A recent article by legendary Mega Man creator Keiji Inafune discusses the current troubles of the Japanese market and its place in the state of the gaming industry today struck a cord with me and inspired this little piece. Keiji expresses his worries about how Japanese game designers go about making games, and he is worried they are making them "too Japanese." His fear is that Japanese developers are being left behind and are not appealing to all markets as Western developers are innovating and captivating the gaming audience at large.
Keiji's worries are well warranted as these days Western developers have pretty much taken over the gaming industry from Japan on a software level. Games like Halo, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and Grand Theft Auto are more household names than Mega Man or Final Fantasy. While the Japanese aren't doing terribly, there is reason to worry.
But the question I guess is, what are Western developers doing right to capture this audience? What are Japanese developers doing wrong? Well the answer is more convoluted, long and boring for this article so instead I wanted to focus on Japanese RPG's and Western RPG's. We'll see the innovation and failures of both.
Western RPG Success:
1. Reaping the Rewards
What games like Mass Effect, Fallout 3, Oblivion, and to an extreme degree World of Warcraft do very well is create a slew of "fetch quests" for the player. I call this a success because the human mind loves to be constantly rewarded and quickly. Look no further than the success of Pop Cap games like Bejeweled. These Western RPG's are chalk full of tiny fetch quests and maybe 8 main quests. The idea is to get the player to keep playing and reaping small rewards. And they will too.
While I absolutely hate this fact, that's just how people are. They will praise a game like Mass Effect as such a wonderful game when it only has maybe 6 main quests and 30 to 40 little side quests each being no different than the last. Despite the complete lack of attention to the game's story, oh but those 30 to 40 mini quests were just so damn wonderful...
I used to be one of those people. I would play Diablo 2 at all hours of the night simply killing Mephisto over and over and over, hoping to get some magical awesome item. What's worse is after I collected everything Mephisto could possibly drop...I kept doing it. Why would I do this? The addiction of seeing my rewards is why. I'm glad I asked myself this. I haven't touched the game to this day.
2. "Path" choosing
One thing classic JRPG's never did, or never even attempted was giving the player choices. Western RPG's have pretty much always done this, even back in the days of old point and click games. While I still feel these path options are weak at best, only Western developers are actually trying it. People seem to love it too even if the differences are absolutely negligible like Mass Effect. Fallout 3 and Oblivion do better jobs at this though, and you can actually kill off important characters if you want, and even level entire cities. That's about the best I think this "path" choosing will ever hope to get.
The closest JRPG's ever get to this idea is multiple endings. A lot of JRPG's have multiple endings, but how you acquire them never made any damn sense. Most of the time you had to do random things like find the secret sword, or not pay attention to certain character in the main story, or don't die x amount of times, or DO die x amount of times. Western RPG's multiple paths and endings always made sense. Killed the female lead because of a bad choice? Ok bad ending. JRPG logic was more like, didn't buy the female lead flowers at the beginning of the game? Well she turned evil now and burned down the mana tree, too bad for you.
3. Action
Western developers have taken note, turn based combat isn't fun anymore. Or at the very least, those games don't sell well anymore. I can't name any Western RPG that employs turn based combat. Every one of them now is either first person combat or some hybrid of pausing the game to choose a set of actions which will play out as you watch. Everything happens in real time with these games though and that has been a huge success for Western RPG's. I can't tell you how many times I have heard the complaint of turn based systems and how it ruins the "realism."
Japanese RPG's: What they still do well:
1. Story/Pacing
In most cases, JRPG's still have a better handle on character development and spacing out when to employ story elements in their games. I hear the argument all the time that JRPG's only use cookie cutter characters, long swords, emo heroes, bla bla and so on. And while that is largely true, that isn't where my argument comes from, and that has nothing to do with the technical aspect of how a story is presented. For instance, western games like Mass Effect and Fallout 3 spend a lot of time...ignoring the story they set up entirely. Just flat out ignoring it until maybe mid-game and of course the end. But there is usually 10 hour periods where the story doesn't even rear its little head.
That's what Japanese RPG's do far better, they keep the player involved with the plot. They keep up the pace set from the start and characters are constantly evolving and interacting. And of course there are many JRPG's that don't abide by this, but I can't name a single Western RPG that does this at all.
2. Characters
I still believe this is a reason JRPG's are still purchased today. Generally speaking Japanese characters are simply more interesting. Western RPG's are way too into "creating your own character" so they never end up being interesting...ever. From Mass Effect to Oblivion and Fallout 3 the main character of the game is horribly boring and flat. Chrono Trigger's silent protagonist had more character in his little sprite animations than nearly all Western RPG main characters combined.
But what of side characters? Well this is where the argument just becomes opinionated, but I honestly feel there is no difference between the two. I think Western RPG's tend to do a better job at hiding their archetype characters whereas JRPG's shove them in your face. But either way, both genres employ tried and true character types which always results in a band of unlikely heroes out to save whatever it might be.
3. Music
Ok, this one might be heavily opinionated but I can't hum a tune of any Western RPG I have ever played. Oblivion came the closest to having interesting music but it doesn't hold a candle to any JRPG. I honestly feel Japanese developers care about the music score in their RPG's and I feel that is very important to set the mood of the game. Playing through all of Mass Effect, Fallout 3, and many other Western RPG's I barely remember hearing any music at all. I can't see how JRPG's could lose this category at all.
The only issue with this category is I do not believe sales are affected positively or negatively on a good musical score. I do think it gives a boost to the story and atmosphere though so perhaps on some level that helps. I know I have purchased a few RPG's because Yasunori Mitsuda has done the score or Nobuo Uematsu, but I'm sure I am in a small minority.
Conclusion:
It is painfully clear that the successes of Western RPG's outweigh what JRPG's still do well. What also hurts is JRPG's lack of innovation. For American gamers anyway, JRPG's are all the same. They all have save the world plots with character archetypes, big swords, goofy hair, inane convoluted storytelling, and overly complex battle systems. This is where Keiji is worried, lack of evolution. Western developers have discovered what works and what doesn't whereas Japanese developers are still stuck in believing a good RPG for instance absolutely needs a young spunky annoying female character that doesn't wear much clothing.
This is what Keiji is warning about and he is right. Final Fantasy 13 may still have sold rather well, but not nearly as well as it should have. It did noticeably poor in Japan which is a little startling. But it was a bad game through and through. It didn't even do what JRPG's do well either. What is funny is the game was trying to be progressive and captivate a wider audience, but instead all it did was slap the face of hardcore fans by being dumbed down, and ignored by people who still don't care about the series. It pleased no one ultimately.
Personal Thoughts:
I still prefer JRPG's, and I really want to disagree with Keiji. While I understand JRPG's need to be less Japanese to sell well in the states, that is what I enjoy about them. If they can just be themselves and not force in newfangled ideas that they think will work we won't get FF13 ever again. What came of their experimentation was neither Japanese nor Western, it was just plain awful.
What I hope doesn't happen is for JRPG's to stop being JRPG's all together. I can see it happening too. The last thing I want is for every RPG to make me go on meaningless fetch quests for 30 hours and then tell me why the bad guy is evil at the very end of the game so I can kill him...(Mass Effect)
*Stay tuned for a Mass Effect review...I really want to rip that game a new one*
