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Inafune calls Japanese industry 'very closed-minded'
by Steve Watts, Mar 08, 2012 9:15am PSTFormer Capcom designer Keiji Inafune has been vocal about Japanese game development for quite a while. The creator of Mega Man left Capcom amid sharp criticism that the Japanese games industry was creatively stagnating. Inafune's talk at this year's Game Developers Conference, titled "The Future of Japanese Games," was no less critical of his home turf.
"Back in the day our Japanese games were used to winning and achieved major success," he said, according to a report from Gamasutra. "By not accepting that fact we have arrived at the tragic state of Japanese games. The Japanese game industry has become very closed-minded."
Inafune said that people in Japan were critical of his comments, but these days they are "beginning to run out of steam" and see some merit to his prediction. He claims he wanted to "light a fire under the Japanese game industry before it was too late."
"I am ashamed to admit it but when I travel overseas I feel as if Japanese games are becoming a blast from the past," he said. "They have become great memories and little more. But there is a limit to how much business you can do trading on past glories. We rarely see new creations from Japan. So we stick to our memories and we ship an HD version."
He suggests that the Japanese industry should create new brands and foster talent that will be interested in creative control. "Thanks to [our predecessors], here we are today. But leaders of the Japanese game industry must think about developing and rebuilding the brands, not simply maintaining or sustaining the brands."
Inafune is getting back into original game creation himself, having announced Kaio King of Pirates and the social mobile game The Island of Dr. Momo.
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Keiji Inafune gives a GDC talk on Japanese game development, suggesting that it needs to build new brands rather than relying on the old ones.
Keiji Inafune gives a GDC talk on Japanese game development, suggesting that it needs to build new brands rather than relying on the old ones. : Shacknews
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The very innovations you pointed out, are also innovations in a genre that most Japanese gamers have no interest in. Namely, first person shooters. I wouldn't expect a western developer to innovate (or even attempt to create) a modern fighting game like Tekken or Street Fighter, any more than I would expect a Japanese developer to create or innovate on the next GTA or Halo.
Not because Japan or the West doesn't have the "know how"... obviously Valve or Blizzard or someone else could create a Soul Caliber. And Japan could easily license the Unreal Engine to make an FPS, and iterate it into something decent (see Platnum Games' Vanquish). But the original DESIRE to even create said genres in said territories doesn't even occur to the developers.
So if you look within those territory specific genres, I do think you see some good innovation. Street Fighter 4 is this generation, and is really the first modern fighter with online play. Looking at the RPG genre, Final Fantasy has a incredibly innovative combat system. Another would be Monster Hunter, a game not popular in the west, but hugely popular here (and with good reason). Dark Souls is another. Ninja Gaiden, Bayonetta, Metal Gear Solid (which had AMAZING online play BTW), and El Shaddai. There are also other niche titles like Persona and Deadly Premonition. Pixel Junk series and uhh... god, I can't remember the name... The Rez revamp.
I would argue that a lot of the games I mentioned have something unique and original, or even innovative, going for them. BUT, many are also not big sellers to the U.S. mainstream audiences... and so I think people forget that they exist.
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