Allan Foe said:
mfeff said:
It would of been easier if I had made the video myself, rather than dicking about explaining why he's a fool.
Gorblimey, that has to be the longest single post on the whole Escapist Forums!
I admire your fever and diligence, but I hope you do understand that there's going to be something like 5 people who've read that post to the end. How about writing an article, with proper references and links and all that? Or why not even write a letter to the Extra Credits crew listing your counter-arguments and proposing to answer them publicly?
It was way long, sad part is, could of doubled it in size and barely hit the real answer. I agree with everything you say. At the end of the day, its not who is wrong or right, rather that if one is going to do videos, for profit, could they use less data manipulation and forced hypothesis, and more describing what is there to be described. Sadly again, it is part in parcel with the scientific method, and a huge part of the oft vaunted "age of enlightenment".
You called bullshit on me, it is for the same reason I called bullshit on them, my argument was faulty. Notice how my arguments becomes more faulty as I go? That's data manipulation to persuade the audience to see things my way. EC did not need to do that as much on there video, because they played off stereo types and built in audience agreement.
When they show a picture of "game developers" and its a white guy, a brown guy, a woman, right after talking about the "nativity" of the industry... well that ignores reality. The "industry" was apogee and shareware in a garage, a white guy in photos and a bearded white guy in his native environment. In Japan, there was little to no "indee" development, it is almost all corporate, a reboot of the failed console market in the states.
Only in the past couple years have there been unrestricted indee development in Japan, it's almost all porn games.
What are you talking about? I visit a decent number of Japanese web sites, which ones are you having problems with?
And I'm sorry, but I find the timing of that particular typo hilarious. No offence, mind!
Key here is you said "decent" I am talking about "not decent", general public use websites hosted by regular guys like you and me. Your website, my website. Not company web sites, that are developed for a wide audience. Go to a website that deals in mod or programming techniques for a hentai first person hentai game, written by Japanese for Japanese... you cannot do this, not without utilizing some network tricks. IP blocked.
You and me talking, without a middle man, is intentionally hard to do in Japan, if I am Japanese and you are in Spain through the vehicle of data storage. Not phones, talking public use information such as websites like the Japanese escapist...
exactly? Please elaborate, I can't quite get my head around that.
I took a liberty here, and I am glad you called BS on it. Programming techniques (technology), such as engines for games right now, and this has been true for some time is behind in Japan. The Havok engine for example has been one of the outsourced engines used in PS3 development, but has been difficult to use due to manuals and technical support not written in Japanese. This is VERY true for the Unreal engine. Wonder why games like Last Remnant never made it to US PS3?
Engine trouble, engine trouble means they 'generally' don't have one of there own. They are two years from a viable reverse engineered copy. Grand Turismo, Final Fantasy, engine troubles. Deamons Souls? Havok engine... imported. From Software has a Havok team. This is why Atlus went to em, no talent on board mate.
Again keep in mind, Wolfenstien was made for all practical purposes in a garage, not at a major company, the company came later. In Japan, it's just not that "open" to that much independent thought. Conformist society. Even the PC systems up until later versions of windows were incompatible OS's. All my Japanese games back from the day, I ran on Japanese OS.. They really struggle with things like Direct X and open API's like open GL. Theres no support for Japanese stuff.
And "copying gun games", how would that go? Would you say that Russia Ukraine is copying gun games with S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Metro and the like?
Glad you asked, Russia and Ukraine have some of the finest programmers I have ever met, Iceland is the same way, dudeeeeee those guys are smart.
Now back to facts, Stalker runs on counter strike source, counter strike source is half life, half life is quake engine, quake engine is doom engine, doom engine is wolfenstein, wolfenstein is John Carmack, and the hardest decision in Carmacks life is what color is his new Ferrari.
This is engine evolution, a technology, and technique. Metro is a home baked engine, and a really good one at that. Although it has a lot of Quake DNA. Still not optimized though, look to Crysis 2 for that, talking about DX 10 and DX 11... and guess what, the Japanese are still back at DX9 or Glide. To learn these things you need to be a Digipen or FullSail, learning them before they are even in the manuals. Do you think Japanese guys sit around upgrading there PC's and stacking video cards every generation like they do in the west? Cmon man... this is an economic question. An availability question.
Things change all the time, I am talking 'back in the day', not right here not right now. The Japanese Vanquish is RIGHT HERE RIGHT NOW. Not wolfenstien days. It's possible to play on Asian servers with many games, I played on a Japanese dominated server for a couple years back in the days of Ultima Online, it helped me with my Japanese.
Your right though, there are some monumental cultural differences. I am simply arguing that a distinct lack of FPS from Japan it is not solely due to there religion, and that the West do not solely utilize the FPS due to ignorant concepts of Patriotism, as Daniel would insist we swallow in all it's creamy bravado.
Thanks for pointing out the grammatical mistake. I make lot's of mistakes.
Now that's just not fair. For example, weren't most Final Fantasy titles localised for western markets as an afterthought? And Gyakuten Saiban games, the first three certainly weren't meant for the western audiences. If James is half serious about this game design thing, he's probably looked at one of those.
It's localized not localised... see how that works?
Just kiddin!
Anyway, Final Fantasy roots are a copy of the Ultima Series in the United States, in fact I could probably reasonably argue that they are clones of the Ultima series, especially the first ones. I would also argue that they were also 'not meant' to be exported at some time the future once the Japanese had something that wasn't such an obvious rip off or the quality level got up some.
Ultima came out in 1980
Final Fantasy came out in 1987...
see that?
In this case the technology difference when it is applied to game engineering is 7 years. The gap closes as we march on.
Can't really speak to all of them, but without looking I would take the Pepsi challenge on every title you drop that there is a western equivalent that pre dates it, or that the Japanese were in competition with each other, trying to out Final Fantasy Final Fantasy. Just like Rift tries to out WoW WoW.
It's a business. Run by many people who read Sun Tzu's art of War. It's not Buddhist or Shinto, or whatever Mumbo Jumbo Daniel wants to paint his pathetic argument with.
What I am saying is that Daniel, probably more to his credit than not, is not playing modern Japanese games. Most of em are Hentai. So that said, how does that fit with his Shinto, Buddhist argument? It really doesn't.
Game like Catherine, are VERY VERY TAME compared to the real deal in Japan... guess what, all of those, even ones coming out THIS YEAR, are still DX9 or Glide... mostly Glide... cause independent folks are not being taught the new magic, or can't afford to develop for it, or there is no market... remember Japanese guys are not upgrading there PC's all the time.
I could reasonably argue that Japan game developers are not going to compete with western FPS games, simply due to being so far behind. Killzone maybe a different story, but the big deal there is 3d glasses, gimmick... like the Wii... it's there version of innovation, because they cannot program at the level that Western developer's can. There probably saying it's too expensive, and the risk is too great, and they are right.
Japan is still stuck on the turn based battle system... Final Fantasy is trying to get away from it... but its just one of those things...
Now as far as programming technology goes... software that runs a nuclear plant a highschool kid could write... these are control systems with simple logic gates...
Writing software to interpret a 3d environment and make complex decisions is incredibly difficult to do. Look at some of the work at Darpa.
In a way, when one or two key people leave a game company for example, that company almost always FAILS.
Why?
Just like anywhere else, there are like 2-3 (mostly white guys), who know EVERYTHING, and everyone else is a script kiddy, or working on some little 'widget'. There not software engineers, they are 2 year degree applied games theory people. Or some mass communication graduate pretending to know something.
They do know something, that Bullshit is the next big growth industry.
It's education, economics, right place, right time.
