I notice this alot in Japanese games. The art is very virtuosic and in some cases definitely superior to modern westoid generic slop, but at the same time it feels excessive and overdesigned.
Japan's designers are greatly suffering from a lack of first hand experience. Technology has made computer games and anime the defacto childhood experience and it's only getting worse over time. The fact that Japan cannot get over the katana as a primary weapon in basically every game they make is both tiresome and troubling. As you said Asians have their genetic personality and the bug people meme fits very well here. They have stamped out innovation at a genetic level because any thing not herd focused is unacceptable to them and innovation disrupts the herd.
Ha. Funnily this is what Hayao Miyazaki says about younger animators. But if the Japanese are a bit naive regarding elements of reality, westerners are far more often
horrified of reality. Western popular media is at this point characterised by a
willful aversion to accurate depictions of the world, while the Japanese are most often just stylising off of reality because they aren't autistic and don't care. The Japanese do not like katanas because unlike you they have not watched enough youtube videos about how
ackchyually they were shit and would chip and shatter before even being able to cut a piece of paper. The Japanese like katanas because they're cool and they're theirs.
If a fondness for an old cultural artefact and tradition reflects a serious problem with being out of touch with reality, what the hell is going on in western games?
No katanas in sight. This is healthy. This is what happens if you grow up not watching anime.
He's not wrong, yuri, yaoi, unspeakable horrors, fur faggotry, gender bendering, cross dressing, ntr/cuckoldry shiet, dick girls, and even more shit I don't want to know about. Basically everything that ills was there in manga decades ago before autists really latched on to any single one of them. Hell 95% of twitter transexuals have some kind of anime avatar.
And look at the state of Japan today compared to your own country.
As you said Asians have their genetic personality and the bug people meme fits very well here. They have stamped out innovation at a genetic level because any thing not herd focused is unacceptable to them and innovation disrupts the herd.
There's an element of that, but keep in mind that the western pench for creativity is also a sign of instability and can easily lead to innovation for innovation's sake and a tendency to want to reinvent the wheel at every step of the way even when it's not necessary.
Japanese mindset is relatively static but it also creates stability and gives room for experience to grow. This can be seen in their action games, where lessons learned in one game are then transfered in another game until proven mechanics become a standard feature and each game is guaranteed to just work and can often boast and profit from the experience gained from a plethora of other games.
Like Schuon said, western cultures burn brighter but also burn out quicker. Racial differences are more of a give and take it's not as clear cut as some people would have it.
Whites have been making Farcry3vaniabornelites for something like 15 years straight now. There is no explanatory power in your favoured worldview.
I always wondered why Westerners have such a contempt for legacy and the idea if "if it ain't broke..."
Westerners fetishise legacy to an absurd degree. The people who created and embraced the "Boomer Shooter" cult do not have contempt for legacy.
How many western games do you see where the original is a cult classic, but then the sequel they made either immediately after or later is so awful the fans of the original can't even look at it?
If we actually look at each individual case we can find answers and actually know what's going on. What do you have in mind? We
could attribute this to mystical traditionalist race-callings. But if we actually
look we'll probably find far more mundane answers. An essential difference to keep in mind between western and japanese pop media is that the Japanese have brilliant supporting infrastructure and culture and safeguards against corporate exploitation undermining good work, while the west doesn't.
Then you look across the pond at series like Tekken and Monster Hunter, where every game stands squarely on the shoulders of the one that came before it, and the creators make a conceited effort to outdo themselves in every way possible?
See above.
And the western studios that DO make good sequels, are usually either being published by a Japanese company, or taking spiritual liege and/or direct creative control from their asian contemporaries, the Metroid Prime series being a perfect example of both cases.
Yes, exactly. The Japanese are far better
bosses. Nobody talks about the importance of this. One of the most important factors in gaming history.
Notice also the contrast between the western indie scene and the Japanese indie scene. The western indie scene is often taken to be an escape valve from corporate uniformity. Most indie Japanese games i've seen are just low budget versions of the same type of games commercial Japanese companies make.
Western "indie" is a subculture/scene that has nothing to do with a desire for artistic independence. Western "indie" games are mostly half assed attention seeking clones of things that already exist. The first wave of American "indies" were a fake counterculture of posers who saw existing
culture as something to
fight. And they were handed the win. All American games are spiritual
indies now. In your face with performative rebellion against perceived (and non-existent) stagnant standards which they are stunningly rebelling against.
The history of western indie is very barren in retrospect. Hellish times. Hellish scenes. Pretty much every good western "indie" was actually completely unrelated to the western
scene and was just european autists doing their own thing which could only be done that way and would have been regardless of anything else going on in the world (Hotline Miami, Factorio, Fear & Hunger, etc).