GDC 2012: Time running out for Japan, says Inafune

March 9th, 2012, 00:28 Posted By: wraggster

At the Game Developers Conference, a day after Fez creator Phil Fish responsed to an audience question with "modern Japanese games just suck," renowned ex-Capcom developer Keiji Inafunedelivered his own damning judgement of the modern Japanese videogame industry.
Speaking through a translator, Inafune bemoaned what he sees as a lack of innovation in the nation's output: "What happened to Japanese games? Where are they going? Will they continue to go downhill? What are the Japanese creators of today thinking and where are they heading?"
At the 2009 Tokyo Game Show, Inafune stated that the Japanese games industry was "over", and today he discussed the negative reaction and shock he got from the Japanese industry for these remarks. "'How dare you say our industry and our games are dead?' they said."
However, in the years that followed, Inafune has observed many of his critics coming around to agree with him. "They’re in a situation where they realise perhaps my prediction was true," he said.
For Inafune, who was still at Capcom at the time he made the remarks, Capcom was the only Japanese developer keeping up with the Western creations at the time. "[We] thought on a global level," he said. "We were able to see our own industry through an unfiltered lens." This understanding of the 'global level' is what Inafune believes most Japanese developers are lacking: "So I want to light a fire under Japan before it is too late."
Inafune explained how he became "a little ashamed" when he travels overseas because these days, "Japanese games are becoming a blast from the past." Just like "The Beatles were great!" or "Steve McQueen was a great actor!" Japanese games are now merely "great, great memories."
But just as The Beatles will never release a new album, and Steve McQueen will never act in a new film, Inafune thinks the Japanese games industry is damaging itself by an over-reliance on brands popularised in previous decades.
"I feel like we rarely see new creations from Japan anymore," he said. "We just stick to our memories and we re-release HD versions of games. That is the upper limit of what we are showing to our users today and that is not what our users want."
However, Inafune admits that even he is guilty of sometimes falling back on the pre-existing brands for support. Just yesterday, he explained, a fan asked him for a signature and he immediately, without thinking, scribbled a doodle of Mega Man.
But there is a middle ground, Inafune believes, where the past can be respected and remembered, but does not become a crutch. "I don’t want to get carried away," he said. "You may never see another Mega Man doodle from me after today."
Japan has become slothful on its own successes, believes Inafune. But he understands that this is just human, "We as humans don’t want to take the hard route." After decades of success, it was all too easy for Japanese developers to use the existing brands as a crutch. But, Inafune insisted, Japanese developers must start forcing themselves down the hard route if the country's videogames are to improve.
Inafune gives the example of the first Resident Evil; many within and without Capcom thought it would fail, but the studio, determined, worked on and created a massive success. He contrasted this with his own work on Mega Man Legends - a Mega Man game just trying to be another Mega Man game - and how it was an utter failure.
Inafune says this taught him a priceless lesson: "Establishing a brand takes a lot of work, but at the same time you cannot rely too much on that brand." Inafune compared the state of the Japanese games industry to Apple. "If Apple tried to stick to the glory of the old days with their old computers, they probably wouldn’t be around today," he said. "But Steve Jobs chose to develop the brand and not just maintain it."
This was Inafune’s main plea, that he repeated several times. "Japan must understand the importance of rebuilding our brands, and we must do it now," he urged. "It will be too late when our brands hold no power.
"Time is running out, and we should have realised this when I made that bold statement a few years ago."

http://www.edge-online.com/news/gdc-...n-says-inafune

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