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Square-Enix's President, Yoichi Wada, had a few things to say about Japan's lagging game industry at Tokyo Game Show 2008. Namely, "'Eeeeey man, this isn't cool!" and "Let's get off our asses and do something about it."

I personally find it unfortunate that Japanese game development has been lagging behind North America and Europe. I want to see Japan's industry thrive for a couple of reasons.

First, having grown up with the Nintendo, gaming (to me) will always feel like the domain of the Japanese. God knows America failed me for my fix of mushroom-jumping Italian plumbers, so pardon me for sleeping with the other side. Really though, there was something extra special about our elders being baffled by Japan's bizarre concepts.

"Frog-men? Shape-changing leaves? What the hell is a 'Tanooki?'"

(They were just lucky that Mario's tanuki suit lacked the mythical creature's trademark: gigantic testicles. Actually, I think we're all lucky for that.)

Unlike Atari, Nintendo's early games did not emerge like Venus from a cloud of marijuana smoke. Regardless, Super Mario Bros first captured me because it felt so different from my Atari games while it still managed to be, well, classic. "Rescue the Princess" wasn't very new to anyone who's grown up with fairy tales (or its delightful twists, like The Paper Bag Princess--anyone?), but to me, it offered something Atari games rarely did: a goal. An end. Something more than "Get a high score, wank off to it."

I am, however, still happy to see that other countries are bringing their ideas to this beeping orgy we call game development. This comes to my second point, in which I am going to argue that losing any culture's gained influence would be a bad thing. I doubt Japanese game developers are ever going to go away entirely, but it's sad to see it trickle off. We all must agree that there is a certain, er, charm to Japanese games that no other country is going to emulate. Man, who's going to cater to my fruity-wooty JRPG fix? Rockstar? Oh wait, that might be interesting.

Wada has the cure, however. Or at least he thinks he does. From the article:

Wada pointed out that this problem is "not limited to the game industry," but rather structurally to the entire Japanese nation. He went on to look at possible solutions -- mainly an opening up of attitudes.

He specifically referenced the potential "psychological resistance" of the Japanese developer to achievement based on "standing on the shoulders of giants," -- that is to say, using external tools and building on top of them.

The CESA chairman attempted to psychologically define and split out the technical and creative parts of game development, and a key point was to be that overly rigid definitions of roles and a lack of willingness to use outside technology are hobbling Japanese companies.

"I am slightly disappointed by this stance. IMO Shadow of the Colossus and Killer 7 have not yet been surpassed by games with more modern/advanced technology. I think the 'japanese way' of creating games should not be written off that easily. Especially not now that we are seeing more acceptance for technologically less impressive games like megaman 9 and the wii platform. I'm not saying we should go totally retro. I'm saying new technology in games is overrated as the audience for wii, indie and retro games is growing. And that if "we change ourselves" it is possible to lose the uniqueness of the 'japanese way' of game making."