interesting article for consideration from Polygon writer Kazuma Hashimoto. here’s the opening:
In February, Final Fantasy 16 producer Naoki Yoshida sat down in an interview with YouTuber SkillUp as part of a tour to promote the next installment in the Final Fantasy series. During the interview, Yoshida expressed his distaste for a term that had effectively become its own subgenre of video game, though not by choice. “For us as Japanese developers, the first time we heard it, it was like a discriminatory term, as though we were being made fun of for creating these games, and so for some developers, the term can be something that will maybe trigger bad feelings because of what it was in the past,” he said. He stated that the first time both he and his contemporaries heard the term, they felt as though it was discriminatory, and that there was a long period of time when it was being used negatively against Japanese-developed games. That term? “JRPG.”
This is a very valid point that I don’t care about Yoshi “Black People can’t exist in FFXVI”-P bringing up lol
I have, in fact, talked to people who are insistent that any RPG made in Japan is a JRPG and any game not made in Japan isn’t. They argued that Dark Souls is a JRPG. They were entirely serious.
I hear what they’re saying, but I’ve just never heard of anyone trying to dismiss a game for being a JRPG. Sure, they have their style and tropes, and they aren’t for everyone, but I’ve yet to meet anyone who seriously claims that a particular game is bad because it is a JRPG, as opposed to a game simply being a bad JRPG.
It seems to me that between Sony, Nintendo, From Soft, Bandai Namco, Square Enix, and even, yes, Konami, Japanese gaming culture has had a huge influence on so-called Western gaming culture.
I noticed this in the 90s and 2000s. The Japanese perception of Western tastes was massively different than actual Western tastes. There were a lot of games that never made it here because they thought we would not like it and it later turned out to be a hit.
To be fair it wasnt just japanese. I know at least in the US there were American branches of these companies that handled the localization and advertising of their games. So it was the american hands of these companies that replaced anime fantasy art with more generic 80s fantasy book cover art, as well as the saga that was american mega man(though I still dig mega man 2’s art even if it makes no sense).
Fire Emblem is a good example. They were very popular in Japan in the 90s, enough so that Smash Bros. Melee (2001) included 2 characters (Marth and Roy), yet the first Fire Emblem game to come to the US was a GBA game in 2003. Now Fire Emblem is incredibly popular in the west.
Monster Hunter also comes to mind. Before Monster Hunter World, main series Monster Hunter games were on Nintendo’s portable gaming consoles, namely the DS and 3DS, because those portable consoles were very popular in Japan. Once Capcom brought the series to the main consoles with Monster Hunter World it became a huge success.
Final Fantasy III and V (The US Final Fantasy III in the US is actually Final Fantasy VI. There just wasn’t a Final Fantasy V until after Final Fantasy VII had already released and FF became more mainstream)
Mother 1 and Mother 3 (Earthbound Zero and Earthbound 2). Mother 1 was released like 30 years later in the west, Mother 3 has never been localized.
like 90% of Ganbare Goemon (Legend of the Mystical Ninjas). The first SNES game is also horribly localized and for some dumb reason they removed the internal SRAM (saving without a password). Probably rental related or somthing. And this has peeved me for my entire life because Ganbare Goemon 2 is probably one of the best Platformers on the SNES, a platform already stacked with some of the best platformers in gaming, and we got the worst version of Ganbare Goemon 1. This was also ongoing as every release after N64 (ending with the DSI) was not localized
The Original Custom Robo on the N64 (And if you’ve never played the Gamecube Custom Robo you owe it to yourself to)
Ryu Ga Gotoku (“Like a Dragon”, formerly “Yakuza”).
The devs feared that the game was too Japanese and would confuse and alienate Western gamers. Over the past decade they’ve been working on being less heavy-handed with localization and allowing the game to just be what it is now that they’re getting all these feedback from players that bursts their bubble.
~I’ve just never heard of anyone trying to dismiss a game for being a JRPG~
And I remember the 2000s where that was common among gamer culture. So what now?
I have definitely met people who said they didn’t like JRPGs and weren’t interested in trying X new JRPG coming out.
But that is because they didn’t like the genre, not because they had any negative feelings towards Japan or Japanese game devs. Nobody likes every genre, and that is exactly why having genre labels is a good short-hand.
I don’t like FPS games, that doesn’t mean I have any particular ill-will towards people or companies who make them. It doesn’t matter how good a new FPS is, I probably won’t like it.
I don’t think his position is reasonable. JRPG does describe an RPG subgenre, just like CRPG or ARPG do. They have specific format, structures and tropes that they all adhere to religiously.
He also omits the fact that not all RPGs coming out of Japan are called that. Once they stray enough from the trope of the genres, they are no longer included in it. If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck…
Finally, acting as if people have a racist or discriminatory slight against those games because of the term… I don’t think I’ve ever seen people do that, other than disliking the general style and anime aesthetic which is entirely fair?
I don’t get him.
I dunno I find the JRPG tag akin to the anime tag. If you get down to it anime as a category covers a wide range of genres, art styles, animation styles , and so on. That said there is a DNA throughout that does unite a lot of anime. Series and creators are inspired by other older anime and manga and games and even the non japanese pop culture that influences the creators is filtered by the impact that thing had in Japan.
As a category JRPG used to refer to a very specific story heavy game with turn based combat and usually random battles and leveling up that originates in japan. There are many modern games that have evolved beyond that old school system and look, but the DNA is still there. FFXV despite being open world, having action based combat, and realistic graphics still feels more like a classic final fantasy than it does like Fallout or elders scroll.
I also feel like that there’s a bit of revisionism towards bias against JRPGs. I was chronically online in the 00s on gaming message boards and RPGs were held up as a gold standard among a lot of gamers and I bet even today you’d find quite a few “BEST GAME EVER” lists that would put FFVII and VIII and chrono trigger up there as some of the best of all time.
In the console space at least in the US the default RPG was JRPG for the longest time. There were some western RPGs on consoles but they were few and far between and not nearly as popular. It wasnt until the xbox into the 360 and ps3 gen that C-RPG devs started releasing on consoles. After years of being low sellers on PC this subgenre hit the mainstream and felt like a breath of fresh air especially with this not being the best year for many landmark JRPGs like Final Fantasy.
It is at THIS point in the late 00s into the early to mid 10s that things start getting toxic because gamers are gamers and have abrasive and bad communication skills. I feel like even then these kinds of dickheads werent in a majority and sales of big name Japanese RPGs along side the slow trickle of formerly japan only RPGs like Dragon Quest show that the demand and success is still there. At most there was a brief dip as many Japanese “style” games in general fell out of fashion with western gamers as western devs started getting more and more of the console pie.
I dunno it feels more like there was a blip in sales and the dev is trying to rationalize it as racism based on toxic gamer culture. Which is a fair assumption to make towards gamers but they still sell millions.
