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[kokujin]

Shmups.

I miss my spaceship shooters

I never noticed this until you brought it up.Almost all of Cave's recent releases have been like this.Makes me wonder if Japanese people would still play if they had an old fashioned space theme.

 

[Vamphuntr]

Lots of clichés in there... It's not like someone will localize loli games anyway. True some niche publishers are pandering to hardcore niche fans to survive but it's not like the big games from SE, Konami, Nintendo and Capcom contain such materials. Even if these niche games weren't pandering to a certain audience, we wouldn't have gotten them anyway.

Change of tastes and development time are probably good answer to the question.

 

[Emitan]

Shmups.

I miss my spaceship shooters

Why have a spaceship shooting aliens when you can have an 8 year old loli riding a broom stick fighting FROGS?!

 

[Beth Cyra]

Nah. While bald space marines/etc. are generic and forgettable, lolis are aggressively awful, like what Erik Larsen is to comic books. That hideous style has ruined a lot of japanese gaming for me (RPGs especially). Same with anime by and large. Man, I miss the sci-fi, horror and cyberpunk styled 80s and early 90s before that obnoxiously fluffy shit seemed to take over everything.

What RPGS exactly have had this Moe shit?

Maybe a few but in general JRPGS haven't really been affected by this.

 

[a Master Ninja]

Can the people complaining about moe please give examples of series that were "ruined" due to moe-ification? Almost every Japanese game I can think of with a token moe character are generally otaku centric franchises to begin with (Disgaea, Ar Tonelico, Tales, etc).

Each iteration of Soul Calibur adds younger characters with bigger eyes. To compensate, they give Ivy bigger tits.

These characters didn't cause each game to be worse than the one before, but it is a symptom of how the team's priorities have shifted.
SC1=fighting engine and graphics
SC4=dress up and whatever this is:

 

[EternalGamer]

I have to wonder, is it really so bad to cater to an younger audience? I mean, yeah, it's all great to reach to other audiences and all if you're confident about it but there's nothing really bad to sticking to what you know either.

I mean, I get the need for games for "older audiences," but... eh. I dunno what I'm trying to say here.

There is nothing wrong with it. It is just that you are alienating a large possible base. And pretty soon there will be way more gamers over 25 than there will be under 25 since most people (at least in Western culture) continue to play games.

But really, it just sucks for those of us that grew up with Japanese games and appreciated them. We don't want to be stuck playing games made for 13 year olds. I mean, I actually liked Final Fantasy 13 because of the battle system and the beautiful art and music but that dialog, those characters, and that story was fucking depressing. I'm a grown man and I'm playing shit that is designed for Saturday morning cartoons. Every JRPG I've played this generation has had that problem. The closest one to avoid it was Lost Odyssey and it was really only great by comparison to how bad the others were.

 

[chickdigger802]

how much I'd give to see Reggie announce Love plus + during e3 2012.

Where would that fit on the inverse megaton scale?

 

[truly101]

What does any of this have to do with Japan's shrinking console game market? Western games don't have to do anything with that, you still have Japanese developed games that do fine in the West. Its not what it was in the PS1 and PS2 days but its not like they are rare either.

 

[IoCaster]

Western games weren't always amazing. They changed to match certain Japanese designs.

What the hell are you talking about? They were amazing to me and the ones I like haven't changed to match anything Japanese. As a long time PC gamer I've always had great games to play on the best platform with the best controller setup.

One thing I can say is that I've never claimed that JP games are shit. They don't generally have any appeal for me, but I can definitely see that some of the high profile AAA titles are excellent in quality and design. The problems I've had with them are mostly due to janky tank control schemes and old arcade engine limitations that dictate save points rather than save anywhere. The stylistic stuff can be a bit off-putting to a certain degree, but not inherently disqualifying. *shrug*

 

[EternalGamer]

What the hell are you talking about? They were amazing to me and the ones I like haven't changed to match anything Japanese. As a long time PC gamer I've always had great games to play on the best platform with the best controller setup.
*

He is probably talking about in the console world and/or doesn't know about the history of PC games' development. And it's true that Western console games used to be pretty terrible, but that was because all the talent was focused on making PC games. Now that same talent just makes games for both consoles and PCs simultaneously.

 

[Nirolak]

What RPGS exactly have had this Moe shit?

Maybe a few but in general JRPGS haven't really been affected by this.

I think it's more of a symptom of there being way less JRPGs on consoles, so people who only play on consoles see a vastly higher percentage of Moe games.

I mean, Ar Tonelico, Disgaea, Neptunia, Atelier, and Tales make up like 50%+ of the JRPGs coming out on PS3.

I'm actually having trouble thinking of upcoming PS3 JRPGs that don't have Moe outside of Final Fantasy XIII-2, Final Fantasy Versus, and Dark Souls.

 

[CornBurrito]

I'm just glad I can enjoy both Eastern and Western games.

Though it seems an increasing number of Western games I buy are from indie devs.

 

[A Black Falcon]

He is probably talking about in the console world and/or doesn't know about the history of PC games' development. And it's true that Western console games used to be pretty terrible, but that was because all the talent was focused on making PC games. Now that same talent just makes games for both consoles and PCs simultaneously.

Yeah, anyone who says that makes it very clear that they didn't play PC games, that's for sure.

 

[OldJadedGamer]

Well, no shit, most American gamers pointed and laughed at MGS4's online attempts in the face of the Gears, and the Halo's and COD's, and that was a high profile game specifically tweaked to suit the American playstyle. So don't be appalled if you find out now that the Japanese gaming scene is giving the finger to the west.

Play a MGO game for the first time on your PSN account then play a game for the first time on COD with that same PSN account and you will see first hand why MGO failed in the west.

 

[Gamer @ Heart]

The whole article? Isnt that kind of taboo?

 

[NotebookJ2]

There is nothing wrong with it. It is just that you are alienating a large possible base. And pretty soon there will be way more gamers over 25 than there will be under 25 since most people (at least in Western culture) continue to play games.

But really, it just sucks for those of us that grew up with Japanese games and appreciated them. We don't want to be stuck playing games made for 13 year olds. I mean, I actually liked Final Fantasy 13 because of the battle system and the beautiful art and music but that dialog, those characters, and that story was fucking depressing. I'm a grown man and I'm playing shit that is designed for Saturday morning cartoons. Every JRPG I've played this generation has had that problem. The closest one to avoid it was Lost Odyssey and it was really only great by comparison to how bad the others were.

I guess what I mean is, "older audience" can mean anything. Both Drawn Together and The Wire are TV shows that are both for older audiences but they're like completely different things in quality.

A game that says it's for "older audiences" doesn't say anything about the possible quality of the game itself--it doesn't say that the characters will be any less irritating or whatever. I guess that's my problem with it.

 

[gundamkyoukai]

There is nothing wrong with it. It is just that you are alienating a large possible base. And pretty soon there will be way more gamers over 25 than there will be under 25 since most people (at least in Western culture) continue to play games.

But really, it just sucks for those of us that grew up with Japanese games and appreciated them. We don't want to be stuck playing games made for 13 year olds. I mean, I actually liked Final Fantasy 13 because of the battle system and the beautiful art and music but that dialog, those characters, and that story was fucking depressing. I'm a grown man and I'm playing shit that is designed for Saturday morning cartoons. Every JRPG I've played this generation has had that problem. The closest one to avoid it was Lost Odyssey and it was really only great by comparison to how bad the others were.

Man give me a break , most games have a shit story .
Some people think playing a RPG with option for interactive dialog choices\ sleep with people is change .
I see that shit in hentai\text games for years without the AAA gfx .

 

[NeonZ]

Each iteration of Soul Calibur adds younger characters with bigger eyes. To compensate, they give Ivy bigger tits.

These characters didn't cause each game to be worse than the one before, but it is a symptom of how the team's priorities have shifted.
SC1=fighting engine and graphics
SC4=dress up and whatever this is:

Angol Fear was a tie in character with a popular kid's show in Japan, Keroro Gunso/Sgt. Frog. She basically only had her character model too, with everything else recycled, so she received much less focus than the Star Wars stuff.

That said, I really dislike what they did with the model. They basically tried to make it mimicking the anime's art style, rather than the original art, or even just making her fit into the game, unlike they did with every other character, guest or not...

 

[truly101]

This is all pretty much horseshit considering games released 10 years ago like Deus Ex and Baldur's Gate 2 outclass the significantly watered down shit being passed off as as fresh and new by the Western press these days.

I think he's referring more to the NES, SNES and Genesis days. With a few exceptions, most western console games were considered shit because they were. The best western developers were on PC, and PC gaming I think was more niche than it is now.

 

[xbhaskarx]

That is such bullshit. The fact is Japan used to produce most games, and the Western studios produced mostly crap. The Western studios grew, evolved, became better, while Japan didn't change.

Japan never made games "for the entire world", it was just the rest of the world that wasn't even trying to take its place in that market.

Eventually the market became more interesting to invest in as technology evolved and opened up the doors for increased revenue.

Japan lost its share, and Japan lost its market share because they didn't figure out why they had it to begin with.

I agree with this...

 

[icecream]

Horrible article. They make a poor attempt to correlate Japanese gaming companies and their current inability to adapt to the worldwide trend due to their stubborn hold on archaic beliefs in game development, and create some tenacious link that blames moe as the result. Big-selling Japanese games do not resort to moe to sell, and non of the big companies actually give a serious attempt to use it as a selling theme for the general Japanese or Western audience.

It is only the niche developers who attempt to appeal to the otaku because they know their style of games would never sell otherwise. But that has no bearing on the trends of Japanese development as a whole. Western gaming media has become so obsessed with laughing and pointing out at outlier games in Japanese development because they have been unable to admit that they are the cause of the state of current mainstream Japanese gaming due to their constant approval for western-styled gaming and its resulting effect on forcing main Japanese developers to evolve, and they have been doing as such for so long, that they have completely deluded themselves into believing that these games are now the main representative of the Japanese gaming environment as a whole.

I'm actually having trouble thinking of upcoming PS3 JRPGs that don't have Moe outside of Final Fantasy XIII-2, Final Fantasy Versus, and Dark Souls.

Blame Sony for not creating a platform conductive of real JRPG development forcing most of them to start off on the 360, with only budget developers willing to take risks. And budget developers do what they need to in order to sell their targets.

 

[Lafiel]

Shmups.

I miss my spaceship shooters

I consider that a improvement!

 

[ElectricBlue187]

I haven't wanted to play a Japanese game since Lost Odyssey. If Japanese developers want to wallow in self absorbed obsolescence, so be it.

 

[ZoddGutts]

that damn moh-ay ruining games.

Ruined anime years ago.

 

[EvilMario]

Don't leave me, Japan. I'm so lonely. ;_;

 

[AlimNassor]

I visit Japanese gaming forums from time to time, they hate WRPGs for being nothing but boring filler and generic bald guys and plus it's a western made game and according to most gamers in Japan that automatically makes it bad.

 

[gundamkyoukai]

I think it's more of a symptom of there being way less JRPGs on consoles, so people who only play on consoles see a vastly higher percentage of Moe games.

I mean, Ar Tonelico, Disgaea, Neptunia, Atelier, and Tales make up like 50%+ of the JRPGs coming out on PS3.

I'm actually having trouble thinking of upcoming PS3 JRPGs that don't have Moe outside of Final Fantasy XIII-2, Final Fantasy Versus, and Dark Souls.

I can see how people would say that but what happen to all the handheld games that are being made.
Which is a problems in the west they don't care about handhelds at all.

Most of this i see people complain about for games\anime was happening for years .
Way before this gen started .

 

[Emitan]

I haven't wanted to play a Japanese game since Lost Odyssey. If Japanese developers want to wallow in self absorbed obsolescence, so be it.

So you either have extremely specific tastes or are unaware of a lot of Japanese games, so that means they're obsolete?

 

[qq more]

I consider that a improvement!

No


No it is fucking not.

 

[GillianSeed79]

Three things I found interesting in this article.

1. Corporate employees in Japan can't go home until the boss does? WTF Japan? I have several bosses, the big bossman gets to go home at 5 pm, but some of my bosses, just by the nature of the business I'm in, come in at 4 pm and work until 2 am some nights - 5 am if there's a big project on deadline.

2. The Bioshock thing was funny. Granted, I'm in the minority that thinks the game gets rather weak after the opening set pieces, but declaring it cheap after 30 seconds seems crazy.

3. The all western games are shit mentality. Prior to the shift of PC developers to consoles, this is understandable if you lived in a vacum occupied by only consoles. Today, though, I don't get it.

Lastly, I like good games, whether they are from the east or west. My problem with Japanese games this gen is the seemingly 5-year dev cycles for a significant amount of AAA heavy hitter titles.

 

[Branduil]

I think gaming journalists are just using some sort of auto-writing word processor where if the article is about some problem in Japan it just spits out a paragraph about moe that has nothing to do with the rest of the article.

 

[Shurs]

The whole article? Isnt that kind of taboo?

That was my thought, too.

 

[VALIS]

What RPGS exactly have had this Moe shit?

Almost everything from Atlus. Maybe moe or loli isn't always the right term, but rather something like "over-stylized." Character designs that are just ridiculous to look at. Again, kind of like what Rob Liefield is to comic books (I mistakenly said Erik Larsen last time). Like where Liefield puts ridiculously enormous muscles and a hundred pouches on a superhero -- taking some common elements of superheroes and exaggerating them to the extreme -- the same undisciplined and exaggerated pandering seems to have taken over a lot of Japanese anime and game design.

 

[EternalGamer]

Man give me a break , most games have a shit story .
Some people think playing a RPG with option for interactive dialog choices\ sleep with people is change .
I see that shit in hentai\text games for years without the AAA gfx .

Most games have a long way to go, true. But Western developers have made tremendous progress this generation.

Just look at how dialog is handled in games like Mass Effect, LA Noire, or Deus Ex. I mean, last gen we were lucky to even have voice acting. Nowdays you get sophisticated camera pans, facial motion capturing, and dialog options that really require you to think about how you want to respond in a dynamic interactive way.

And we have storyarcs like the one in Red Dead Redemption with that amazing denouement and Bioshock's great narrative twist or The Witcher 2's branching narrative paths.

You are greatly reducing the level of sophistication we have advanced to in just one generation to reduce to "interactive dialogue/sleep with people."

I understand that people may like Japanese aesthetics or whatever, but really, can you name a single Japanese game this generation that you think has a story that doesn't reduce itself to parody by the end? I mean, true we have dumb shit like Gears of War and Call of Duty, but we also have the types of games I just mentioned.

 

[Ratrat]

I think it's more of a symptom of there being way less JRPGs on consoles, so people who only play on consoles see a vastly higher percentage of Moe games.

I mean, Ar Tonelico, Disgaea, Neptunia, Atelier, and Tales make up like 50%+ of the JRPGs coming out on PS3.

I'm actually having trouble thinking of upcoming PS3 JRPGs that don't have Moe outside of Final Fantasy XIII-2, Final Fantasy Versus, and Dark Souls.

But XIII-2 is more moe than Ni no Kuni.

 

[ScionOfTheRisingSun]

It's more like PC devs brought to consoles the things they had been doing for years and a lot of people think that's new because they ignored PC gaming.

I have been saying the exact same thing for years. All of these western games have evolved but Japanese have not business is nonsense.

For decades home console game design was driven forward by the Japanese and the PC by the western developers. There was a true Galapagos, two platforms side by side yet largely isolated from one another each serving different audiences and housing very different design philosophies.

This gen several factors such as SONY not so much fumbling their incredible lead as they leaped into this gen so much as landing arse first on a crate of dynamite contributed to Japanese devs shifting focus to portables. This gave PC devs room go turncoat and embrace a largely unexplored platform where their old ways felt fresh and could quickly win a lot of new fans.

Anyway, a lot of people have realized that they kind of like PC, that is western, game design more now that they've got a taste for it. This is to be expected, who better to know what hits home the best than people who live there and simmer in the culture.

Of course instead of just admitting this people have to be idiots and claim the Japanese are stuck in the past just because they got to taste for some reheated old design trappings. I've been keeping an eye on both platforms for decades, give it time, the so called "evolution" you love so much will start ro feel tired yet.

 

[a Master Ninja]

Angol Fear was a tie in character with a popular kid's show in Japan, Keroro Gunso/Sgt. Frog. She basically only had her character model too, with everything else recycled, so she received much less focus than the Star Wars stuff.

I maintain my point that they focus way too much attention on crossovers, dress-up, and jailbait.

 

[Lindsay]

Posts in this thread confuse me @_@

People saying loli sucks and people saying characters with breasts suck. Japan seems to be okay with making both. Does westerners just plain hate girls being in games period? Sure seems that way with how some people speak. Rawr gotta be all macho alllll the time!

This is true as well. CoD gamers don't like that Japanese games too often.

Numerous people on GAF will say the COD crowd don't even know who makes each edition of the game! Yet they'll somehow know where JP games come from?

Moé is killing everything!

It helped kill the western anime industry -_-!

I don't get the complaints about Japanese gaming becoming more handheld based. Are people so allergic to the notion of playing something on a smaller screen?

And using the "you can't get 'epic' games on a handheld!" excuse is tame and ignorant.

Maybe if handheld games were designed like console ones instead of being "portablized" I'd agree that they could be epic.

I'd pay money to convert my copy oh Hyperdimension Neptunia in a moe-free game.

I never had a problem with anime, mangas, hentai or whatsoever but this game is reeeeeally embarassing to play, even if I'm alone. And I never felt this way with FF, Bayonetta, NMH etc.

Neptunia was recommended to me by a friend alil while back but reading your post I'll quietly cross it off my list cause I felt embarassed playing Bayonetta alone lol

 

[7Th]

No


No it is fucking not.

Same gameplay, they're just prettier to look at now.

 

[Emitan]

Almost everything from Atlus. Maybe moe or loli isn't always the right term, but rather something like "over-stylized." Character designs that are just ridiculous to look at. Again, kind of like what Rob Liefield is to comic books (I mistakenly said Erik Larsen last time). Like where Liefield puts ridiculously enormous muscles and a hundred pouches on a superhero -- taking some common elements of superheroes and exaggerating them to the extreme -- the same undisciplined and exaggerated pandering seems to have taken over a lot of Japanese anime and game design.

What. Catherine? Persona? The rest of the Shin Megami Tensei games?

 

[randomkid]

I think it's more of a symptom of there being way less JRPGs on consoles, so people who only play on consoles see a vastly higher percentage of Moe games.

I mean, Ar Tonelico, Disgaea, Neptunia, Atelier, and Tales make up like 50%+ of the JRPGs coming out on PS3.

I'm actually having trouble thinking of upcoming PS3 JRPGs that don't have Moe outside of Final Fantasy XIII-2, Final Fantasy Versus, and Dark Souls.

Just how many upcoming PS3 RPGs even exist? Only other ones I can think of are Ni no Kuni, Yakuza, Super Robot Wars and did White Knight 2 come out already?

Also, kinda bad form to post the entire article in the OP isn't it?

 

[KuroNeeko]

It's going to be interesting having this conversation in another 10 years or so when we have to start including China and Korea in the discussion. Especially since most of the AAA studios are already outsourcing a lot of the labor to Asia.

Japan is not out of the picture, but judging from this thread there are a fair number of people who are crapping on the industry here for the wrong reasons.

Around E3, the newspapers ran a story about gaming in the United States and it came up that the average age of your typical video game player was around 37 years old. The average age of the person actually buying the game was around 41 years old. This figure has been steadily increasing as gamers (and western developers) continue to grow older. On the flip side, the average age of your typical gamer in Japan is somewhere in the late teens as far as I know.

Having lived and worked in both the US and Japan, I will tell you that your average working class American has way more free time to play games than your average working class Japanese. Not only that, but the 1UP article hit the nail on the head, the perception about gaming is completely different. You tell someone that your hobby is gaming (among other things) and they're more likely to either A) be a lot more accepting about it than your average Japanese salaryman / housewife (who will be pressured into thinking that it's a waste of time, B) have a significantly higher chance of running into someone who is also a gamer C) receive an indifferent shrug.

Looking at Wikipedia you'll see that as of June 2011, only 1.5m 360 consoles have sold compared to 25.4m in the US, 3.9m in the UK, and 13.7m in EMEA. In fact, Microsoft is talking about abandoning the platform (again) in Japan because they simply can't compete against Sony / Nintendo.

The PS3 has similarly skewed numbers, 6m units in Japan versus 32m units (America - 13.5m, EU + UK 19m). Considering that Japan has about half the population of the US, you'll see that simply not as many "adults" are sitting at home playing games in their (very little) free time.

Ok, so then who is playing games in Japan? Like 1UP said you got your middle school kids (mostly boys - MH, Pokemon, Gundam fans); high school kids (same games for the most part with some sport titles like Winning Eleven Soccer and Baseball,) your (shrinking) college crowd, and the freeters (who are basically unemployed adults who rely on part-time work or their parents to support them.) There is a small, dedicated population of "hardcore" gamers out there, but I very rarely meet any who are outside of the game industry. Most "gamers" are, as the article states, people who play their PSP or DS on the train or more frequently, commuters who are now turning to their iphones / android phones for cheap, mindless time-killing.

Nintendo still makes money of their IP. They still manage to sell "family-oriented" games, but they're currently in trouble - big trouble.

Anyway, the point is that some of you are going on about how great western games are compared to Japan, and yes, western games have gotten a lot better than they were. You're completely neglecting the fact that Japanese game companies are not looking for your western dollars (especially with the weak ass dollar messing up my exchange rates), they're trying to stay alive and that means making games that target the ↑ aforementioned ↑ market.

SOME developers here don't want to resort to that. Some developers want to make games that people around the world can play and enjoy. Most of those developers have deep pockets and don't have to worry about a single failure sinking their company. With people's jobs on the line, do you really blame them for taking a safer approach? The company I work at is a small start-up that is trying to stay away from derivative moe / anime games and make something new that we think people all over the world can enjoy. It's a hard sell right now and the industry has changed a lot in the past 10 years.

I found the article to be pretty accurate.

I haven't wanted to play a Japanese game since Lost Odyssey. If Japanese developers want to wallow in self absorbed obsolescence, so be it.

Why Lost Odyssey? What was it about the game that sets it apart from everything else? The actual game system is pretty antiquated, slow, turn-based, command entry combat. It still relies on random encounters. Plus, the swords & sorcery with a touch of SF based setting wasn't anything particularly new. The game's strongest areas - Inoue's character designs, Uematsu's soundtrack, and writing by Shigematsu / Rubin were nice points but they're not really indicative of any sort of advanced game design. (To be fair, I did like the game.)

 

[qq more]

Same gameplay, they're just prettier to look at now.

Badass Spaceships > Little girls

 

[EternalGamer]

I guess what I mean is, "older audience" can mean anything. Both Drawn Together and The Wire are TV shows that are both for older audiences but they're like completely different things in quality.

A game that says it's for "older audiences" doesn't say anything about the possible quality of the game itself--it doesn't say that the characters will be any less irritating or whatever. I guess that's my problem with it.

Well it's true that you can have bad games and good games for older audiences. Trying to address an older audience doesn't automatically mean that you do it well if that is what you are getting at. But you can't succeed at all if you don't even try.

 

[icecream]

I understand that people may like Japanese aesthetics or whatever, but really, can you name a single Japanese game this generation that you think has a story that doesn't reduce itself to parody by the end? I mean, true we have dumb shit like Gears of War and Call of Duty, but we also have the types of games I just mentioned.

Lost Odyssey? 428? Nier? E17? There are plenty of Japanese games that have stories that are at the least comparable to the games you are claiming to be of high calibur.

 

[Lafiel]

Badass Spaceships > Little girls

I prefer looking at over-stylized little girls over boring ol spaceships!

 

[kokujin]

Same gameplay, they're just creepier to look at now.

Fixed.

 

[Emitan]

"Maybe if handheld games were designed like console ones instead of being "portablized" I'd agree that they could be epic."

This is absolutely false. Radiant Historia is one of the best RPGs I've played in years. It is in no way "portablized". What does that word even mean? Simplified?

Fixed.

Right on.

 

[qq more]

Fixed.

Thank you.

 

[cosmicblizzard]

When the JRPG fan's defense against games that actually try something different often is something like "I don't like change, keep it the same", I think that on the former point he's right...

I don't really think western game fans are much different, but the whole tone of that post kind of irked me. First of all, loli/moe games DO NOT sell in Japan and the notion it has invaded everything is pure ignorance. Second, Japanese games have done a ton of innovative stuff this generation; just not in the supposed "AAA" games. I can't name one non-indie western title that exudes more charm and innovation than something like Catherine or Little King's Story.