The New Future of Japan - The Auteur Movement - Extra Credits

Japan's Game Dev scene is having an a tour Renaissance right now where in the US we had the Indie scene shake up the state and aing AAA Market in Japan it looks like the old guard the creators of many of the games that crystallized a whole genre onto themselves will serve that role by breaking off and returning to their 80s '90s and 2000 Roots like the US Indie scene they're focusing on smaller leaner teams with an emphasis on gameplay rather than pushing the limits of current gen hardware and taking games in a direction that local industry wisdom said was unsellable people like kg inafune with Mighty number nine Koji igarashi with bloodstained ritual of the night hironobu sakaguchi with mist Walker Yu Suzuki with that Kickstarter for shenmu 3 and now most likely hideo kajima are all members of this new movement each of these personalities has through their games and even in the Press at times basically said I know how to make good games if you'd only let me and now as the Japanese Studio system

fractures and new models of funding and distribution become available these Old Guard creators are able to take a crack at doing just that today I'd like to take a look at some of the parallels between what's happened in the US over the last few years and what's happening in Japan now as well as some of the key differences and outlier cases to begin with in both the US and Japan the AAA industry has been struggling the number of Studios producing AAA content has been shrinking every year while the cost of producing that content continues to increase this is all the result of a development and Publishing mindset that focuses on the marketability of a game how well can we advertise it how can we make people want to buy it through a series of bullet points how attractive can we make the screenshots in the trailer unfortunately this marketing focused mindset forces the creation of derivative games and sequels as those are the types of games that we have marketing data on and it forces games to compete in terms of visuals and Graphics as standard marketing does a lot of its sales through Visual presentation this system was and arguably still is untenable and leading to a collap

the response by the Indie movement in the US was to find ways to make games with smaller teams on a lower budget that didn't compete on Modern visual Fidelity standards the recent response in Japan appears to be identical most of these aour projects seem to have a budget in the 10 to20 million range rather than 50 to 100 million the development teams on these projects look like they'll cap out at most at around half the size of a major AAA project team and most of these games are aiming to fill a market whole rather than compete in an already saturated genre and it's that last Point that's important by focusing on underserved markets these games don't have to worry about being lost beneath the mammoth marketing budgets of major games and can in fact Market themselves to that underserved audience based on the merits of the game rather than the raw flash of the marketing trailers if they can demonstrate good or at least intriguing gameplay these games can develop a community of enthusiasts and expect those enthusiasts to serve as evangelists for them doing most of the marketing work for these games for free which brings us to mistwalker Mist

Walker was one of the first Japanese game studios to have a major name break off from the company they'd worked for for years and start the aour movement but in being the first it wasn't a complete break rather it was a step toward the new model we're just now seeing emerge it was sort of a hybrid approach a company that still made games that competed in the AAA market and yet came in with the idea that they'd co-develop these games using slightly smaller teams under the direction of a single Visionary they're an important Studio to look at because I think it shows the danger of trying to straddle the line between AAA and Ur rather than fully committing to one and they point to where the evolution of this type of game creation is probably going at Mist Walker's founding the market didn't have options like Kickstarter and didn't really have the level of digital distribution especially on console that we've come to expect today which left them in that middle space of still working with traditional Publishers who understood traditional marketing and putting boxes on shelves rather than the leaner let's make a game that at least some people really love and hope they tell the world roach that we're seeing

even in the crowdfunding efforts for aour games today so what's different about the burgeoning aour movement in Japan and the Indie movement in the US well the most obvious difference is the impetus many of the indie games in the US came sort of out of left field with games created by people you'd probably never heard of before then a whole new scene of game devs but in Japan where game developers have always had a bit more celebrity than they've typically found in the US this movement is being driven not by Outsiders but rather by the creative celebrities who couldn't work work the way they wanted to in the Japanese Studio system and until now had no other option that first difference leads us to the second and more important one where much of the US indie game scene was built by Outsiders who often didn't know or really care about the established rules of making video games the Japanese aour scene is coming from people with a long history of making games which means the very types of games that are getting created are going to be radically different while with a few notable exceptions the indie game movement in the US looked to push Innovation sometimes in game play

sometimes in narrative sometimes in graphical style it looks as though the Japanese aour movement is going to focus instead on perfecting existing game types especially game types that the mainstream industry has abandoned because some industry reasoning said they weren't viable anymore this makes perfect sense as many of the people taking this on were the very people who invented these game types and you know what this is great I mean I love Innovation and I love seeing devs pushing beyond the known limits of this medium but it's also important to remember that there's not only in Innovation but also in finely honed craftsmanship in building something magnificent at the highest level possible I can't wait to see what a decade of thinking refinement new tools and new ideas do to Mega Man and Symphony of the Night we've been asked many times over the years what we think the future of the Japanese game industry will be and truth is I really couldn't tell you but I'm pretty sure there's a chance that the aour movement will serve to revitalize the game industry in Japan much the way the Indie movement has sparked new ideas and brought vitality to the US games industry again and the

industry as a whole no matter where in the world will benefit a great deal from a focus on craftsmanship and a re-examination of the things we've left behind see you next week [Music]