Tokyo Game Show 2009

TGS 09 was a failure. The headlines have been saying this for several days now: attendance is down, several normally filled-to-bursting halls closed off, and even some of the remaining show space was dedicated to museum pieces of armor from the country’s history rather than games. Capcom’s Keiji Inafune, the creator of Mega Man and Dead Rising, even went so far as to go on record as saying, “Man, Japan is over. We’re done. Our game industry is finished.”

But why?

What has brought the industry that was so much a part of our gaming culture to its knees? In a few words: their attempt to imitate western development. America invented the video game, and for a long time, it didn’t know what to do with it. American game development companies certainly tried, but western-developed console games were looked down upon…and with reason. They usually sucked.

What western companies tried to do in the NES through Playstation eras was emulate Japan…but there are problems with that: an incomplete understanding of the culture that gave birth to the game being the most important. What need was the game supposed to address? What were the critical design philosophies that made this work, and what philosophies needed to be thrown out to address those needs?

History repeats itself now in Tokyo. For the last few years, Japan has been trying to create the sorts of games western developers might, because they need to garner a worldwide audience to make it in this world, and they perceive western games to be what everyone wants. In doing so however, they trip over their incomplete understanding of the culture that birthed the games they’re trying to emulate. The result are cries of Japanese developers not “getting it”.

There’s a nasty cycle building up: Sony and Microsoft develop the next big HD console. Game development companies need to amass huge budgets to take advantage of the graphics capabilities, so they begin looking to what other companies that have that sort of budget are doing, to see what’s selling well, and to see if they can do the same thing. And as the cycle of prettier and prettier looking games continues, the consumer is conditioned to be wary of games that don’t look like a photograph.

This brings us to TGS 09. What can Japan do at this point to save their industry? The answer does not lie in imitation. It lies in creating a game to fit a need within the society the developer is familiar with, it lies in innovation, and it lies within the advertising necessary to push acceptance through to the mass audience. Only when they’re not selling a product everyone else is making better, and only when they can educate potential consumers as to the merits of their game can Japan succeed.

Moral of the story: Play up your strengths. Don’t be the one-off.