Phil Fish's comments at GDC

[Sans Frontieres]

Hypothetically, someone asks you... "what, in your opinion, is the state of Japanese games?"


Now, read this...


http://www.develop-online.net/news/40061/GDC-Japanese-dev-mocked-your-games-suck ('http://www.develop-online.net/news/40061/GDC-Japanese-dev-mocked-your-games-suck')


In short, Mr. Fish stated something that a lot of people are unhappy with and I have no idea if I'm in the majority or the minority but, ultimately, I agree... Japanese games aren't what they used to be.


Aside from Vanquish last year, Skyward Sword & The Last Guardian this year and some other smaller games (things by Q Games, etc) , there isn't a whole lot that I'm interested in from Japan. Dark Souls and Demon Souls (along with the Armored Core games) are neat... but if you go by sales to rate how popular a game is... (which definitely has it's flaws), they're lower than the CoD's, Gears of Wars, Mass Effects, and BioShock Infinite's of "the west".


I guess ask yourself, "How many games have I played from Japanese developers compared to 'western developers'?


So, while his delivery was a bit rude, I don't believe his comments were that far off. I'm curious as to what people think because Fish has been taking a bunch of "heat" all of Twitter and I was just wondering what the general "gamer's opinion" was.

[Kirkreng]

I can't really comment about the state of the Japanese game industry because I have never really played a whole lot of games Japanese games. But I can say that it really is a disrespectful way to bring your point across. And regardless of popularity, you can easily say something about the western soldier-in-boring-unoriginal-brown-setting-games that are so damn popular here.

[precipice66]

It's difficult to sell Japanese games to gamers in Western countries because of the culture gap. There are some things about Japanese culture most of us will just never understand and vice versa. It's a shame because a lot of that culture is so beautiful.