"Thank God For The Japanese"

[Mulboyne]

[floatr][/floatr]The Age: Why Japan makes the world's best games
Screen Play has been lucky enough to visit Japan many times, and despite memories of some truly frightening food and the world's craziest TV commercials, one thing always resonates: thank God for the Japanese. "Japanese people have an insatiable appetite for anything new, liking very new technology and new approaches to games," says Masaya Matsuura, creator of Parappa the Rapper. Ultimately we are all beneficiaries...If there weren't Japanese developers around to push the industry forward, we all might drown in a sea of FIFA updates, GTA clones and first-person shooters...more...

[Ketou]

"perhaps because of the Japanese perfectionist culture, our attention to detail. But developers from the West are catching up so we are thinking we have to raise the bar even higher."

So true so true. There's a whole floor at one shop in town dedicated to games that help raise the bar a little higher.

[Kuang_Grade]

Naka-san is right about Western developers improving their game, and there are many in Japan who believe their local industry has been stagnant for many years.

But how many Western developers would take a punt on the likes of Rez, Kingdom Hearts, Parappa the Rapper, Shadow of the Colossus, Pokemon, Animal Crossing, Katamari Damacy or Ico?

It is worth noting that most of these games were first released years ago (except shadow of the colossus which came out last year, which was made by the same group that made Ico)

Thank goodness we're not drowning in a sea of RPGs, Mecha and Anime themed fighters, Idoru management sims, side scrolling shooters, and very post modern tatical espionage action games with long lectures that alternate between nuclear proliferation and monster movies from the 50's. While key strides in the breast physics engines were due to J developer TECMO, I think it is the J consumer is where the praise should be focused. After all, games where take the role of mosquito or were you could fight zombies by typing words into a giant battery powered dreamcast console or a homo-erotic themed side scrolling shooter would have never gotten past the talking stage if there weren't enough imaginative/nutball J gamers to convince the developers there might be a market for those games.