Old and Dead. Now you have Starfield. Enjoy your Toddslop.
Way to shift the goalposts. The argument as initially posited was that Western game design has NEVER been as creative as Japanese game design. And that’s just… really not true from where I’m standing, and I’m not sure how one can make that argument other than from a position of ignorance.
I haven’t played, and likely will never play, Starfield, but suggesting that it’s (or any game’s) existence is an argument that the Japanese development houses are inherently more liberally creative is a hot take of the highest order.
In the past, creatives were more respected in the industry. You had your Lord British, Warren Spector, Romero, Will Wright, Sid Meier, etc. Today, only franchises matter. Doing business the old way (aka doing business) has been gradually captured and destroyed by rent seeking sharks. And it continues. The only way to stop this would be politicians coming together and agree on a global capital gains tax and closing all tax havens, making it easier to tax capital flows and restore the power-balance between capital and labor. If this balance continues going out of whack, you'll lose a lot more than your precious games industry. Like Swen said, the issue is too much greed. But greed has become "normalized" in Kwanzania, less so in Japan.
Were these men respected, or just incidentally enabled? If they were respected,
what happened? You can say
the money happened, but I don't think anything that deserves to be called
"respect" evaporates that easily. Money happened to Japan. And they did not fire everyone to replace them with indian slaves to create clones of successful products.
I do think you're right to identify crass financial incentives as a serious problem. Investigation of Japanese economic history here might be enlightening and offer some more practical ideas.
Disempower shareholders. Only give central bank loans to industry that creates real value. Incentivise company loyalty and competition within industry with limits against undercutting national rivals. In America the shareholders won these battles and now benefit from nobody talking about them anymore. All opposition is funneled into "communism". But of course nobody would call Japan a communist country.
Perhaps a certain brand of socialist though...
western developers were creative once upon a time. i mean japanese still copying wizardry formula to this day. but not anymore.
even western indies are just doing "pixelated deck building tower defence survival crafting simulators" slop in hope to ride on tail of success of someone who tried something. every idea will be killed, fucked, eaten, digested, shat, eaten again to infinity.
That's a certain kind of creativity, sure. But who's still playing Wizardry today, compared to old Final Fantasy games? American innovation in video games was driven and cursed by its well developed STEM field. Wizardry is an interesting and novel piece of technical work, but it's only
art as far as it's fine and idiosyncratic craftsmanship. It's video games as
toys for computer enthusiasts. The Japanese took the wizardry formula and incorporated it into multimedia art. That makes all the difference and is what gives their work lasting life. How many of the "creatives" named in this thread is this true for? American nerd creates a technical novelty to amuse himself, the Japanese artfag sees this and reconstrues it to express himself. The latter vision wins and outlasts every time.
What the Japanese do is not comparable to the "steam trend car crash" school of
gamedesign. The Japanese are very naive and sincere for the most part in their imitation. They
elevate what they take. That something as simple and silly as Wizardry could serve as the seed of a creative genealogy leading up to a work like Final Fantasy 7 should be considered miraculous. Spiritual alchemy. The Japanese made it gold.
