Japanese Development In Danger?
Silent Hill's Akira Yamaoka seems the think so. What makes this a little more interesting is that he seems to think the threat is coming from North America. Here's what he said to QJ.net in a recent interview:
We often see creative games of all flavors from the land of the rising sun, yet according to Silent Hill 5's composer and producer, Japan is falling behind in the technical aspect of game development. "I look at what American developers are doing and I think wow... Japan is in trouble," he concluded.
Regarding prowess in graphics and ability to execute a game technically, I can see where he believes Japan is trailing behind a little. While American developers have become a lot more creative in recent years, I still think Japan is the land of most of the brilliantly creative games in the industry. So, is Japan's game development in jeopardy? If games are nothing more to you than eye candy yes. Unfortunately, there seem to be a lot of gamers out there where graphics are the single most important aspect of a game. We'll just have to wait and see what happens, but I'm sure Japan will have no problem "catching up." Opinions?
Silent Hill 5 producer says Japan game development is in trouble [QJ.net]
[via EvilAvatar]
Super Timsy
Posted to Video Games on 18 December 2007
· Comments (3)
Other stuff like this: akira yamaoka, japan, japanese game development, north america
I think he underestimate Creativity in the Creative vs Technical Ability war.
Crysis is easily the single best technical achievement in terms of graphics this year (and there have been a few such as Gears of Wars, Unreal Tournament and Oblivion), however, that does not make Crysis a great game. Super Mario became one of the highlights of the year because of its creativity in gameplay and not for its graphical prowess.
Although graphics (as well as AI and physics) are still important, they do not determine all in this day and age. They do make an incredible first impression (if done right) but most of us know that it is the whole package that counts.
I think you also have to take quality in writing into account, of which Japanese games have kinda dropped the ball the last couple of years.
With the exception of games like Metal Gear Solid 3 and FFXII, I can count the amount of games with quality writing on one hand. Meanwhile, we're getting games like Portal, Half Life 2 expansions, BioShock, Silent Hill Origins (yeah, it's from the UK, but still), Assassin's Creed, Mass Effect...
This used to not be the case, especially in the RPG genre. Hopefully things will change, and the intelligent writers in Japan will come back out of the woodwork to throw down some seriously grippy stories.
I think he was being modest, and everyone took it way too seriously.