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Weekend Confirmed Episode 57
by Garnett Lee, Apr 22, 2011 11:00am PDTLike millions of happy gamers, the Weekend Confirmed crew eagerly jumped back into the joys of testing in Portal 2. But there's a lot more to keep guests EGMi's Andrew Pfister and Billy Berghammer, and Jeff and Garnett busy. Mortal Kombat has them in fighting spirits and a full report from Bethesda's recent spring showcase includes a deep look at the Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Prey 2. There's also news of the next Wii hardware, codenamed "Cafe," and the brouhaha over Portal 2's ARG in the news before closing things out with Finishing Moves.
Weekend Confirmed Ep. 57: 04/22/2011
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If you're viewing this in the GameCenter application, you can play Weekend Confirmed Episode 57 directly.
Weekend Confirmed comes in four segments to make it easy to listen to in segments or all at once. Here's the timing for this week's episode:
- Whatcha' Been Playin Part 1: Start: 00:00:00 End: 00:31:18
- Whatcha' Been Playin Part 2: Start: 00:33:04 End: 01:08:29
- The Warning: Start: 01:09:31 End: 01:42:42
- Featured Music "Ahead on Our Way (FF7 Cover)" by Haunted Shores: 01:42:42 End: 01:45:39
- Front Page news: Start: 01:45:39 End: 02:26:42
This week's featured music is the track "Ahead on Our Way (FF7 Cover)" by Haunted Shores. Haunted Shores is Mark Holcomb (guitar) and Misha Mansoor (guitar and programming) and they are an ethnically confused project based in Washington DC. Hear more from them on their Soundcloud and Bandcamp pages.
Original music in the show by Del Rio. Get his latest Album, The Wait is Over on iTunes. Check out more, including the Super Mega Worm mix and other mash-ups on his ReverbNation page or Facebook page, and follow him on twitter delriomusic.
Jeff can also be seen on The Totally Rad Show. They've gone daily so there's a new segment to watch every day of the week!
Remember to join the Official Facebook Weekend Confirmed Page and add us to your Facebook routine. We'll be keeping you up with the latest on the show there as well.
Comments
Shitty title aside, I don't see any problem with a Japanese developer tackling western mythology or genres.
I personally get the sense that there's a segment of the gaming population that just reveres the Japanese development community, more for the memories from their childhood then the products they're actually putting out these days.
Last Guardian looks great. But I also think Japanese games are usually hampered by bone-headed design decisions, and there are a lot of people seemingly willing to give these developers a pass on the grouns of 'cultural differences' or eccentricity.
Bad game design is bad game design.
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The other thing you have to consider is that Japanese developers still have their home audience to sell to. The best article I've ever read on the differences between gaming cultures was published at 1up back in 2007: http://www.1up.com/features/clash-cultures
It goes into a lot of things about how Japanese developers instinctively look at save systems as something static and never imagined anything else. Things like camera systems and how most Japanese gamers apparently don't like having to mess around with a movable camera in their games.
A lot of Japanese developers are increasingly aware of the growing division between cultures. The director of Dragon Quest IX originally wanted to make the battle system real time, but Japanese fans lashed out at him, and he kept it turn-based, but still retained some character building elements inspired by Diablo and Elder Scrolls. It's starting to reach a point where they have to sell to two different audiences that want two completely different things.
People like Square Enix president Yoichi Wada have been campaigning to try to sell western games to Japanese gamers in some kind of effort to "show them the light," but it isn't working. They have a saying over there: "Yo-ge, Kuso-ge," which literally means "Western game, Shitty game." Developers over there have gotten over it but the audience they have to sell to hasn't.
All that said, I think you can fault Japan a little bit for evolving so little over the years. Even if they don't adopt some "western conventions," at least evolving in some form would be nice. Sometimes I feel like Japanese gaming has stayed relatively the same since the Super NES, and they've just been offering new content in the same user interfaces since then. A lot of the content is still excellent, but you have to get through an antiquated filter to enjoy it.
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