After years of decline, Japanese manufacturers seem to be undergoing a renaissance, but everything seems not to be that simple.
In 2011, a well-known European and American game media published such an article:
"What can The Legend of Zelda learn from The Elder Scrolls?"
If this article were published today, it would probably be regarded as a "fishing article." But at the time, the author of this article was not writing this article to start a fight or set the pace, but to discuss a very serious topic – in the eyes of many people, compared with European and American games of the same period that focused on high degrees of freedom and cinematic narratives, Traditional Japanese large-scale games are somewhat "rustic" in concept and artistic expression.
Around 2010, the time when the dominant force in the large-scale game market gradually changed. After peaking at approximately US$6 billion in 2007, the Japanese console game market has begun a long period of shrinkage. By 2017, the entire Japanese console game market was worth just over US$2 billion, only 1/3 of what it was ten years ago.
At the same time, the development costs of large-scale games have skyrocketed. "Shenmue" was the most expensive major game at the time in 1999, almost dragging Sega into bankruptcy. However, after excluding inflation, the research and development expenses of "Shenmue" can only be regarded as the traditional 3A level among super masterpieces after 2010. The research and development cost of "The Witcher 3" was nearly 50 million US dollars, which sounded very high. However, when this figure came out, the industry was shocked by the fact that "Polish people make games really cheaply!".
On the one hand, it is the shrinking local market, and on the other hand, it is the increasingly high research and development costs. If Japan's large-scale games want to survive, the only way left is to work hard to open up the European and American game markets.
sink
From a conventional logic, if you want to develop the European and American markets, you need to learn and adapt to the tastes and habits of European and American players. A common view at the time was that Japanese game development teams were unlikely to be able to make games that European and American players would appreciate.
There are many great things about Japanese games that we can be proud of. A workshop model similar to a master leading an apprentice allows Japanese game design to always have a relatively complete inheritance. The meticulous craftsmanship in the game system and hand-controlled animation has made Japanese games always praised for their "gameplay" and "sense of impact".
Games like "Hand of God" are still unbeatable in the eyes of some players.
But European and American games have taken a completely different path. Motion capture has replaced manual animation, and advanced realistic light and shadow effects such as normal mapping and PBR have replaced the competition of basic skills among game artists. Random worlds generated using programs and map materials can also be arbitrarily expanded. Rapidly advancing technology has allowed European and American game companies to far surpass Japan in production efficiency. Regardless of whether the games are fun or not, at least large quantities are sufficient.
Faced with fierce changes and competition, Japanese developers back then felt chilled.
Keiji Inafune, the producer of "Mega Man", said in 2009 that "Japan (the game industry) is dead", and the following year he said that Japanese games are "at least five years behind" Europe and the United States. In his eyes, the language barrier alone between Japanese developers and European and American developers and console manufacturers will make it difficult to make up for this gap in the future.
In this atmosphere, some big publishers like Sony and Square Enix have begun to gradually reduce their reliance on Japanese development teams. Through acquisitions and investments, they gradually shifted the focus of game development to European and American teams.
Sony’s best first-party large-scale games are basically from European and American teams
Faced with the huge differences in game culture between Europe, America and Japan, Japanese developers seemed clumsy and at a loss at the beginning. In 2010, at the E3 press conference for the game "N3" held by Fujii Ryuyuki, he gestured like a "European and American gamer" in his mind, and also imitated an American English accent. But his English was so poor that no one in the audience could understand what he meant.
Fujii's posture was very impressive, but no one could understand what he wanted to say.The show is often rated as one of the most embarrassing press conferences at E3
For a long time, Fujii Ryuyuki's failed performance was an example used by European and American players and the media to compare their perception of Japanese games – they worked very hard to adapt to European and American players, but the overall effort was in vain.
Players back then also saw their confusion about Japanese games. Although Japanese games are still praised for their "gameplay" and "sense of impact", when it comes to Japanese games, the mainstream view seven or eight years ago was disappointing. Japanese games have become synonymous with backwardness and small scale, and it is difficult to compare with those of the same period. European and American game competition.
revival
However, in recent years, players’ love for Japanese games seems to have returned.
"Zelda: Breath of the Wild" aside, very Japanese games like "Persona 5" have also received high praise around the world. "Monster Hunter: World" only took one year to rank second in Capcom's history.
Earlier this year, we ranked the major publishers based on the quantity and quality of games released in 2018. Capcom, which insisted on relying on its Japanese team, unexpectedly came first. As if to continue their efforts, the "Resident Evil 2 Remake" and "Devil May Cry 5" in early 2019 have made many old players find the excitement of the year due to their excellent quality.
Capcom really likes this composition
There are many reasons for the rise of Japanese games in recent years, and it is difficult to summarize them simply. There are reasons for development habits – the teacher-to-teacher development model allows to retain the essence of Japanese games without losing the aesthetics of game design. At the same time, after several years of hard work, Japanese developers seem to have gradually understood the best parts of Western games, and learned how to make their games look more modern and designed, while retaining their excellent combat systems and feel. On the basis of giving players more freedom.
At the same time, landmark and successful products such as the "Dark Souls" series have also given Japanese developers a shot in the arm, allowing them to regain their confidence in the themes they are good at and realize that Japanese game culture has its own uniqueness There is no need to completely move closer to Hollywood-style movie shots and realistic images to enhance the charm and expressiveness of the film.
Now no one will ask you what The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild needs to learn from Fallout 76.
The stagnation of game technology in recent years may also give Japanese manufacturers breathing space to catch up. The return of the PS4/Xbox One generation to the X86 architecture of general-purpose PCs has further reduced the difficulty of developing large-scale games.
Compared with European and American manufacturers who keep making promises but fail to deliver, Japanese manufacturers, which have experienced several years of troughs, also appear to be more low-key and pragmatic. Compared with semi-finished products such as "Anthem" and "Fallout 76", the quality of masterpieces produced by Japanese manufacturers obviously gives players more confidence.
What can people say
Another very interesting thing is that European and American players don’t seem to be as repulsive to Japanese-style games based on Japanese culture as people initially imagined.
In 2012, Hideo Kojima said in an interview: "Many Japanese developers are too focused on the Japanese market, and their development materials are all from places like Shibuya… European and American players will not care at all."
But in 2017, the Japanese RPG "Persona 5" based on Shibuya sold a record of more than 2 million units, half of which came from Europe and the United States. "Yakuza 0", which is based on Japanese yakuza culture, does not have the majority of its sales in Japan.
European and American players seem to enjoy wandering around Shibuya.
On the one hand, this may be because Japanese animation has become increasingly popular in Europe and the United States in the Internet era, which has increased the spread and acceptance of Japanese culture. But on the other hand, it is also possible that over the years, players and the media, guided by their inertia of thinking, have indeed underestimated the value of some design concepts in Japanese games.
In any case, after several years of decline, Japanese game manufacturers have finally regained some of their former glory. This may be a reincarnation of the game industry.
At least that's how it seems on the surface.
shadow
While Japanese game manufacturers are beginning to shine again in large-scale games, the console game industry is undergoing a profound change. In the past decade, the overall size of the gaming industry has been expanding, but the console and PC markets, which are the soil for large-scale games to survive, have stagnated. The number of gamers is constantly increasing, but most of them are mobile gamers and do not sit down in front of the TV.
In 2018, console + PC revenue is no longer as good as mobile games
Large-scale game development has always been an industry with extremely high investment and high risks. No matter how many brilliant success stories a team has, it is only one or two failed works away from bankruptcy and disbandment. 3A game development, which is full of glory in the eyes of players, is actually a business model that is not sexual.
"BioShock Infinite" received numerous positive reviews, but also brought down the developers
Players often accuse big companies like EA of being unscrupulous in order to make money, acquiring excellent development teams and then destroying them. But the actual situation is much crueler: the game development team is not without vision, but they are unable to bear the risks of large-scale game development on their own, and have no choice but to commit to a large publisher.
Many teams may be finished if they fail to produce a few good works after being included, but without the support of publishers, they may not even be able to produce these few works. The founder of EA once said that although they were prosperous in the RPG field, they had been on the verge of bankruptcy for many years and would have closed down without EA.
Without EA, there would be no Mass Effect
The employees of the game development team are not necessarily willing to take such huge risks with the company to develop games. Riot, the developer of "League of Legends", was caught in a controversy over employee rights a while ago. One employee complained that Riot "prefers to recruit core players, resulting in other qualified job seekers not receiving equal opportunities to join the company."
This reason may not be easy to understand in the eyes of players: Can people who don’t love games make good games? But this is the reality of the current game industry: for many game practitioners, developing games is just an ordinary job. For them, the security and stability of this job may be more important than the recognition of players.
This kind of risk and contradiction is an unsolvable natural opposition between excellent large-scale game development teams and excellent enterprises. "Red Dead Redemption 2" has amazingly rich details and graphic performance, but every developer behind it has been stretched to the limit. At the time of release, a vice president of Rockstar accidentally revealed that the team worked more than 100 times a week. Hours later, it caused quite a stir.
The intensity of work behind the scenery is unimaginable
Regardless of whether the truth is that "only a few people worked intensive overtime in a short period of time" as he later claimed, the labor intensity of the game industry has long been no secret. The former Naughty Dog producer said that he worked more than 80 hours a week for more than ten years, and some other employees said that he "rarely went home for several years, and his children did not recognize him." In Europe and the United States, which place greater emphasis on employee rights and interests, this kind of work intensity will obviously cause big problems sooner or later.
Traditional European and American large-scale game publishers and R&D teams that move relatively quickly have gradually begun to withdraw from the battlefield of large-scale console games, seeking more stable and easy sources of income. Valve has become an e-commerce company. While Blizzard wants to become the NBA and FIFA in the e-sports era, it is also working on mobile platforms. As early as 2017, EA had transformed into a North American live online casino relying on FIFA and Madden NFL card draws. Ubisoft and Bethesda, which are slower to move, are also eager to build their own digital sales platforms.
EA's digital revenue is growing rapidly, making major games an increasingly smaller proportion of sales
Even the console manufacturers themselves are not optimistic about the prospects of console games. Microsoft itself has taken down the wall of exclusive Xbox games step by step, ported various games to PC, and even recently added a "reverse streaming function" to allow Xbox to stream games on PC.
Japanese game companies, which have gone furthest on the road to European and Americanization, were the first to feel the difficulties faced by the European and American game industries. Shinji Mikami's "The Evil Within" series has received high reviews, but the sales volume of the second generation has not even passed the million threshold. It is still unknown whether there will be a sequel. Capcom's "Resident Evil 7" received high reviews, but its sales were not as good as those of its 5 and 6 generation predecessors.
Square Enix, which owns multiple European and American classic IPs, has an even more disappointing market performance in large-scale games. The market performance of "Deus Ex" and "Hitman" were very dismal. After the reboot of "Tomb Raider", it experienced rave reviews from the first film, but also experienced highs and lows.
In this reality, the heavy bets Japanese manufacturers have placed on console games seem somewhat intriguing. Capcom announced at the end of 2018 that it would launch three masterpieces every year in the future, not just to recreate the glory of the year. Most of Capcom's highest-selling games in recent years are various handheld versions of "Monster Hunter." When the handheld market gradually disappears, Capcom, which has done little in e-sports and mobile games, may have no other suitable choice except returning to console games.
In fact, in order to develop "Monster Hunter: World", Capcom made an exception and expanded the development team to more than 200 people. The entire company had to tighten its belts to support this project, which has a tragic meaning of failure or failure.
At a time when the entire console game industry feels that winter is approaching, the resurgence of Japanese game manufacturers may just be the light of people without firewood lighting furniture.
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