D
Deleted member 3315
Guest
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 Were Japanese games really outdated back then?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And while I can't find anything through Google now, I do see a little bit of the "Japanese games have outdated design" mentality if rarely.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.
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 Were Japanese games really outdated back then?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.