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Setting Sun - On Final Fantasy And Western Design Philosophies 60

Posted by simoniker from the down-after-all dept.
Thanks to 1UP for its feature discussing the still-declining state of the Japanese videogame industry, despite recent figures showing a small increase in sales for the first half of 2004. Nevertheless, it seems that "Japanese hardware and software revenues [were] down 11% in 2003 and nearly 40% since the peak of the PlayStation generation in 1997". The piece muses on reasons for the decline: "Complex, lengthy, story-driven [Japanese] games demand an awful lot of care and feeding these days, and often offer paradoxically little replay value... [whereas Western developer] DMA Design hit on a formula with Grand Theft Auto III that... offers activities suited to both long stretches of gameplay and short sittings of cruising or random action." In a similar vein, a OPM-reprinted column from Andrew Vestal suggests a solution: "One possible catalyst [for design change] is the upcoming Final Fantasy XII. In an interview, character designer Akihiko Yoshida readily admits that 'many team members are huge fans of non-Japanese games,' and... the game disposes of large parts of console-RPG design expectations." He concludes: "It's possible the game will act as a Trojan horse, introducing Western design philosophies to a wide swath of Japanese gamers and designers."
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Setting Sun - On Final Fantasy And Western Design Philosophies More

Setting Sun - On Final Fantasy And Western Design Philosophies

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  • Nostalgia plug... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Amigori ( 177092 ) * <eefranklin718 AT yahoo DOT com> on Sunday July 18, 2004 @06:17PM (#9733642) Homepage
    I'm sure I'm not alone with this thought, but I remember a time when you could sit down and play through a game in a few hours, and yet, it was fun enough that you wanted to play through it again and again. Most of those games were not very complex with stories that took 10+ hours to develop, didn't have characters you can relate (or not) to, and have so many side quests that by the time you got back to the main mission, you forgot what you were doing. Think Contra, Super Mario Brothers, Metroid, Sonic, and Mario Kart. These games were simple to play, fun, and had high replay value. I still play them today. I just don't have the time anymore to go off on some mega-hour quest to save the planet from doom. If I want a good story, I'll get a book from the library and save myself $50.

    I think this formula would sell alot of games: Decent graphics/music, Simple concepts/control, High replay value. EA knows this and it shows in their sports series.
    Amigori

    • Re:Nostalgia plug... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by dafoomie ( 521507 )
      Some people enjoy games with deep storylines that take forever to beat. They had these kinds of games in the time period of Contra, Super Mario, Sonic. In fact, most games then and now are still in the gategory that you describe. They aren't the norm for any platform.

      Personally I consider it a good value if I get 60-80 hours of gameplay out of one game before I beat it. Those 10 hour action games don't cost any less. There are times when I want to pick up something simple for a short time, but I can a
    • Hell, I remember when games were so simple that you *didn't* ever "win." Maybe you had a high scores list, but that didn't matter so much if you were playing on your home console. rather than the arcade. But that didn't make the game any less fun.
    • There's also the problem of getting _so_ attached to your characters that you stop playing the newer games for fear of completing it.. =)

    • I think this formula would sell alot of games: Decent graphics/music, Simple concepts/control, High replay value. EA knows this and it shows in their sports series.

      The only problem is that these qualities are still very open-ended. It's very hard to simply add high replay value to a game, especially once you actually get into the coding phase (and the concept portion is mostly complete).

      There is something to note about all the games you menitioned, though (Contra, SMB, Metroid, Sonic, Mario Kart, and

  • Indded this is true. More and more of the RPG games coming out are more like cinimatic movies, only you have to press (x) to see the next scene. (Xenosaga, Star Ocean?)

    There are some though that offer a much wider variety of game play; like the recent FF X-2 where you have the choice to travel anywhere at any time, Drakenguard with 4 sepperate endings, and more replayability then a deck of cards, and Sukoden III had lots of extra features as well if I recall right.

    The merger of Square and Enix I thin
    • ...push the rpgs coming out into a new frontier...

      You mean like western RPGs have been doing since the 80s? RPGs such as Wizardry, Fallout, and even KOTOR have had nonlinear mechanics. Its not a new concept.
      • You mean like western RPGs have been doing since the 80s? RPGs such as Wizardry, Fallout, and even KOTOR have had nonlinear mechanics. Its not a new concept.

        Yeah. Those who do not understand Ultima are condemned to reinvent them, badly.

    • I strongly doubt that FFXII will push anything to a new frontier, aside from the classic (read 'old') FF style of play. It will still be nothing more than a "press-X-to-advance" movie, just like FFXI was. Square-Enix is (in my eyes) the type of company that finds a formula that works and repeats it until it no longer works, rinse, lather, repeat as necessary.

      Call me a Nintendo fanboy, but I much prefer the design elements of the Mario RPGs where it is possible that I can avoid damage based on knowledge of
      • Square-Enix is (in my eyes) the type of company that finds a formula that works and repeats it until it no longer works, rinse, lather, repeat as necessary.
        What about Chrono Trigger? A successful game based on a new game mechanic. Parasite Evil and Vagrant Story also come to my mind. I could be wrong, but I think they were all innovative games.

        Call me a Nintendo fanboy, but I much prefer the design elements of the Mario RPGs...
        Mario RPG was a fantastic game. All Miyamoto games (or based on its charac
        • Mario RPG was Square-developed. You, er, know that, right?
          • Yes, but under the direction of Miyamoto. If he wants something done, it gets done, much like any other director. He makes sure his babies are treated exactly how he'd like them.

            And I said Square-Enix, not just Square. Square deviated from their formula BIG-TIME at PS1 later years/PS2 launch with the Bouncer, Einhander, Bushido Blade, and a bunch of other non-RPG games. Square-Enix on the other hand gives us FFXII, Dragon Warrior 8, and FFTA which was basically the same game as FFT.

            I wish they'd make Radi
            • Ah. I see what you mean. I have played Radical Dreamers, though; it's really nothing special, and arguably Chrono Cross was the realization of Radical Dreamers as an actual game--it recycled a lot of RD's music, had a similar intro, and its story was actually nearly the same, although of course it was drastically expanded on. But, yeah, despite all of that...that would be cool.
            • Square-Enix on the other hand gives us FFXII, Dragon Warrior 8, and FFTA which was basically the same game as FFT.

              Never mind FF XI, Front Mission 4, Drakengard, FF:Crystal Chronicles, and so on, then... Besides, in the PS1 later years/PS2 Launch period, they also gave us Bushido Blade 2, FF VIII, FF IX, and eventually FF X. Beyond that, if FFT and FFTA are basically the same game, then Front Mission 4 may as well be lumped right in with them (and, of course, Front Mission 3).

              Realistically, Square-Enix ha
    • Replayability is NOT "hi, play through this 40 hour game and if you do X, Y, Z - which are spread out at the 10, 20, and 30 hour markers, just for giggles - you get to see a different 30 second ending, which differs from the other endings in that it in/excludes $character or has good/bad ending for $character"

      Replayability is how much fun I had GETTING to the X, Y, and Z markers. I'm not going to schlep through 40 hours of exactly the same thing - which was mildly enjoyable ONCE, you can imagine how it wil

  • God. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by gasaraki ( 262206 ) on Sunday July 18, 2004 @06:21PM (#9733672)
    Here's hoping they don't go too far with this GTA-fication of RPGs. MTV-style gameplay is alright, but sometimes it's nice to sit down and get a story too. And considering what seems to happen when Square Enix diverges from what they're actually good at (see Crystal Chronicles) I'm not sure how much I trust their ability to mess with the formula too much before alienating their fanbase and diluting that which makes their games so popular. Final Fantasy doesn't sell the way it does by trying to be all things to all people.

    We already saw the beginnings of that with FFX-2 as well, with its mission-centric storyline. And it was an interesting gimmick that was sort of neat for such a non-serious entry in the FF series, but it also seemed to give rise to a far less involving storyline and less sense of 'progression' as the game went on. Hopefully this trend doesn't continue in future FF games. Once you take the story of out FF, there's a lot less seperating it from every other RPG out there.

  • Reversal of Fortune? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by geminidomino ( 614729 ) * on Sunday July 18, 2004 @07:09PM (#9733951) Journal
    Sure, the Japanese companies' big-name RPGs are (de-)evolving to embrace the Western design styles. Makes me fear for Dragon Warrior 8. On the other hand, there's some new faces coming into the RPG arena. Namco just brought out Tales of Symphonia(Which I havent played yet), and they'd had the old PSX "Tales of Destiny" series, which had a nice, old-school feel to it. Personally, I was done with FF when X-2 came out. Hopefully the expanding field makes up for it.
    • [sarcasm]Yes, because mixing the intense storylines and vivid art styles of japanese rpgs with nonlinear western-style mechanics (like those of Fallout) would be such a horrible thing...[/sarcasm]

      (Though some people may argue that we already have a game like this... called Planescape: Torment)
      • Oh, don't get me wrong. I love non-linear RPGs (see my recent Zelda:WW rant). But since the article was focused on SquareEnix, my thoughts were led more towards recent FF games, with more eyecandy and fluff than storyline, dumbed-down dialogue, and lots of pointless minigames. THAT'S what I'm afraid of.
        • But since the article was focused on SquareEnix, my thoughts were led more towards recent FF games, with more eyecandy and fluff than storyline, dumbed-down dialogue, and lots of pointless minigames.

          Spoken like someone who hasn't played the older FFs lately, or at all.

          Rob
          • Just played FFIV a week or two ago. I don't follow what you are trying to say, though. Are you suggesting the older FF games don't have those flaws (or at least, are not as blazingly obvious about them)? If so, notice the qualifier "recent" before "FF games."

            If the opposite, I can't think of too much about FFIV-VI that could be called "eye candy" (remember Kefka the clown? ;)) but they were far deeper into the storyline and less into dopey minigames (compare FFVI's short "river" minigame to TripleTriad/Tet
            • I can't think of too much about FFIV-VI that could be called "eye candy" (remember Kefka the clown? ;))

              You didn't just say that they had eye candy. You said that they had more eye candy than storyline. If that's the case with recent FFs, then it's most certainly the case with the older ones too. They don't have eye candy? That was my point; they don't have much of a storyline either.

              Rob
            • Oh, and "dumbed-down dialogue"? Does "I hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate HATE YOU!" ring any bells? Or how about "You spoony bard!"?

              Rob
    • How is giving the player choices that actually affect the game world (which adds replayability) "de-evolving"? I don't think freedom in a game world should be limited to Western rpgs, nor does having more freedom and flexibility in a game automatically make Japanese themed storylines more Western.

      The direction and risk these Japanese game designers (and their companies) are taking should be applauded, considering it takes a lot of balls to do something drastically different from your peers.

      • Because it destroys the story and the experience. I want to play an RPG and feel for the characters and the story. If the developer's attention is mixed between 20 branches, we will get 20 stories with low quality instead of 1 highly polished branch.

        Secondly, it ruins the experience. One of the most fun things is talking about the story and the game with other fans. If you each have a separate story, thats ruined. Imagine discussing the LotR if my character destroyed the ring and yours used it to dest
        • If the developer if of Square's caliber (both in resources and the skill of their designers and developers), then maintaining the strength of the story while giving the player freedom is possible. While you do have a strong point with games like Morrowind existing (yes it was really nice looking with lots of freedom but it had weak story = boring), but you're also acting like games with both good story and flexibility are impossible and haven't already been developed. The proof is Knights of the Old Republi
          • I have played BG 2. ANd Morrowind. I foudn the two to be horrible games, and uninstalled each within 2-3 days. Just utterly boring. If you have multiple plot lines, you cannot make them each as good as you can 1 single one. You're spreading your resources out. However many people you hire, you could put them all on one and make it even better.

            And no, it would be impossible to discuss characters in a game where you take totally different paths. The characterrs aren't the same- NPCA to me ends up wit
            • "If you have multiple plot lines, you cannot make them each as good as you can 1 single one." You probably didn't play BG2 then; just one of its story branches could make a good game on its own. "And no, it would be impossible to discuss characters in a game where you take totally different paths. The characterrs aren't the same- NPCA to me ends up with a ddifferent sstory and personality than to you. There's no basis for comparison. There's no way to talk abot personality traits, etc." that's the whole
              • Wow, you're ignorant. I said I played BG2. I hated it, and I found its plotlines (what I saw of them) horrible. And I definitely did play DW1, PS, etc. I got DW1 through the Nintendo Power give away. Yes, there's less work than it used to be, and thats a good thing (although FF1 still had the best combat system of all FFs, it actually required thought). But its still DAMN BORING to replay a game to see multiple storylines. I've seen all the places, done everythign once. I don't want to do it again,
  • Japanese developers tend to be more willing to try weird (sometimes, really weird) things, but overall tend to be less creative than their western counterparts.

    In the West however, we have a long tradition of incredibly original games (most of the arcade stuff Atari created, SimCity, Civ, Grand Theft Auto, etc.) that gets drowned by the sea of depressingly ordinary work. The industry has systematically weaned itself away from our legacy of originality (partly by punishing creativity: push away your bright

    • Originality (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Don't you think Super Mario Bros. or even Pac-Man is original? Or, in the later games, Rez, ICO, Katamari Damacy or Vib-Ribbon? Your talk of innate creativity of the Westerners is BS, IMO. GTA3 was good, because Rockstar was a good house. Not the Westerner (which is even divided, for example the Eastern Europe area has many capable PC-game developers with different concepts from the Americans and others, I believe).
      • Don't you think Super Mario Bros. or even Pac-Man is original?

        While I didn't mention them, yes, yes I do. Just because there may have been side-scrolling platformers before, or maze games, doesn't mean that these games themselves didn't bring the elements together in just the right way. Originality is about the synthesis of pre-existing elements into new forms.

        Plus, I actually created a (slightly) Lemmings-like game for the Commodore 64 that saw print in a computer magazine, in that it was about manipu
        • P.S. What is "Katamari Damacy?"

          It could be called "Rolling a Ball - The Game." Only the ball keeps growing as it rolls, like a snowball. Except there's no snow, for that would be silly.
  • As mentioned by others, it seems that the downturn in the japanese game market has much to do with lack of replay value from products that have become simply to reliant on story components and not actual playtime. Much of this, I believe, comes from the fact that the game industry have become fixated on trying to become that which the movie industry is (as seen by the large amount voice acting, scripting, and music talent that is being brought into the mix). But what they fail to realize is that unlike a go
    • But what they fail to realize is that unlike a good flick, games such as RPGs will always have 'downtime' between scenes and higher monetary cost.

      Actually movie production prices tend to be much higher than game production prices (about a factor of 10). Real life props, and actors who want seven-figure salaries tend to do that.

      This then results in a product that is much more expensive in terms of time and money to the game player, but perhaps wont give you much more than an average film would at the th

    • Oddly enough, a couple of friends and myself LOVE to put the CPU on Madden and SSB:M and place bets or just laugh and have fun. Maybe the smog from LA kills our brain gnomes...

  • Western vs. Eastern.. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by CashCarSTAR ( 548853 ) on Sunday July 18, 2004 @09:35PM (#9734630)
    As a big-RPG buff, personally, I don't see where the problem is. Maybe it's that the genere is becoming less popular, whatever. I don't think it is personally.

    Is the genre getting old? No, of course not. On both fronts, better things are coming out all the time. Domestically, games like KOTOR are coming out that are probably more ambitious than ever before. I don't particularly like those games, they're too much hack and slash for my taste, but whatever.

    On the Japaneese side, there's all the whining..yes whining, about how "linear" they are, no replayablity, whatever. They don't get it. What a JRPG, Final Fantasy style mostly is, it's a new form of book. It gives a story the length of an epic novel, but a graphical representation of that. There was no more replayability in the old days, there never was. Not that there IS no replayability, it's just what you make out of it.

    Are the stories getting worse? Not really. Actually, to my mind they're getting more ambitious. The bar keeps rising. Of course, there's the throw away stuff, but then again, there's the great stuff.

    For my mind, the whole epic of FFX and FFX-2 (Which is NOT a light happy throw-away game. If they did it without the "light" style, the game would have been too dark. As it is it straddles the line..) is one of the best stories I've ever experienced. Sure the game is linear. But it's supposed to be that way. It's a story to experience wrapped up in an entertaining combat mode.

    If you don't like it, fine. But it's always been that way.

    • Best stories you've ever experienced? I felt totally bored after a few hours. Japanese games have a tendency to add philosophy into the script. It is like reading Pleateu with a few monsters battles here and there.
      Japanese game designers think they are starting a new intellectual trend. Just think about Metal Gear Solid 2. A wonderful game engine & design put to waste because of a terrible story line.
      Give me some Miyamoto games where all I need to do is rescue the princess (Peach or Zelda).
      • Yeah, pretty much. It's all moral philosophy really. I happen to love that, to each their own.

        That said, my second favorite genre, is what I call the Viewtiful genre. Basically cool stuff games. Viewtiful Joe, Devil May Cry, Ninja Gaiden, etc.

        Games that you get a rewarding sense of pure style from.

        I'm also a big Miyamoto/Nintendo fan, but it's not all roses.. (Wind Waker, SMB 3/Yoshi's Island), there's a few thorns. (Super Mario Sunshine, the N64 Zelda's, which were stiff and played like crap.
        • Please don't tell me you're calling Super Mario Brothers 3, Yoshi's Island, and Zelda: Ocarina of Time crap, and claiming to be a Nintendo/Miyamoto fan... Especially considering the fact that these are some of the best and most popular games Nintendo has put out, not to mention some of their most original. Even though they are all "sequels" in the sense that they build upon already defined characters and worlds, each redefined their respective genres when they came out.

          I'm not sure, since the structure of
    • You're not alone with thinking FFX was great. I was kind of leery at first but it was a great game. The battle system was awesome, and it may have been linear but there are so many secrets and stuff that you don't notice really.
      FFX-2 is not a real serious game, it's fun but X is just alot more involved.
  • I think the real problem is that there is different audiences out there in regards to games.

    Some like turn based and somewhat-to-fully-automated automatically controlled characters or 'managed' characters (i.e. Neverwinter Nights and most other modern MMORPGS automatically attack and do everything for you most of the time). Other's like action or "twitch" based games.

    IMHO the 'twitch' based (realtime fighting /w deep fighting system) are the best ones because they should ideally a) rely on skill which up

  • Narrow vision of Japanese games (Score:3, Informative)

    by Taulin ( 569009 ) on Sunday July 18, 2004 @10:31PM (#9734858) Homepage Journal
    I probably can't dispute the statistics ( i.e. Japanese sales down X percent ), but I don't think it has anything to do with the decline of Japanese games.


    1) The market before seemed saturated with Japanese games because there were not that many companies in other countries making games for their systems. This makes sense since their consoles were normally not sold overseas for a year or so after the Japan release. This has changed since consoles now are released in all the major companies only months apart, and all interested game companies can get dev kits faster (thanks Sony!).


    2) Japan has never exported that many games. You always here about all the of games that never leave Japan soil, and it's true. As one who just moved back from Japan and went to Akihabara almost every weekend for the last two years, I see no decline in their ingenuity and originality. The problem is many Japanese games are culturally fit, and with the rich/strange culture they have, there are many sides that don't go well elsewhere. Games like Densh de Go, and the Tokimeki series are easy to play for long and short periods of time, offer great fun, and many cases depth. You will never see these games out of Japan, though.

    • Games like Densh de Go, and the Tokimeki series are easy to play for long and short periods of time

      Er, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that the missing "a" in "densha" was the result of a typo. Anyway...

      Neither of those games are poster children for excellent games that didn't make it in the West, IMHO. Gameplay-wise, they sorta ... um ... suck. They're sort of the Japanese equivalent of those reams of horrible EA sports games. Team sports are intrinsically a bad video game concept

  • Could the downturn in Japanese game sales also be (Score:3, Insightful)

    by foidulus ( 743482 ) * on Sunday July 18, 2004 @10:55PM (#9735009)
    because the Japanese game market was crapflooded a lot more than the US game market? If you ever have a chance to go to Japan(which I recommend, beautiful country) walk into any used game store. I was just stunned that even in the little Tokyo suburb I was living in, the huge number of games for dreamcast, and ps1, ps2, and hell, they even had a huge rack of famicom games.
    There probably are a few gems in there, but my guess is that most of the games are probably total crap. Maybe this just turned a lot of people off of video games. Look at the US market, whenever the market got hot, it was usually followed by a crapflood of games(Atari ET anyone?) and then usually followed by a downturn.

  • Japan's savior is not GTA3. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by badasscat ( 563442 ) <basscadet75@yah o o . c om> on Sunday July 18, 2004 @11:27PM (#9735173)
    The piece muses on reasons for the decline: "Complex, lengthy, story-driven [Japanese] games demand an awful lot of care and feeding these days, and often offer paradoxically little replay value... [whereas Western developer] DMA Design hit on a formula with Grand Theft Auto III that... offers activities suited to both long stretches of gameplay and short sittings of cruising or random action."

    Let me guess - this guy's new around here.

    Seriously, the guy is going to compare a series that has sold somewhere around 22 million copies in Japan with a series that has sold somewhere around 300,000 copies in Japan and conclude that the latter formula works better? This makes no sense.

    The Final Fantasy series is one of the most successful of all time. It has always been successful, and it continues to be successful. FFX sold 1.4 million copies in Japan, FFX-2 sold 1.2 million. FFXI is an online game - doesn't count. But let me tell you, a lot of people are nervous about the changes being made to FFXII - it's one thing to tweak the formula (nobody wants a series to get stale), it's another to throw the baby out with the bathwater. The fact is the FF series is one of the few bright spots in the Japanese game market and it's the absolute wrong series to hold up as a poster child for what's wrong with the industry there.

    Thinking Japanese tastes are the same as ours is a rookie mistake. Rockstar is an American company (Rockstar North is based in Scotland, but their ownership was American prior to GTA3) making games for western tastes. GTA3 was #1 in Japan for a week or two, as was Vice City, but neither was a phenomenon and neither sold nearly as well as even the worst-selling Final Fantasy title. This is just a really dumb comparison.

    Now, that out of the way, I'll at least concur with the obvious; Japanese game developers have got some problems. If you ask me, though, it's exactly the opposite of what's said in the quote above that's at issue - many Japanese publishers are shunning their home audience in favor of the larger western market, creating games specifically tailored to Europe and the United States that end up not selling well at all in Japan. Metroid Prime, the DOA series, Ninja Gaiden, Dead to Rights, Kill.Switch, SOCOM, etc.... all games from Japanese publishers and/or developers made specifically for a western audience that did not/do not sell well in Japan.

    This is a new phenomenon - remember that the Japanese did not even sell consoles in the US until 1985, and it wasn't until the mid-90's that they really even consciously began developing games designed to appeal to both western and Japanese audiences. The primary audience has been slowly shifting from East to West ever since and it's now gone beyond the tipping point.

    This has become a vicious cycle that's in danger of reaching the point of no return. Publishers in Japan commission games for a western audience because the overseas markets are larger, which leads to disinterested Japanese at home, which leads to further shrinking of the market and in turn more development specifically for the west.

    The danger, of course, is that there are plenty of western publishers out there that know western tastes better than Japanese publishers do. So if you look at a company like Namco, their games have really not been selling well at all lately in either market, despite their focus on the west. If you ask me, the best thing to do would be for publishers like Namco to refocus on what got them where they are in the first place - plenty of Japanese games have sold well in this country without pandering to a western sense of style (practically the entire NES/SNES catalog, for example, along with most of the PSX and early PS2 catalogs), and they obviously sold well in their home country too. Japanese publishers have simply lost their focus over the years, and lost their way.
  • ...to stop looking at Japanese games and US gamers as completely different beasts. If you really insist on pigeonholing, there are merely different types of gamers and statistically more of one type lives in Japan and more of another type lives in the US. A lot of people like GTA style games and (now here's the shocker) some of those people live in Japan! Should a software company miss out on this audience because just because they are based in Japan? Also, should software developers cater to a small a
  • So what? Western games don't sell well in Japan, so it's pretty natural that the opposite applies.

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