Editorial: Left Behind

“I just wish Capcom would stop using Western developers,” said Andrew Acampora. He was voicing his distaste for the current Western-centric games industry. Whether or not the publishers know it, he isn’t alone.

There is a good chance that if you’ve been playing video games for more than the last few years, you grew up playing games made in Japan. Capcom, Konami, Squaresoft, Sega, Nintendo: for many, these five companies, plus a few others, were synonymous with video games for much of their youth. Whether they were spelunking into the dungeons of Hyrule in Nintendo’s Zelda series, beating in heads to Yuzo Kushiro’s great jams in Sega’s Streets of Rage 2, or crying at the death of a video game character for the first time in Square’s Final Fantasy VII, console gamers everywhere were consuming Japanese products.

Through the PS2’s mid-cycle, most games produced here in America were often second-tier at best, and the sales figures reflected that. But this console generation, that has changed. The rise of the shooter and the open world action game as the dominant “hardcore” genres has given Western developers a sudden increase in attention, often deserved. The days of the PS1, with a new JRPG per week, are gone, and many people are left missing that golden age.

Quite frankly, this hasn’t touched me like it has a lot of my peers. Some friends have said, without hesitation, that they won’t buy games that Japanese companies have outsourced to Western development houses (Silent Hill: Origins, the forthcoming Dead Rising 2.) Others have come close to swearing off games all together, feeling silent and unable to affect a market that has suddenly become too big for their single voice to matter.

This isn’t the first time that people have felt left out after a gaming-wide sea change. Imagine being  a fan of FPSes in the late 90s, without a decent PC. Or an point-and-click adventure fan in the period before this recent revival.

The fact is that at this point and time, there are many factors keeping your favorite developers from putting out the games you want to play. Making a AAA title is just more expensive now than ever before, and the audience for those games is smaller still. Companies like Atlus have dealt with this by refusing to take a leap into the current generation, but the big companies can’t afford to be seen as artifacts of a past age. As for the outsourcing? If Capcom wasn’t outsourcing DR2, I’d wager that it just wouldn’t be being made at all any time soon: they’ve devoted their resources elsewhere.

Mostly, though, the market just isn’t there for them to devote their time. Yes, there is someone who wants a sequel to Sony’s PS1 RPG Legend of Dragoon – but it just isn’t as big as the audience that wants Killzone 2.

If you’re among the many that feel ignored, here’s my advice. Panta rhei - “everything is in a state of flux.” Stick it out – your continued patronage of companies like Atlus will have an effect on the market, it just won’t be instantaneous. Also, don’t forget that you had that “seven years of prosperity.” Go back to the cadre of games there, find some old gems you never got to check out and dig in. Finally, don’t be afraid to try something new and different. For many people, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion was their first foray into Western style RPGs and many of them really loved it. Liking something made in Maryland doesn’t mean you have to stop liking things made in Honshu.