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Kojima: Japanese devs use beautiful artwork, West uses technology |
Listed in: PSP, PS3, Nintendo DS Tags: Hideo Kojima
Oh no he didn't! Hideo Kojima has finally expressed his true feelings for Western level design, and needless to say, he's not impressed. In his tweet, he shared his sentiments that the difference between Japanese and Western design is that the latter does it with "beautiful artwork" while the West does it with technology.
I am a beautiful artwork! Say it!!!
Here's his tweet in full: "The differences between the creators in Japan and the West in this industry... Japanese creators try to express the game's environment through beautiful artwork, but western developers use technology to draw out the environment. The Japanese make the models and textures carefully to create a world. The West use shaders, lighting, shadows, effects and programming to create their world."
Okay, so he wasn't exactly attacking per se, but you don't have to read between the lines to know that he does not look too kindly upon technology-dependence for art. Which is quite ironic considering he himself does use it for his own works.
Kojima will remain to be loved despite this, though, I believe. As for you, I am sure you've got your own two cents about this. Throw them our way via our comments section below.
Via [Gamernode]
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just pointing that out in your first paragraph.
When you say eastern and western, western is the latter.
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i like both styles equally..
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I've always liked Japanese games better than western ones, but in the last few years it seems the games have been nothing but the artwork. With a few exceptions, (Bayonetta for example) japanese games just aren't that much fun to play these days. Now if they could learn how to do western style gameplay and use the same "shaders, effects, etc" that the west uses, while retaining their beautiful artwork, they could make some awesome games. I would love to see what the Japanese could do with the graphics/environments of Uncharted. Transformers WfC would have looked awesome if japanese devs had done it... but it wouldn't have played anywhere near as well as it does.
So yeah, maybe they should collaborate more or something.
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Even after Kojima says all that I'd still suck his d...
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A typical user would see this as an insult to the western industry. The western industry is an insult to art.
Feeling, passion emotion through setting/character is not something I'd expect a typical blogger to understand.
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You can deliver alot of feeling and personality to a game by completely writing it without any auto-create tools. Take the 3d games from: Zelda, super mario, Final Fantasy and kindom hearts. put them against Crysis for example. Id still pick the japanese titles.
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Oh wait...
ISOhaven sucks!
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Do most American gamers have some sort of inferior complex toward Japanese game development that most of us average people don't know about?
It seem to me when a Japanese creator/director talk about Japanese/Western, some one from the west side will be the first to shout out the WEST IS MORE SUPERIOR.
Culturally Japan and the West are completely different, that being said different people do things differently... But it seem most westerners can't stand that fact that Japan is different from the rest of the western world.
Kojima is a clever guy, he never said Western games was superior... He said
"western developers use technology to draw out the environment."
My question is doesn't Japanese used technology to make their games? how do you makes models and textures for games with the use of technology?
I'm pretty sure Metal Gear Solid 4 used a lot of computer technology to creates all of awesome graphic... The games sold 5 million copies worldwide afterall. So name me one Western game that came close to Kojima creation in 2008? As I recall westerners were complaint how complex the PS3 were because they were too lazy and stupid to how to tap into the PS3 power cores.
I'm not saying all Japanese games are great games, but for sure not all Western games are great neither. Greats games comes from great talents, without that you have a simply and basic games.
I just found it interesting so many people are interested in this sort of nonsense. I mean the only games that sales in the West are FPS... and the rest are a bunch of second class Japanese ripoff.
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"As I recall westerners were complaint how complex the PS3 were because they were too lazy and stupid to how to tap into the PS3 power cores."
+1 i've seen countless stories about devs giving up on developing games for the ps3 as it is way to hard to code. But as soon as they past that barrier anything is possible.
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try to compare the jungle from MGS3(PS2) and the jungle at the start of Halo3, sure Halo3 looks better with the HDR light passing in the trees and water reflexing and normal maps on trees, remove the shaders and lights and wich looks better even with the huge amount of triangles that halo3 uses compared to a PS2 game
other example is quake4 or doom3, remove shaders and shadows and looks terrible
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Nothing wrong with either approach, but IMO, the superior method (as always) is a combination of the two, make the streamlined model, then go over the details personally.
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I personally am a friend of this anime style. I liked Zelda Wind Waker with that Cell Shading look too.
It doesn't have to be bad what Kojima said about Western games. It's just up to your liking if you prefer "beautiful art" or plain real graphics.
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i dont know wat they do but
look at the difference between GTA and westerner games compared to japanese games...you noticed the quality in the graphics
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Think of every game you've ever considered artistically impressive and odds are it was made in japan.
Think of all the biggest hitting, uncanny valley realistic crap and... it'll all be western, by and large.
Theres nothing wrong with that, but it is, in general, a very true to form comment.
Western studios want realism, eastern studios seem to be aiming for quite the opposite a lot of times.
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Like what?
the game Ive found most artistically impressive lately was made in scotland
this is all rubbish anyway, other than the odd game thats famous no games worth playing really stand out from each other artistically, I mean some look better than others but thats all.
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ONLY Americans from what Ive seen, just like when the ps3 came out and they were basically saying "why would I buy that japanese crap when I can have a great usa made console" (which turned out well lol)
Americans have a (possibly one sided) rivalry with japan, probably something to do with ww2
frank
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and what he said about the West is true and its better that West use Technology more. time passes and so is our taste for the games, they at least need to improve graphically.
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I'd like some evidence of that, because all I can think of right now is the fact we've had almost 10 MGS games (not counting remakes) and like twenty different Final Fantasy entries.
Not saying that Japan isn't pretty creative, but you can't just make blanket statements like that. To deny that the West has produced some seriously creative games recently is a disservice to the West, and smacks of annoying Japanophilia to me. Splinter cell: Conviction and Assassin's Creed II are as plastic and as flawed as graphics this generation get, yet they look beautiful. Red Dead Redemption has pretty good graphics, but the level of thought that went into the design process really shines through, while Heavy Rain is possibly one of the most ambitious games we've seen, and focusses on so much more than lighting techniques.
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Westerns like to be "creative" with the gameplay, Easterns like to be "creative" with the story and artwork, so and such, you find a huge gap in creativity depending on which aspect of the game you look at.
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you're using a lot of technology putting nonsensically written English onto a great network of lots of technology, which is supported by ... lots of technology. Using storage isn't the sort of thing we're referring to, it's using rendering tricks- ya know, I think that was even mentioned in the fulltext.
RAGE will be a game that counters his statement; every inch of that game is uniquely textured- there is no such thing as a default texture. The artwork is truly spectacular.
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The cut scenes in Infamous, while not wholly original, were still pretty cool.
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These Asian game devs have been bitching a lot lately and if you won't work, give your position to others who're also talented. The newcomers won't complain because they know how valuable their position is.
A lot of moaning from them devs, if they'd get fired they would be crying and begging to get back.
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I think his statement was generally true.
Most western games depend on technology to provide as realistic an environment as possible.
Japanese games on the other hand usually are made with emphasis on textures and models when creating their environment.
Have you all ever played any western game and think "damn this game looks so realistic" or play Japanese games and think "this game is so creative, look at the buildings and the detail..."
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These happen to be total inversions of what Kojima was talking about.
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I understand and like a little of both.
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I like both regional art styles, and they all have their advantages and disadvantages, but honestly, beauty is subjective.
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while better games like mass effect or crysis look amazing and there storys are surprisingly good (especially mass effect 1 & 2).
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I'm just curious. Why would you say something so wrong? I mean, does Old Snake really fit the bill you just laid out for Every japanese game? You're giving gamers a bad name with your incredibly false statements. Who would listen to a guy who doesn't make sense? Make a defensible point, next time. Avoid superlative generalizations like, "all western food has ketchup" or "all japanese games are the same" or something else ridiculous like that. I'm not just bashing you for no reason, here. For your health.
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This is only one of the many reasons that many japanese games have such a powerful artistic structure behind them in comparison to western games, but more to the point, Kojima didn't belittle or insult anyone with his accurate comment. He basically said "billy uses a lot of red, and jake uses a lot of blue." If you find offense in his statements, you only see it because you're looking for it in lines that aren't there. "Between the lines" my ass; stop fabricating ill sentiment. I hate it when people put words in someone's mouth or try to incite discord when it's unnecessary.
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