{"id":1688,"date":"2013-10-08T19:28:03","date_gmt":"2013-10-08T19:28:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/?p=1688"},"modified":"2013-10-08T19:28:03","modified_gmt":"2013-10-08T19:28:03","slug":"japanese-game-development","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/2013\/10\/japanese-game-development\/","title":{"rendered":"Japanese game development"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/param><\/param><\/param><\/embed><\/object> <\/p>\n

The great Chris Deleon<\/a> had a video earlier this year wrapping up how Japanese game development was\/is making things differently compared to the West. It\u2019s interesting to see that Japanese companies hire employees right after college and keep them pretty much for life. It means that these companies take care of rookies, who in return become good and loyal, working for the company forever (think Keiji Inafune<\/a> for Capcom). <\/p>\n

The problem is that it induces a massive secrecy in the industry, the good thing is that it creates stability, which triggers cohesion, which triggers high quality output. Japanese games are usually tight, it comes from this culture. Western game development on the other side\u2026 We\u2019re all mercenaries. Inside Ubisoft or through multiple companies we\u2019re trying \u2013like Chris says- to show what we can do for the next job more than make great games. I guess it kind of worked as long as we had a stable market with consoles.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s no longer the case. There is no stability, there\u2019s chaos. How many platform you can ship your game on, today? It is so crazy that even Japanese game development took a toll: Mega Man creator left Capcom after 23 years, kickstarting a game that looked a lot like what he did there. Nintendo, the black box where no one knows what\u2019s going on inside, doesn\u2019t know what to do (and the first sign of that was announcing the 3DS and immediately say \u201cit plays Netflix!\u201d, that\u2019s where I knew).<\/p>\n

People associate Japanese development greatness with Japanese culture but I don\u2019t think it\u2019s typically Japanese. It\u2019s a culture that values good design, that\u2019s all. As the video demonstrates, it makes sense to start designing a video game directly with the hardware, not by making artworks. It\u2019s good production design and yet, I\u2019ve seen that once in my career in the West. Once.<\/p>\n

The key for game developers is to be able to sustain their creativity through iteration and for that, a large platform is required. A great team is required. A vision is required. Some freedom is required.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a very difficult equation these days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The great Chris Deleon had a video earlier this year wrapping up how Japanese game development was\/is making things differently compared to the West. It\u2019s interesting to see that Japanese companies hire employees right after college and keep them pretty much for life. It means that these companies take care of rookies, who in return […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1688"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1688"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1688\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1689,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1688\/revisions\/1689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}