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This Week in Games - If 'JRPG' is a Dirty Word, It's America's Fault

I also can't help but take Yoshi-P's comments with... some very big grains of salt. He's speaking on behalf of Square-Enix, and Square-Enix as a company has spent the past decade and a half acting as though they were deeply ashamed of being in the JRPG business. I also know from my own experiences that while Japanese developers were often dismissed out of hand in the PS3/360 generation, the term JRPG specifically was rarely (if ever) used as a pejorative. It's been a clearly distinct (and well-respected) genre since the PS1 era.

There are reasons why people point to Square-Enix and talk about the decline of the JSRPG genre, and it has very little to do with racism and far more to do with Square-Enix' corporate culture. Back in the day Final Fantasy games were known for having large, diverse casts of characters -- and the Final Fantasy games of today tend to make special effort to exclusde women and people of color. If there's any disrespect being directed towards those developers, it's earned.

Western media and tastemakers are infamous for their discomfort or lack of care when covering Japanese media.

There are reasons why people point to Square-Enix and talk about the decline of the JSRPG genre, and it has very little to do with racism and far more to do with Square-Enix' corporate culture. Back in the day Final Fantasy games were known for having large, diverse casts of characters -- and the Final Fantasy games of today tend to make special effort to exclusde women and people of color. If there's any disrespect being directed towards those developers, it's earned.

That's fair, but Square-Enix isn't the only people that make JRPGs and Yoshi-P isn't the only person who's pointed out the sheer racism behind the othering of Japanese games for the past couple of years. Tetsuya Takahashi of Monolith said the same thing a decade ago. It's an ongoing matter and it's been an ongoing issue. This twitter thread has plenty of statements from Takahashi and other devs who've been on the receiving end of "JRPG" as a pejorative term.

Yeah, SE did a lot of boneheaded moves with regards to their games. That's just a microcosm of the entire industry. And remember, it wasn't just SE or RPGs that got snubbed for years and years: people wanted Nintendo dead ever since the release of the SNES, and those sentiments reached a fever pitch with the Wii and the DS.

I know some people have also advocated for ERPG, or Eastern-style RPG, and while I can appreciate the symmetry I don't think that term is likely to catch on.

I also can't help but take Yoshi-P's comments with... some very big grains of salt. He's speaking on behalf of Square-Enix, and Square-Enix as a company has spent the past decade and a half acting as though they were deeply ashamed of being in the JRPG business. I also know from my own experiences that while Japanese developers were often dismissed out of hand in the PS3/360 generation, the term JRPG specifically was rarely (if ever) used as a pejorative. It's been a clearly distinct (and well-respected) genre since the PS1 era.

There are reasons why people point to Square-Enix and talk about the decline of the JSRPG genre, and it has very little to do with racism and far more to do with Square-Enix' corporate culture. Back in the day Final Fantasy games were known for having large, diverse casts of characters -- and the Final Fantasy games of today tend to make special effort to exclusde women and people of color. If there's any disrespect being directed towards those developers, it's earned.

Another thing that gets me is it's not like during the 7th gen Japan stopped making RPGs, they were making tons of them. Just not for consoles. Due to a shifting market, a lot of their titles moved over to handhelds. Valkyria Chronicles, Shin Megami Tensei, Etrian Odyssey, and freaking DRAGON QUEST all went to handhelds and they sold big because that's where the market was. Heck, Dragon Quest was having a full-blown revival in the West because of Nintendo localizing and publishing the DS and 3DS remakes of the older titles as well as Dragon Quest IX. As such, I don't think it was any coincidence that the stigma was exacerbated there as the West has always begrudgingly accepted handhelds, thinking of them as "lesser", and considering how they associated RPGs with big, splashy AAA affair that definitely colored their opinions

I'm pretty sure that Yoshida's comments on Final Fantasy XVI had more to do with the team deciding pretty early on that the entry where most major characters commit war crimes was probably not the time to go full Bridgerton. He's only actually on the record denying having "modern" levels of diversity, and considering the FFXIV lore books have multiple chapters on diaspora, I think we can give him and CBU3 the benefit of the doubt when he says "modern." But, no, people wanted to re-litigate The Rings of Power and it was so easy to make the stubborn Japanese man refusing to globalize into a scapegoat, some going as far as condemning Japanese devs as a whole for their willful ignorance. Does anyone else see the problem here?

I'd say the main issue is proper worldbuilding is kind of frowned upon in American media these days. Afterall, if Tolkien's current rightsholders can fall in line and change things so black hobbits, dwarves, and elves exist then surely some Japanese developer should be able to change their work to comply to the modern standards. Most of the hubub was from American pundits who were just so used to American media falling in line without any pushback so when they see a Japanese creator look at them oddly and say it wouldn't make much sense in their world to have modern diversity they get taken aback by such a response.

I don't want to go against the grain on calling the gaming culture's view on JRPGs back then as Xenophobia (remember X-Play? Shitting on JRPGs was their bread and butter even during the PS2 era) but I feel like rushing to that conclusion devalues Japanese devs who spoke out about how there were issues adjusting to the HD era. There were still good games and good JRPGs. But many of the games that were coming out were still heavily flawed on console and a lot of franchises had to move to handheld only or just straight up died upon the rise of the PS360. This time period was very hard for many Japanese studios and not in a "well they needed to change their ways" way but that the gaming landscape was changing rapidly and it was hard for them to adapt way. Heck I'll be honest, to this day I'm still not feeling FFXIII

I recommend everybody should watch this great documentary that has multiple video game devs talking specifically about "the resurgance of Japanese gaming"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_j6ZHkg5BtE
You'll get a real feel for the challenges that Japanese gaming development, how it affected them, and how it led to this new rise of appreciation for Japan's games. There are lines in there where they acknowledge some of the games weren't in a great place back then.

It is interesting though that Yoshi-P's comments put Capcom's weird phase of trying to appeal more to the West in a wider context. The view of Japanese games back then must have just been very demoralizing

This can assuredly be a situation where both are accurate. Japanese developers had issues focusing on consoles in the 360/PS3 generation which weren't fully righted until the PS4/One generation, and X-Play was full of racist, xenophobic, passive-aggressive garbage like when they reviewed an Eyeshield 21 game (that they didn't know how to play so they said it sucked, it's really just an arcade footballer in the vein of Tecmo Bowl) with "The Japanese have inflicted atrocities upon mankind for centuries now," and call the series "desecration" of Murican football.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ViFCCkzxKg&ab_channel=G4ZDTechTV

It honestly makes a lot of Adam Sessler's later statements really suspect, and sort of explains why so many game players...don't like game journalists. It also explains the disdain that a lot of these developers would have for being "othered" or isolated by region, that these journalists will automatically assume because they aren't Western, that their product is inferior in quality (even if that's not the intention, that's the presumed intent of the words through their actions).

Beatdigga wrote:

This can assuredly be a situation where both are accurate. Japanese developers had issues focusing on consoles in the 360/PS3 generation which weren't fully righted until the PS4/One generation, and X-Play was full of racist, xenophobic, passive-aggressive garbage like when they reviewed an Eyeshield 21 game (that they didn't know how to play so they said it sucked, it's really just an arcade footballer in the vein of Tecmo Bowl) with "The Japanese have inflicted atrocities upon mankind for centuries now," and call the series "desecration" of Murican football. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ViFCCkzxKg&ab_channel=G4ZDTechTV It honestly makes a lot of Adam Sessler's later statements really suspect, and sort of explains why so many game players...don't like game journalists. It also explains the disdain that a lot of these developers would have for being "othered" or isolated by region, that these journalists will automatically assume because they aren't Western, that their product is inferior in quality (even if that's not the intention, that's the presumed intent of the words through their actions).

The thing is, it's not like the West was struggling less with HD development. Tons of studios, even successful ones, closed during the 7th gen. Heck, even publishers did with THQ folding. As such, I wonder if the reality wasn't that Japan was doing worse, it's that the West seemed to create an illusion where it was doing better through sheer numbers and turning their dev scenes into meat grinders. I don't think it's any coincidence that the move to the PS4 and XBox One finally broke the spell because they just burnt too many people out.

And that's before getting into how Japanese companies were doing very well on handhelds which was where the money for them was through stuff like Dragon Quest IX, Monster Hunter, Yo-Kai Watch, Pokemon, etc and the reason that went under the radar was because of the West turning up its nose at the DS and 3DS