The New York Times’ recent interview with Keiji Inafune was pretty shocking stuff. Capcom’s Global Head of Production lambasted Japanese developers  for making “awful“ games and being “at least five years behind,” described his own company as “barely keeping up,” and topped things off by comparing himself to a famous 19th century samurai who tried to overthrow Japan’s feudal government.

Whoa.

America’s “real world“ news media gets stories like this on the regular. When economic times are tough, the easiest thing to do is to come out the gate pointing fingers and assigning blame. This is not the first time some salty corporate head honcho has sounded off about his frustration to a guy with a tape recorder.

For Western gamers, though, this as a rare occasion. Someone in a position of influence is acknowledging the way we’ve felt for years: Japan’s stature in the world of gaming is a shell of what it once was. Innovation has been usurped by stagnation. Creativity has been replaced by endless iterations of long-stale ideas.

Inafune’s perennial bluntness on the subject of Japanese game development is incredibly refreshing (although one has to wonder if Capcom feels the same way.) However, Inafune also spends much of this interview suggesting that developers in Japan need to look to the West as a model for success. “I want to study how Westerners live, and make games that appeal to them,” he tells NYT’s Hiroko Tabuchi.

But will this approach translate to dollar signs (er, yen signs) for Japan? Call me a skeptic, but I think it sends the wrong message to Japanese developers. It’s not that we need more games from Japan that emulate the Anglo-centric stories or gameplay found in Halo and Gears of War. The problem is that they need to stop making the same crappy games over and over again.

Games like Dark Void and Bionic Commando (both of which Inafune was involved in making) followed his recipe to the letter - they featured established Western themes and gameplay with so-called “Western appeal.” So why didn’t they sell? Probably because they weren’t very good games.

The lesson is that quality and innovation trumps cover-based shooting mechanics and blond-haired, blue-eyed protagonists. But Inafune’s argument for the Westernization of Japanese gaming overshadows his initial point: what once was a flood of great Japanese games has become a slow trickle.

My belief is this: Japan needn’t look any further than their own shores for inspiration. Developers like Level 5, Q Entertainment, and Team Ico are crafting titles that don’t compromise their Eastern appeal, yet  manage to captivate audiences in this hemisphere. These companies don’t bask in the notoriety of decades old franchises like Nintendo or Square Enix. They take the same bold leaps as Western devs - they just do it the Japanese way.

One reader in the NYT interview’s comments section seems to think this current creative drought has a deeper cause. “The fundamental problem…is endemic to (the) country’s culture, and therefore, far less mutable,” writes “Cordell.” “A Japanese saying, ‘the nail that sticks up, gets hammered down,’ explains the country’s inability to innovate. The Japanese education system inculcates conformity and consensus from the earliest ages…(it) purges iconoclasts from its ranks.” Yet one look at Professor Layton, Child of Eden, or The Last Guardian would seem to suggest otherwise.

What do you think? Is the East’s best hope to look to the West? Or is Inafune giving Japan the short end of the stick?
 

Paul Alexander is a student of Interactive Media and Game Design at SCAD in Atlanta, GA. Follow him at twitter.com/fender_splendor.