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Are these creative core concepts being developed by your company coming from you? Are they coming from your team? Are they coming from individual creators that you work with?
KI: You need to have the right foundation in the company before you can really get to that level. Right now, all of these concepts, basically, they come from me. Right now, the key point is to try and get the staff to be able to execute on my vision.
Once I get enough people that can execute on my vision, then of course, when they come up with concepts that make sense, I'll know that they'll have learned all they need to learn to be able to create their own vision and execute on that.
Right now, it's more of the training and learning process, and executing process. But of course long term, every good teacher, every good father, wants his students to be able to branch out on their own. That of course will be the long-term vision.
I think the Japanese industry has had a problem with that, in the sense that younger people are not rising up and becoming well known. There seems to be a ceiling. If you listen to something that Miyamoto recently said, he's trying to make people at Nintendo think about what's going to happen when he's not around, because right now they don't think that way.
KI: The biggest problem is they're never giving chances to the young guys. So, they're thinking, "It's just faster if I do it myself. If I do it myself, there's not the risk of it being a failure." They just don't really have the bravery to give the younger generation a chance. That is the biggest problem that I think is occurring within the Japanese industry right now.
If you look at the Japanese game industry in general, if you want to become a director, if you become a director by the time you're in your early 30s or mid-30s, that's pretty good in a major publisher or a major developer. But at Comcept, we actually have two directors that are in their late 20s. So ultimately, we're giving people their chances at an earlier time. They would never have gotten these chances if they were at Capcom or some other big publisher.
So, we truly believe about giving people chances, helping to teach them and helping to train them at an early age, rather than just being like "Oh, it's a hassle to do that." It's not convenient.
Is that what you think is the biggest problem facing the Japanese industry right now, or is that just one of the big problems?
KI: It's one of the problems. In Japan, there are a number of small problems like this that have added up to a big problem. That's just one. Obviously, there are problems with the companies, problems that we don't have enough creators, problems with younger developers not being given a chance.
There are a lot of problems in the Japanese industry -- the fact that we're not looking at the global market, looking towards America and Asia. There are all different kinds of problems that build up to be a big problem right now in the Japanese game industry.
You've kind of become the spokesperson for "the Japanese industry sucks" right now. Are you comfortable with that?
KI: [laughs] Yeah, I'm totally fine with that, because it's my personal feeling. It's how I truly feel. Ultimately, if that's going to make people to work harder in the game industry, they can call me the bad guy, they can say I'm twisted or demented, they can say what they want to. But if, in the end, it's going to lead to a good result, if it's going to lead to them working harder, becoming more international, making good games, that's fine.
Is there anything that gives you hope, that you've seen changing?
KI: I will be the person to bring hope to the Japanese game industry. I will be the one to show them that there are other ways to think about games. There are other ways to develop them.
Just you?
KI: So, ultimately, if I work my butt off, if I show them there's a different way, then I think naturally, they will come. If you build it, they will come. If you show them there's a different way to think about game development, they will naturally support you, and more and more people will change their way of thinking. So, yes, somebody has got to stand up and try to make a movement, got to make it work, and then people will start to change their way of thinking. That's usually how that happens in life.
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I think its a good thing that Gamasutra keeps close ties with some of the best in the industry even when no one else is.
Now hopefully Inafune will indeed be able to show the japanese sector a more effective way of how to get things done.
After the metascores of Ninja Gaiden 3, RE:Operation Raccoon City and Armored Core V we've talked about what's wrong with the Japanese game industry, but as well with the one in Germany. Seems it's almost the same. Monetization and copycatting are more important than original game mechanics and prototyping. There seems to be no more space for Innovation and Creativity for the major Developers and Publishers.
What some small studios could have done with the money that those two titles had cost ... gosh, it aches!
And the problem as a whole is that there's nothing new. Interest in the game industry has been raising tremendously but 'nothing' has changed. To just allow that to remain leads to loss of interest followed by a collapse.
No one is inventing, and David has nailed it on the head.
This is particularly bad for an industry that is dwarfed exponentially by the constantly reinvented technology it is using.
I'm not particularly big on this constant need for "innovation" or "invention", but it does have it's place of importance. Nintendo stepped it up because they knew they had a problem. Continuing to simply compete for the same audience would lead to stagnation and eventual destruction. So they gambled (seriously, they gambled HARD) with a completely untapped market and struck big. HUGE, even. Now, there's a larger focus on a casual market as a whole with Move and Kinect walking into the areas of motion control that the Wii couldn't. But that's only on the tech end. Simply relying on the latest console, graphics engine, or apple product to drive our creativity is terrible. If we keep that up the first successes on the platforms will dictate all the genres and tropes of the market, and we'll be flooded with copycat syndrome again.
But Inafune's level of change is really on the management end of our industry. How do we as developers make games? One of his problems at Capcom is how it took so long just to push an idea out. He's a seasoned developer at Capcom and it takes him MONTHS of approval time. Imagine the new starters of the industry who have less experience. They probably never get heard from for years. By the time you DO have any say, the next wave of hardware might be coming out. Now, you've got to flow with the tide of changes that generation brings whether it's a new level of control, a new method of feedback, or a completely new market that your company wants to focus on. It's a system that can bottleneck creativity.
Inafune is working with a group of people differently than how he did at Capcom: Having staff working at positions that they wouldn't have until they were at least a decade more experienced, more focus on creative development and its directed vision than monetization methods, and an rapid-decision process. The innovation doesn't lie necessarily in the games, but in how they are developed. The kicker is that this isn't even new. It's just the perks and freedoms of indie development! Indie devs are praised consistently for their ability to add new and different ideas quickly as opposed to many of those AAA studios we point to because they have specific markets to target. Inafune wants to push out more creativity into the industry, so it's not a surprise that this is how he's doing it.
innovation is more than having a new fancier machine that does the same exact thing as its predecessor and I believe that's where the japanese game industry and what inafune is attacking . Not the machines or hardware but the mindset and development process of japanese games. As David Asksys why can't we have several badass games a year? why do we have to be subjected to a large number of uninteresting and cliche titles before the occasional demon souls comes out which is both uncompromising in its design and a new model as far as gameplay mechanics and implementation are concerned ?
I'm not convinced there'd be an increase in masterworks though, because even in the days of 1 year dev time, 5 man teams there were very few really good games. I'll take Mortal Kombat (1992) as an example. It was a game who's style (digitized sprites) that lots of other developers tried to copy, but just couldn't nail. By the time MK3 came out they were waaay ahead of anyone else in the field. Metroid was just as innovative, and by the time Super Metroid came out, many developers were making simple run and gun shooters with different weapons. What I'm saying is that the best games of each generation are really difficult to make, even in small teams.
I love how he wants to make a game that is just his pure idea. Not for the customers, not for the money, simply out of a love and passion for making games. Bravo, Inafune-san, Bravo
Unfortunately that question was not asked. But it's still true. The only public effort he's got so far is the basest form of the thing he is railing against.
"The big difference is those companies don't have Keiji Inafune working for them... Right now, all of these concepts, basically, they come from me."
That comes off as egotistical and frankly crass. It sets him up as apparently the only way Japanese games can not "suck." It's also totally at odds with his complaint that the "young guys" aren't getting chances. Combined they make a really straightforward complaint of "young guys aren't thinking like me!" which is the most stereotypical "conservative old man" complaint imaginable.