Former Nippon Ichi Software President Sohei Niikawa talks shares his opinions on the current state of Japan's game industry.

“When asked how he feels about there being less prolific “auetur” developers in the scene, like Hideo Kojima, Suda51, SWERY, and Kenji Eno, Niikawa suggests that this might be due to the “corporate” nature of the video game industry. “That’s a bit unfortunate, to be honest. To put it in my own words, I feel like the salaryman-ification of creators keeps progressing,” he says. For context, a “salaryman” in Japan refers to white-collar workers, employed at large corporations, who stereotypically prioritize work over anything else and are subservient to their organization.”

“On the other hand, when you’re a developer who works for a company, various other factors, like company policies and decision-making, as well as profitability, come into play, making it more difficult for “individuality” to come through…”

Isn’t this also happening in the West? In any case, AAA rarely appeals to me; almost underground-like indies/mods/Foss games are the places to find the really experimental works.

  • yamper@piefed.socialEnglish
    0·
    21 days ago

    imo this and the enshittification of games are symptoms of the same root cause. games are too big and expensive now. one auteur on a 1000 person team can’t have the same level of impact as one auteur on a 10 person team. they definitely have fewer opportunities to develop their reputation/skill/style on big teams

    • zzzxxx0110@piefed.socialEnglish
      2·
      4 days ago

      I do think this is fundamentally still a problem of corporate structure rather than simply the size.

      Control for example, is definitely one of the more experimental games that artistically pushed the envelope while still being pretty AAA in terms of budget, and its developer Remedy had nearly 400 employees. So to cope with the size of the project as well as the development team, they had 3 creative directed all working on the same game, and all 3 of them contributed greatly to the game’s incredible artistic vision.

      I think the bigger problem nowadays is how many companies with nearly 400 people, would be willing to let only 3 people to entirely dictate the artistic vision of the entire project, without considering it too much of a risk to take.