That's odd, i thought the hipster crowd had a Japanese fetish. Not as big as weaboos, but i thought it was there.
Japanese games being "behind the times" is actually their strength at the moment. Somebody should get one of those indie faggot devs to play a manic shooter while being filmed for our amusement. Would love to hear their screams of frustration.
They like copying their games while distancing themselves from those evil damsel in distress tropes. Hipsters want to have the fun gameplay of those games while also being much more than that because their games have profound messages and are "art". They like mimicking the easy to pick up, hard to master style Japanese 8/16 bit&arcade games with out the "hard to master" part. And in side scrollers with simple mechanics you need a lot of programming talent, polishing&fine tuning and good level design to make a game that's actually good, which naturally isn't there in these indy games, save for a couple of gems like Super Meat Boy.
Japan being behind the times has its downsides (stagnated franchises like Dragon Quest), but they also made most of the best non-indy games during the Xbox 360 era because of that.
Of course their greatest strength was that they kept turn based combat alive after the release of ToEE
-> Wizardry clones. Sadly none of them reach the level of later Wizardry games, but it's still great to see a game like Dark Spire (with the option for wireframe graphics) being physically released in NA.
-> SRPGs: They haven't reached their own peak of Tactics Ogre/Final Fantasy Tactics/Ogre Battle 64 or the level of X-COM/JA2, but plenty of turn based tactics games were released for PS2/PS3/PSP/NDS, many experiment with quite complex and confusing new mechanics but they don't have as solid design or AI as those more grounded games like FFT and Front Mission
-> Even regular JRPGs were good at times. I haven't seen any non indy game from 2000s with as high difficulty level and as challenging dungeons as Nocturne.
At best the Japanese being behind the times has led to JRPGs like SMT Nocturne, Dark Souls and SMT Devil Survivor 2. None of those games would have got funded and physically released in the West. Nowadays it's possible to make games like that again thanks to kickstarter, but publishers still wouldn't touch games like that. They're too risky and have too high and unforgiving difficulty levels and expect too much from players (that is that they aren't idiots). And I still aren't convinced that POE or WL2 are going to have as hard and "tactically demanding" fights as DeSu2 since D:OS didn't have either, which is kinda pitiful when you take in consideration that DS2 is a budget game on a handheld console from 2004 with an art budget of around 1000 dollars.
Even outside of turn based/RPG games the Japanese being behind the times was a boon to console gaming. Manic shooters on Xbox 360, deep, competitive fighting games and the most solid 3rd person action games like Ninja Gaiden and Devil May Cry. While it was Hideo Kojima and FF7 who really ushered in the era of movie games (though Western developers tried it before that with the FMV boom of mid 90s), Japanese AA/AAA developers still made more gameplay oriented and challenging games during the last two console generations.
Brenda Romero? I thought her name was Brathwurst or something
She got tired of being mistaken for an undead MMO mob and married John Romero. Now she's become an indy game cheerleader or something like that.
How can someone of old school sensibilities survive in the industry? There just doesn't seem to be place for me outside of modding.
Team up with like minded individuals and make a game worth playing. No need to have gimmicks, but if you make the kind of game that many people have always wanted to see (like a proper cyberpunk CRPG), being different from the crowd sells the game for you if the mechanics and content are solid. Hell, you don't have to innovate at all if you can recreate a classic gaming experience people have been longing to get for years. Many are still waiting for a game that would top X-Com or Master of Orion 2. And like wise many would pay a lot of money for a proper Wizardry sequel and not just the old ones rehashed with anime characters. Though if you're working with just a couple of guys and no budget, it's unlikely that you can deliver a game that massive and deep. Hence the title of this thread. That's why most indy developers stick with making simple games (or rogue-likes if they make more mechanically complex games).
