Stereotypes ALWAYS have some basis in truth. Yes, some JRPGs I'm sure are good (to those fans), but most of them are pretty outright terrible. The same can be said for FPSs, action-adventure, racing, and motion games. I think it's mostly the anime art style and the over-the-top antics of the generally unlikeable characters that make the games difficult to take serious. Most westerners think, "Magic? Am I 7 years old again reading Harry Potter? No. Give me a gun." Things become much less "uninformed and baseless" when game after game after game has the same template. As I said, this can be said for multiple genres.clockpenalty said:People hate JRPGs because it is fashionable to hate on them at this time.
I case you haven't noticed, there is a noticeable backlash going on at the moment against everything japanese in geek-land.
People are hating on anime, japanese-developed video games and of course, JRPGs combine elements of both so they will get hit the hardest.
If you read the reasons people are giving (sweeping generalisations about spunky teengers and long cutscenes etc) you'll understand that they are uninformed and baseless. Like any meme, people are just imbibing and repeating what is currently 'cool' without using their brains.
JRPGs are varied and diverse. The gameplay is not always turn based. The animations are not always slow. Weapons are not always ridiculous. Not all JRPGs have gunblades. Not all JRPGs are brutally linear. Persona, etrian odyssey, demon souls and Nier are all JRPGs.
When upholding WRPGs, its the same bethesda and bioware games that are repeated ad nauseam, and not the hordes of unknown dreary boring d&d clones that *really* comprise the wrpg majority, so why focus on the thousands of korean (not even japanese) mmo's as your 'justification' for hating jrpgs?
Here's what I'm getting at. I love racing games. I could take what you wrote, change a few key words, and say I'm defending the fact that all racing games are different and varied. Yes, to a point that is true. But I would be bullshitting myself to think that they don't share explicit similarities.
Also, thinking it's the "cool thing" to hate something has no weight as an argument. For example, everyone hates Bobby Kotick. We don't hate him because the guy next to us says he does, we hate him because he's a bloody prick!!
Go to a bookstore in the United States. Look at the kids that sit in the aisle (ew) with the anime books that make the picture when you have all 87 books. They are fucking weird. No one wants to be a part of that. That is why we hate Japanese stuff.
If Japanese developers want to stay competitive in the coming years, they will have to begin appealing to western gamers with new, fresh ideas that steer well clear of anime, emo teens, and fashion resembling diving head first into a tumble dryer. I'm not saying they make "brown and gray shooters WAH," they just have to do things differently, or fail.