Kojima: "Maybe I Should Quit Being Japanese"

Keane Ng

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Kojima: "Maybe I Should Quit Being Japanese"



Metal Gear Solid mastermind Hideo Kojima is addicted to everyone's favorite co-op zombie shooter, Left 4 Dead, which makes him all the more bitter about the state of game development in his home country.

Speaking to Famitsu, Kojima expressed his envy of the Western side of the games industry. "The US and European marketplace are far better balanced," he said. "There are games everyone can play...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 [http://www.l4d.com/] right now, but people say to me that that game would never work in Japan."

You'd think that a guy could just enjoy the game, but the idea that something like Left 4 Dead could never come out of Japan just seems to make Kojima more than a little peeved about the state of Japanese game development. "Maybe I should quit being Japanese," he said. "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."

Kojima pointed to the insularity of the Japanese market as the main factor preventing Japan from catching up with the West. Asked why exactly Japanese developers can't create games like Left 4 Dead, he bluntly explained that it's "because they're Japanese. 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."

Nevertheless, Kojima has faith in the creativity of his countrymen. He only fears that if Japan fails to catch up with the rest of the world that that creativity will be exploited. "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," Kojima said. "If that happens, then there won't be any new Japanese creators."

[Via GameZine [http://www.gamezine.co.uk/news/formats/xbox360/kojima-addicted-left-4-dead-$1260889.htm]]

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PedroSteckecilo

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Feb 7, 2008
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I am extremely sad that he used Spike TV's Video Game Awards as a barometer for North American and European gaming... those people wouldn't know quality if it... eh hem. Never mind.
 

unangbangkay

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It's been a growing concern, it seems, for the Japanese to be worried about their own industry, one which they practically dominated not even 15 years ago, becoming stagnant, and it's good that a creator with as high a profile as Kojima to come out and voice it, from a creative rather than business-oriented perspective.

That said, I think "Japanese-y" games still have a lot of pull outside their own country, perhaps owing in part to that same insularity. As many Japanese games are designed to appeal to Japanese people and their own unique cultural mores, a lot of them bear unique style and flavor that can put many games that were more broadly designed to shame.

I could hardly imagine such games as Persona 3 or even Kojima's own pieces ever coming from a place other than Japan, racist/nationalist as that might sound.
 

unangbangkay

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PedroSteckecilo said:
I am extremely sad that he used Spike TV's Video Game Awards as a barometer for North American and European gaming... those people wouldn't know quality if it... eh hem. Never mind.
My thoughts exactly. Spike TV?! Their chances of giving a uniquely Japanese game full recognition are about as high as American Football's chances of "making it" outside America.
 

Vlane

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NoMoreSanity said:
Well, there are some good and creative japanese games out like Persona and NoMoreHeroes, but those games bombed mostly. So, I think it's saying that creative things coming out of Japan are not reaching public mind, only stuff like Final Fantasy and Megaman seem to be the best-selling japanese titles.
And Street Fighter ...and Mario... and Zelda... and Metroid and and and.
 

Tryss

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Keane Ng said:
Tryss said:
sooo Who's killed Kojima in Left 4 Dead already? *snicker*
He probably chooses Bill every time, and pretends he's playing as Big Boss.
sooo tempting.. this actually reminds me of something else I heard of a while ago:
http://www.gamegrep.com/news/9256-jack_thompson_bought_a_copy_of_gta_iv_whats_he_up_to/

led me to wonder what his 360 gamer tag was. ;)
 

HobbesMkii

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Jun 7, 2008
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Kojima strikes me as a pretty conflicted guy. He's probably one of the best suffering artists the video game world has to offer. He's got a right to fear us Westerners just stealing from Japan and building off it. They do it all the time in movies (ie. The Departed, The Magnificent Seven) so I expect they'll start making a grab in the videogame genre to.
 

Sewblon

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Many Japanese titles have strong bases in the west, for example, Mario, Zelda, Metroid and Final Fantasy, so I don't think that the Japanese gaming industry is in immediate danger. If Mr. Kojima or any other Japanese developers are really worried they could always incorporate elements of western titles(Such as Real-time strategy, First person action gaming or morale choices in RPGs) into their own projects.
 

greygelgoog

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I don't know why, but reading this story somehow makes me feel vindicated. And it's not a Left 4 Dead thing, I haven't played that.
 

Keane Ng

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HobbesMkii said:
Kojima strikes me as a pretty conflicted guy. He's probably one of the best suffering artists the video game world has to offer. He's got a right to fear us Westerners just stealing from Japan and building off it. They do it all the time in movies (ie. The Departed, The Magnificent Seven) so I expect they'll start making a grab in the videogame genre to.
Yeah, good point.

But there's already a dialogue between Western and Japanese developers that doesn't necessarily constitute "stealing" on either end. God of War and Gears of War took ideas from Devil May Cry and Resident Evil 4 respectively, and then Japanese developers took ideas from Western games to make things like Lost Planet, or Metal Gear Solid 4. The question then is when does being inspired by someone else and borrowing ideas constitute stealing and exploitation?

Also The Departed was based on a Hong Kong film, not a Japanese one. ;)
 

Taunto

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I imagine that japan will most likely try to come out with some good games for a little now