maybe kojima have problems in his nihonggo class, lol

What makes the men behind Solid Snake and the Yakuza games so pessimistic about Japan's games business?
By Kevin Gifford, 01/14/2009

Quote:What happens when Weekly Famitsu magazine sits Hideo Kojima and Toshihiro Nagoshi down in the same room? A lot of excitement for the new year -- and a lot of bellyaching about the state of the industry they work in. The producers of the Metal Gear Solid and Yakuza series respectively, the two both have years of experience in their chosen business, along with a shared love of movies and drinking alcohol -- the value of which cannot be understated for any would-be game maker.
While there are no groundbreaking revelations from Kojima and Nagoshi's talk (printed this week in Famitsu), there are more than a few neat observations to be had about their lives and the business they work in if you peek inside the interview text a bit. Here are the highlights.

- Kojima and Nagoshi first met in approximately 1996, when Nagoshi was still a rank-and-file staffer in Sega's arcade division. By the time Nagoshi became known for the Super Monkey Ball games, he and Kojima were regularly going on drinking runs. "Kojima had this reputation for being all angry back then," Nagoshi says, "and I remember him being really drunk and me having to stop him. When I think back on it, I can't help but feel so much more adult now, somehow."

- When Kojima and Nagoshi shared a hotel at E3 five years ago, "I remember [Nagoshi] saying that if Yakuza wasn't a hit, he was quitting," Kojima says.

- Kojima is not one to look back on the games of the past. "I'm very happy to see that the technology has caught up with what I want to do," he says. "This might anger some, but some of the [developers] of the past simply aren't able to deal with the high-definition era. When I started, graphics were 2D and nobody expected characters to actually speak their lines. I figured the time would come where I would be able to do movie-like expressio in games, but I didn't think it would come so quickly. It's gotten easier with every year that's passed."

- Both Kojima and Nagoshi expressed frustration at Japanese game companies for failing to adapt with the rapidly changing needs of their customers. "The arcades are just crazy right now," Nagoshi says. "Certainly part of that is because users' tastes in gaming are changing with the times, but companies aren't even trying to create a full cycle of play options any longer. There are fighting games, card games, and so on for the hardcore gamers; there are crane games and photo booths to attract the casuals, but there's nothing for those casuals to try out next. There needs to be, but the makers only faintly realize it. It's the same deal with console games -- companies were too tied up with the past, and before they knew it, cell phone games exploded and suddenly gamers saw their time float away to other things. This forces companies to think about attracting casuals, but this creates a gap between that need and all the great technology wee have."




Kojima agrees, adding an even more pessimistic note to matters. "The US and European marketplace are far better balanced. There are games everyone can play -- maybe calling them 'kids' games' would be inappropriate -- but there's also a deep base of core titles made with movie-industry people that explore the depths of hi-def. I'm addicted to Left 4 Dead right now, but people say to me that that game would never work in Japan.

"Maybe I should quit being Japanese," Kojima continued with a laugh. "And speaking of which, there were hardly any Japanese games nominated in Spike TV's Video Game Awards this year. It's sad to see that Japan's games failed to even register in America last year."

- Why do Japanese companies have trouble keeping up with their overseas competition? "Because they're Japanese," Kojima says. "Japan makes all their own books and movies and music. You can't export entertainment made by Japanese people in the Japanese language, so it's all made with the sort of budgets that guarantee profit within the Japanese marketplace only. Meanwhile, the English-speaking world is a global one. The scariest scenario I see is people overseas taking the ideas from Japanese games, running the Hollywood business merchandising machine on them, and taking all the revenue. If that happens, then there won't be any new Japanese creators."

Kojima also points out that the hi-definition era has changed the rules of game design itself. "Game design up to now has been about making rules," he notes. "It was like a card game; there were lots of things that weren't possible and had to be cut. With hi-def, the more real it gets, the less instruction you need to give, so preoccupying yourself with making rules seems silly. Western developers have realized this, but Japanese ones are still preoccupied with making these rules."

- The two designers are both oldsters by game-industry standards, something that becomes pretty obvious once the subject turns to the younger generation of game staff. Nagoshi sees a lot of them rely on the Internet "as if it were part of their own brain...they're interested in a movie, so they look it up and read the entire plot online instead of watching it." Kojima sees that attitude reflected in Japanese creators' minds: "They think too much about their budgets and the restraints placed on them. It's important they're given the chance to create their work right down to the hilt; I wish they had a little more freedom."

- So what are these two designers up to today? "There is a title I'm designing that I think wee'll be able to announce relatively soon, and there's also a rather challenging project I'm working on to compete against the overseas industry. So as far as unannounced projects, I've started work on one and three others are in progress." Nagoshi, for his part, is working on Yakuza 3 and one other title, which he expects to be announced before the end of the year.

source: Kojima don't want to be japanese