Cultural Dissonance: Musings on the State of Modern Japanese Game Development

Well, another E3 has come and gone. We, the gaming masses, got our share of debacles (apparently, anything anyone from Microsoft presented/said/touched/looked at), highlights (the straight minute of cheers at Sony’s press conference; Aisha Taylor’s hosting of UbiSoft’s press conference), and surprise reveals.

 

The most surprising reveals of the show, for me, belonged to Square Enix. Instead of rolling out yet another iteration of the failed experiment that was Final Fantasy XIII, Sqeenix decided to tell everyone that Final Fantasy Versus XII hadn’t died, but had instead metamorphosed into Final Fantasy XV, earning full-on numbered installment status. They then followed this shock (many had assumed that Final Fantasy Versus XIII had been all but cancelled) with another reveal no one was expecting: Kingdom Hearts III.

These reveals are, in my opinion, important for a few reasons. One: they were actual reveals. There was no prior knowledge that these games existed, let alone that they would be at E3. Sure, there was speculation, but speculation isn’t the same thing as, say, knowing that Call of Duty: Ghosts was going to be shown at E3, because it had been shown previously at the Xbox One reveal. The second reason these reveals are important is because they are Japanese games. Ever since the start of the current hardware generation (Xbox 360, PS3, Wii), Japanese games seem to have been in decline. So much so that Keiji Inafune, Mega Man’s creator, has gone on record as saying that Japanese developers need to learn from Western studios. This statement, coupled with Phil Fish’s infamous declaration that modern Japanese games ‘suck’, give all of the appearances of an accurate barometer reading of the state of Japanese game development. As seen in North America.

That’s really the problem here. Let me say, here and now, that I’m not making justifications for crappy games. Resident Evil 6 is, quite frankly, a mess; the Dead or Alive series has seriously gone past its sell-by date (and its representation of women has always been inappropriate and uncomfortable, and I felt that way as a teenager); Tekken Tag Tournament 2, while fun, is basically the same game as its 2000-era predecessor. However, there is an issue with taking games like these as the whole of Japanese game development that is part of a more insidious whole.

One thing that needs to be kept in mind when making blanket statements about things like an entire country’s game development industry is that we North Americans are not getting a proper representation of that industry. Instead, we are getting the games that North American distributors are willing to localize and bring to North American markets. Of course, Capcom is going to bring Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and Resident Evil 6 to North American audiences; these franchises are guaranteed sellers. However, look at the fight that Wii owners had to put up in order to get XenoBlade Chronicles, The Last Story, and Pandora’s Tower brought to these shores, and The Last Story is a game by Hironobu Sakaguchi, creator of the Final Fantasy series. Even then, XenoBlade Chronicles was given such a limited release, that there is another petition to get more copies of the game printed. There are a few companies which make their names on giving high-quality localizations of Japanese games to North American players (primarily Nippon Ichi Games/Atlus. Thumbs up), but for the most part, which games make the transition is left in the hands of the large publishers.

This state of affairs belies the underlying issue with the perception of the imminent death of Japanese game development. The video game is the only major media form whose content has not been dictated and dominated by North American, more specifically, American culture for most of the 20^th century/its existence. Sure, the Lumieres and Melies were there at the start of cinema, but they were smacked down so hard by Thomas Edison that they just stopped making films while the form was still in its infancy. Especially after World War II, since the Hollywood production centre hadn’t been ravaged by, well, the war, it was primed to become the leading producer and distributor of films in the world. This set-up would allow for increased profits and an inculcation of American ideals in all corners of the globe. Same thing with television. Since North American TV production companies could earn back the costs of each show during its initial North American airing, those programs could then be sold to other countries at a fraction of the cost it would take to produce local content (a situation that is still in effect today). The worst practice, however, belongs to radio. As anyone who does not live in North America can probably attest to, Voice of America is designed to bring free American content and propaganda to foreign nations in order to make them friendly to the U.S.

The point of that history lesson is so that I can contrast those other media with video games. Even when Atari was the biggest video game company in the world, some of the biggest games of the era were produced in Japan. Pac-Man; Donkey Kong; Space Invaders; Frogger; Galaga: all Japanese. After the 1983 video game crash and the rise of Nintendo, Japanese influence became even more ubiquitous with video games, to the point where, if you wanted your video game console to succeed, you needed to have Japanese game developers making games for it. Then, something happened in the ‘90s, ironically due to a Japanese developer. Final Fantasy VII, in the process of becoming one of the biggest games in history, got a $100 million dollar marketing budget and an advertising campaign that encompassed TV, movie trailers, and print ads. Suddenly, video games had been thrust into the mainstream.  They weren’t just seen as toys anymore.

Japanese development remained vital to the industry, but with video games going mainstream, that was primed to change. The perception around 2001-2002 was that the Xbox was primed for failure, despite its push for mainstream credibility, because it could not gain a foothold in Japan, and was having trouble attracting Japanese developers, as a result. As history has shown, however, it did not fail and its successor became an unbridled success. The reason for this situation is because, as Microsoft was pushing for mainstream credibility, and getting it in North America, the major media corporations started investing in video game companies. For example, did you know that Activision is primarily owned by Vivendi Universal? It’s okay if you didn’t. Activision does not publicize it anywhere on its website.

The point is, we live in an era of media conglomeration, and those conglomerates are predominantly American-owned (i.e. Disney; Viacom; etc.). As such, video games have become subject to the same focus on American content as all of the other media these conglomerates produce. Oh, and before you say “But Disney imports Studio Ghibli films without changing them”, ostensibly, yes, they do. However, they also tend to dub them before giving them a studio release, and let’s just say that it was no coincidence that a Jonas brother got a voice-acting job in the North American release of Ponyo.

To sum up what I’m saying: video games are now subject to the same colonialist attitudes which are applied to other forms of media, and the perception we, as an audience, are getting about Japanese game development is skewed as a result.  Oh, and please feel free to debate with me about this concept in the comments, as I’m always interested in other opinions.  Just, y’know, actual debate; not name-calling or insult-throwing.