PART I: A CHANGE FOR THE SERIOUS

You wouldn't know it from reading my last article, but I'm a Fulbright scholar currently in Kyoto to study Japanese video games. I'm writing a book about them, building on my senior thesis research from last year.

And the more I explain this to people, the hollower it sounds in my head. Because sometimes it seems like this year might be the lowest point ever for Japanese video games.

In their January 2002 issue, Electronic Gaming Monthly editors voted for their top 100 games of all time. A full ninety-three of the games listed were Japanese in origin.

That alone would suggest, even to the untrained observer, that Japanese video games have an overwhelming impact overseas - more so than the impact or cultural influence that domestic titles have had. So at the time I proposed it, my idea was worthy of study.

It still is, of course. (I hope.) But, just over this past year, the wind has begun to shift. I'm still not sure whether it's a slight breeze or the first stirrings of a massive tornado.

Ever the academic, I wish to quantify this assessment with another article from EGM, this time from the recent April 2003 issue. The April issue is traditionally home to a terrible April Fools' joke (this month: DOAXVB nude code! Next year: FFX-2 nude code!), but also the yearly awards special. Let's look at what games captured the hearts of these same EGM editors this past year.

PS2 Game of the Year: GTA Vice City
Driving Game of the Year: Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit 2
Sports Game of the Year: Madden NFL 2003
Action Sports Game of the Year: THPS4
Xbox Game of the Year: Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell
Adventure Game of the Year: GTA Vice City

Getting the picture yet? Let's keep going anyway.

Fighting Game of the Year: Virtua Fighter 4

Finally! Not that the West *ever* puts up a fight in this category...

PS1 Game of the Year: The Italian Job
FPS of the Year: Medal Of Honor Frontline
GCN Game of the Year: Super Mario Sunshine
Action Game of the Year: Super Mario Sunshine
Online Game of the Year: SOCOM
Handheld: Castlevania HoD
RPG: Kingdom Hearts
GOTY Overall: Metroid Prime

In short: West 10, East 5. That's a lot worse than the 93-7 Japan pulled over the past decade and a half. Add up all the games that were nominated and the score is West 38, East 35 - a little better, but still a loss.

That's counting Nintendo-funded games like Eternal Darkness and Metroid Prime as Western. Same for Sly Cooper and Ratchet and Clank - they're feeding the coffers of a Japanese company, and are based at least partially on Japanese concepts and designs, but they're Western.

That shows that Nintendo and Sony, at least, know what to do - when American enthusiasm for Japanese products wanes, invest in American products. They're going about it the right way - of course, these games rarely do well in Japan. Because they've just got that Western taint, apparently. Who knows how, or if, that can be fixed?

Well, 38 to 35 is pretty good anyway, seeing as how if Japan voted on its favorite games (of the past year or of ever, US-made products would probably score a big fat zero.

And if and when EGM ever does another Top 100 list, you can bet that some of these American games they voted Best Whatever Of The Year won't be on it - and some of the Japanese "losers", like Metroid Fusion, will.

Indeed, if you don't look at the genre-specific categories (some of which, like Action Sports Game Of The Year, exclude Japanese titles almost by definition), Japanese titles took a majority of the nominations. Even in the Xbox category, three of the five games nominated were Japanese.

And of course, if some more of the awards were slanted the other way, like Music/Rhythm... or Puzzle...

But they weren't, and you can figure out why - because they're of less importance to American gamers.

So what is happening? Well, evidently Western game designers are getting more in tune with what Western game players want out of their games. Or perhaps they've always known that and are only just now getting around to making those games worth playing - that is, really starting to understand the Japanese design philosophy and applying their own designs to that solid base of knowledge. And that's good.

It's not so great for Japanese designers though, because these days they can't simply expect that their games will sell overseas. ICO. Rez. Space Channel 5. Critically acclaimed box office flops. And it's not just a case of bad or non-existent. SC5 was given a terrifically massive marketing blitz by Sega America. And Sega Japan. And sales were horrible in BOTH countries.

We don't raise an eyebrow when a BAD game sells poorly. We only fret about Mizuguchi's games because they're so damned good.

So it's not that Japanese designers aren't making amazing, genre-smashing games.

It's that people aren't buying them.

Why not? One answer that pops immediately to mind is graphics. People buy games based in large part on screenshots. Back in the day, you pored over Nintendo Power or Famitsu and you looked at the great graphics on the games you wanted to buy. And graphics were getting so much better, so fast that you bought new, innovative, wonderful games based on their graphics and hardly ever got burned.

Hypothetically, if in 1990 you had a choice between spending $50 on Final Fantasy or... well, let's say for example that Mortal Kombat Advance - looking in screenshots exactly like it does on the GBA - was on the NES, and came out the same day. Which would you buy? Be honest - you would have passed up perhaps one of the single best console games ever created for perhaps the single worst one.

This is not to say that ICO et al have bad graphics. But it IS to say that there's a lot less of a difference these days, and the truly innovative titles get lost in the pile rather easily. There's nothing about ICO that jumps out and says BUY ME!

Mizuguchi's games can't have the most technically adept graphics. So he makes the style very interesting. Same with Fumito Ueda's ICO screen designs - he wanted it to stand out, artistically, in game magazines.

The majority of people who bought Grand Theft Auto 3 bought it why? Because of the subject matter. By sheer coincidence, they just happened to get a great video game along with the violence.

This is not to say that Tetsuya Mizuguchi's next game has to be about killing hookers. It is to say that just making a really great video game isn't enough anymore. You have to make people buy it.

That's Japan-for-America. What about Japan-for-Japan? Sega and Sammy?! Square and Enix?! Mario and Zelda sell a total of 12 copies?! What's going on here?

Could it finally, finally, finally be time for this massive period of unfettered expansion to end? Could it be time for a shakeout in the Japanese games business?

Japan's never had one, you know.

But America's had a good two shakeouts. The first one got rid of the dead weight and let Nintendo come in with the NES. The second one, around 1994, wasn't felt so harshly except by all the companies who were thrown out of business or "merely" suffered massive losses because of it. Atari Jaguar, 3DO REAL, NEC... all the way down to little guys like Squaresoft USA, Mark I.

Long-term results have been positive. Companies who are keen enough to be producing legitimately good games before the shakeout are usually foresighted enough to see the shitstorm approaching and cover themselves with a tarp. Shakeouts shake out the crap.

And there's enough of it cluttering the Japanese game market, that's for sure. It's precisely what was happening to America in 1983: there's so much crap that it obscures the good titles. There were some GREAT video games produced in 1983, in America. It's just that nobody could find them; they were buried under a mountain of ET cartridges. (I mean, literally.)

If you think I'm being overzealous with my dire predictions, just look at Sega... then Sammy and Sega... then Enix and Square. How many more companies do you think will merge, consolidate... or go out of business?

Now, the Japanese Video Game Shakeout isn't coming soon.

It's here. It's started. How bad it will be is anyone's guess.

When I talked to Yuji Horii last month, he mentioned that people are becoming bored with games because, well, games used to be a great time-killer... until the internet and cell phones came about.

And he's right. And they're here to stay. And so are games.

But that either means the games have got to change - or there will have to be a lot fewer of them, because the market is probably going to shrink.


PART II: OSAKA ELECTRO-COMMUNICATIONS UNIVERSITY

This past Tuesday, I visited Osaka Dentsuu Daigaku, up in Shijonawate, a suburb of Osaka. I was there to sit in on an interview: a Japanese journalist buddy of mine was talking to the head of the new Department of Digital Games, Hirotaka Uoi. The department that he heads is Japan's first four-year course of study in video games. In April, the lucky first 120 entering students will arrive on campus.

Japan is behind the US in this area. Digipen, for one, has already graduated four-year Bachelors of Science. Of course, at the glacial speed with which Japan moves, this is to be expected.

Since it's not my interview after all, I wait through my friend's round of softball questions. "What are students going to learn?" is the first one. Uoi immediately gives us the straight PR line - the idea isn't to be a technical or vocational school, but to approach game studies like film studies; to teach each and every aspect of the world of video games from how to produce a title to how to program sound effects.

It's a good PR line. And it's a good idea, too.

Softball questions are Japanese journalism. My friend is there to write a simple by-the-book story, not grill the guy. But I can't help myself. I always stun my friend when I just point blank ask stuff that a Japanese person wouldn't ever. Whereas Uoi's answers to my friend's questions flowed casually, his replies to mine begin with much sucking of teeth and hesitation.

Like when I ask: "Digipen, for instance, partners with Nintendo. Nintendo supplies game development systems and the students learn to program on actual console hardware. Do you have any sort of arrangements like this?"

"No we don't. Of course, we contacted the hardware companies to see if they would provide us with development systems, but even Microsoft said they didn't have the resources to help us."

"But what is this program for, if not to give students experience developing on actual video game systems?"

"We will teach them to develop for PC, and teach them the skills they will need to develop games on any system. But they will have to learn the specific hardware at the kaisha.

"This department is more in the general sense. The set-top game console is only one of many game platform possibilities. We want to teach larger things - not smaller things."

This led me to ask: "So who are the professors? Who will be teaching these kids?"

"We have ten professors, and may be adding two more before the four-year mark. Five will teach programming, three will teach design, and two will teach production."

"Okay, but who are they? What credentials do they have? Have they worked in the video game industry?" This is where the head of an American college department would rattle off names and qualifications.

Uoi was more reticent. "One is from Konami," he said. This should have been obvious - one of Konami's higher-ups graduated from Osaka Dentsuu and apparently donated a building, or got Konami to front one. In the US, it would have been named after him. But this is Japan, and the building is called Konami Hall.

The rest of the professors have a combined total of zero years of industry experience.

"We will have special talks by game designers, however."

"But," I ask, "isn't there a pretty thick veil of secrecy over game design from company to company? Will those designers even be allowed to discuss things of actual interest to the students?"

"They will discuss larger ideas, not smaller ones."

Deja vu.

"So, what do your students want to study, specifically?" I thought this a fair question - after all, with only 120 entering students and 10 faculty members, wouldn't the department want to know this right away?

Dumb question. "I don't know," Uoi said. "We haven't asked them."

"You don't know what they want to study?"

"We are going to ask them in April."

Far too late to make even minor curriculum adjustments, of course.

I press on. "How were the students selected?"

Dumb question. "100 students were selected from the standard entrance examinations," said Uoi. "The other 20 were recommended by top high schools, and were selected following an interview with our faculty."

Recommended by top high schools - the type of high schools you have to take an entrance exam to get into, no doubt. Like Osaka Dentsuu High School - no joke.

"But game design is a creative process," I pressed. "Don't you want to attract artists as well? Or students with accomplished game programming skills? Wouldn't you want to, you know... look at portfolios?"

"Ah yes," said Uoi, "we realized that this was an issue. But we could not ready this sort of process for this first semester. But, this summer we are going to take applications in this manner, to look at artwork and creative works for admission in the next semester."

"And how many students will you admit this way?"

Uoi hesitated. "Maybe five or six."

***

As someone who practically majored in Japanese video game studies, why was I more skeptical than excited coming out of this interview? I like the idea and all, and of course I think this is a positive step. But I was anticipating a course of study that would put students on the fast track, to be employable in a video game company right after graduation.

"Well, no, that's not going to happen," said my friend. "I'd say a maximum of less than half of these students will get jobs in the game industry after they graduate."

"Why do it that way if they're not going to get jobs?"

"The idea of the Japanese school isn't to put the student into real life. That's the obligation of the kaisha here," said my friend. "The school teaches students about life, and what real life is like. That's their only obligation. What the student does with it is entirely up to them."

"So really, it's about learning, like how not everyone who majors in history becomes a historian, or how not everyone who majors in philosophy becomes a philosopher."

"Right."

"But that still doesn't really make sense - what's the POINT of this program if it's not to prepare people for a job in the game industry?"

"Well, the reason this program is coming into being is because of the population decline in Japan."

"Uh... what?"

"The population is declining, right? Well, fewer kids means that the schools are getting less and less competitive. And really, most Japanese schools offer the same courses. So, to attract more students, some schools are building new and exclusive programs. That's why the school is doing this."

"So it's not really about a love of video games or anything."

"Not really. And when you enter this department, it's about learning all about interactive games, not just training to get a job at Nintendo."

"But, the type of students who are gunning for this program are the type who want to get jobs at Nintendo!"

"Well, they don't want just gamers for this program. They want a broad range of students."

"All they're getting are the top percentile of entrance-exam results. They're probably not getting any artists, any creative game designers, this semester. Not that they even know what their students are like, since they didn't bother to ask them yet." I was still a little put off about that.

"Ultimately," I observed, "it seems like if somebody really wants to make video games they have to start at the two-year schools run by the game companies."

"The senmon daigaku like Konami's are more or less vocational schools, not colleges."

"Well," I said, "if you get into one, you're almost guaranteed a job at Konami, but at the same time you're not really going to school. You're paying Konami for the privilege of doing their scut work for two years."

"Basically, yeah."

"And here, you're not preparing for a job. You're learning about the world of games. But is that going to be helpful when you're kicked out after four years and need a job?"

"That's what I'm telling you - it's really not the school's problem in Japan. You're looking at this from the American viewpoint."

And of course, I was. Not that I could help it. Not that I don't think it's a better way of looking at things. But ultimately I was looking at this like a know-it-all young American; I wanted to change the system, today.

Ultimately, once I got over my own feelings about how I thought things should be run, I realized that this program is Japan's first baby step towards a higher goal than simply training new game designers. The idea is to study the very medium of electronic games - in different fields like edutainment, exercise, physical rehab - to graduate students who think about electronic games differently and who perhaps will come up with brand-new ideas for how to use them and exploit them.

This is wonderful, of course. But I still wondered how they were going to get a chance to use those ideas if they weren't employable by a game company coming out of school.

"The point," my friend finally added, "isn't change right now. It's the beginning of a slow, major change. It's not important whether those students get jobs right out of college at Sony or wherever - what's important is that they're beginning a process by which people in general will come to understand more about electronic games.

"Maybe the edge that Japanese companies have today will begin to deteriorate in the next few years. The movie industry here used to make better quality stuff 40 or 50 years ago. I just hope that doesn't happen to video games."


PART 3: ONE LAST POTSHOT

"By the way, financially speaking I'd give Square an A on FFX-2. It gave PS2 another boost in sales. It was wise of them to recycle whatever they have. But from a creative point of view, well... there ain't much to talk about. I'd give them a B minus.

"Game sales have sagged over the last couple of years, and not just because companies are coming out with sequels all the time. I think it just takes too much time to play a title.

"Square's truncating of the game time should be commended, since spending too much time on a single game will hurt game companies in the end.

"Furthermore, with films, you have long epics like War and Peace at 7 hours, but long, intricate films are not necessarily great. Once in a while, you want to see stupid movies just for fun."

"Yes," I replied. "But when Dino DeLaurentiis wanted to produce a fun movie, he did Hannibal, not War And Peace-2 with Audrey Hepburn running around in a thong."


-Chris Kohler
EMail ChrisK2018