Wada: Globalization has failed due to " Japanese direction"

[Mr Khan]

Alic0004 said:

Mr Khan said:

Alic0004 said:

What he's saying is that they need to stop making Japanese games that try to appeal to a Western audience.  They should let Western developers make Western games, and Japanese developers make Japanese games.  This is possibly the first astute thing I've ever heard Wada say.  And then we collective spaz out on him.  And act as if he said the opposite, or as if the real issue is that he hasn't realized he could just make his company like Nintendo and everything would be great.  I'm starting get the feeling there's a real disconnect with reality here.

That's largely admitting defeat, though. It's fallacious to think that the one side should focus on itself. They should be reaching more broadly than that.

What kind of defeat?  Financial defeat?  Eidos seems pretty profitable these days.  The good games keep coming.  A GOTY contender last year, Guardian of Light looks awesome for this summer.

 

I don't think he's saying they should stop localizing games wordwide and aiming for worldwide success.  He's saying that to make a solid, interesting game in a given style, it's better to focus on having a coherent team that likes the same things, rather than some kind of Frankenstein team that is supposed to magically make a game for everyone just because of the mix of people developing it.

 

Also, that's a funny sentence in your post...  I understand you're talking about where they should try to sell the games, but Wada is talking about the focus of the people who make the games.  And that sentence seems to suggest that the last thing you want to do is focus on what you understand and would want to play, as a game developer!  God forbid! 

That's a narrow line to walk, though. The excesses of this generation have been as much about developer arrogance as about publisher craziness. While developers obviously work best in their element, primarily you shouldn't look at them as fixed into working on one type of game or one certain branch of games.

 

It's a matter of mindset, really.