in the media.

But it's also true that MGSV, at the time it shipped, had a budget of about $80 million, and if Kojima was left unchecked, it would have cost a lot more money and time. Konami forced his hand to get it out because the exorbitant budget was going to get harder and harder to make up. The entire reason Ground Zeroes was its own release was to see some sort of cost recoup while all of this money was being spent. (And for what it's worth, Konami has been consistently profitable since Kojima's departure, and for reasons that are broader and more nuanced than the fans' pachinko scapegoat.)

As far as Silent Hills was concerned, that was destined to be another Kojima mega-budget blockbuster. And apparently things were complicated by PT of all things. Norman Reedus's Silent Hills contract was apparently not finalized before PT released, and when the internet blew up over the game being a Silent Hills teaser, it made negotiations with Reedus more difficult and costly. (Also consequently, Reedus's likeness in PT is a major reason why the demo was eventually pulled from PSN.)
 
Hailinel said:
Kojima's story is a lot more complex than that. He was the VP of Konami's video game division. If you look at the output of the company's console/handheld games in the later part of his tenure, his games (i.e. MGS4 and 5, etc) were huge blockbuster games that demanded massive budgets while the rest of Konami's output, including Castlevania, was left with smaller budgets and scraps, or were outsourced.

Koji Igarashi and his team did great work with Castlevania on the DS in that era, but Judgement on the Wii was very obviously a title with budget issues. And Igarashi was working on a proper PS360 Castlevania when it got canned, and he was moved over to Konami's mobile game division while Kojima took Castlevania over and gave it to MercurySteam.

So there were certainly things Konami did that screwed over Kojima, but Kojima shared responsibility, and part of the situation was a result of his own actions.

On the other hand, I have never heard a single negative piece of news regarding Igarashi or his leadership, and Bloodstained turned out to be a fun game and ode to the genre and franchise he's most known for.
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Reading this definitely paints a not-so-nice picture of Kojima. Sounds like his wish of being a movie director in games could have destroyed Konami. That whole Game Awards tribut Geoff Keighley did is also one-sided, even though I do believe Konami didn't treat Kojima to cool. However, the western press love to treat him like some dev celebrity, so he can do no wrong.
 
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