Cave to talk at GDC 2012

[gs68]

To be fair, STG's are kinda not very big in the U.S. anyway; there isn't much reason for CAVE to bring up shmups at GDC. People at GDC will probably care more about the latest 'Ville clone than DoDonPachi Sai Daioujou Ultra Mega Black Label.

[spadgy]

Maybe, but by part of the description of the talk it sounds like they will talk about porting from arcade to iOS.

Among developers Cave certainly court a mystique and status, so there should be some interest for the GDC audience. And I'm noticing a trend in the dev sector whereby Eastern and Western teams are keen to learn from one another to diversify their audience. There will be an interest in the shmup stuff (just more in Amy Hennig talking about narrative!).

[Estebang]

And I'm noticing a trend in the dev sector whereby Eastern and Western teams are keen to learn from one another to diversify their audience

I wish! The creator of vaporware indie darling Fez just made a complete ass of himself while publicly humiliating someone.

There's about a 1-in-10 chance that the developer he shouted down was Cave. It probably wasn't, but this is groan-worthy news regardless. The man has yet to release a single game himself.

[AntiFritz]

And I'm noticing a trend in the dev sector whereby Eastern and Western teams are keen to learn from one another to diversify their audience

I wish! The creator of vaporware indie darling Fez just made a complete ass of himself while publicly humiliating someone.

There's about a 1-in-10 chance that the developer he shouted down was Cave. It probably wasn't, but this is groan-worthy news regardless. The man has yet to release a single game himself.

I've never heard of this "fez" game but It probably sucks* too.

It would be sad if Japanese companies actually listened to this guy and started "westernizing" their games like some companies already have done recently *cough*capcom*cough*.


*probably doesn't suck

[Estebang]

Fez looked like it was going to be interesting (2.5D platformer where rotating the camera changes the environment to match your perspective), but then the guy revealed that it's entirely about "exploration" and you can't die. It also has that "I wish I was Cave Story" aesthetic...which is ironically a Japanese game.

After this little incident, the game can kindly FOADIAF.

[kid aphex]

The comment was ignorant, but FEZ is a beautifully crafted game. Sucks. I've been waiting for it for 3 years now... Why did it have to be the creator of THIS game who said something so stupid?

[Estebang]

This is the kind of thing Fish would probably hold up as a defining example of the shmup genre, rather than those filthy Eastern lolifests.

It's only fitting that it contains an image of Duchamp's urinal.

[BulletMagnet]

I wish! The creator of vaporware indie darling Fez just made a complete ass of himself while publicly humiliating someone.

Well, according to the article most of the other attendees don't support what that guy said, so hopefully that outburst was more of an outlier than a bellwether.

[blackoak]

Sadly, it sounds like he had some good points to make about modern Japanese game design. Excellent example of what happens when you ignore the effects of your words on others and just impliedly demand that they see the bright and shining truth you have to offer regardless of its presentation. I was this kind of blowhard in my early 20s so its particularly grimace inducing now.

[Wenchang]

I wish! The creator of vaporware indie darling Fez just made a complete ass of himself while publicly humiliating someone.

There's about a 1-in-10 chance that the developer he shouted down was Cave. It probably wasn't, but this is groan-worthy news regardless. The man has yet to release a single game himself.

The dumbest thing said is that both Blow and Fish have said before that their biggest criticism of Japanese games is hand-holding. Hearing something like that is amazing to me, because Blow in particular being a guy who loves to criticize the industry, this comment is incredibly out-of-touch. It's usually the exact opposite about Japanese games that gets criticized. Fighting games, character action games, Japanese RPGs which increasingly have complex subsystems, shmups, most of the stuff from Japanese that gets released in the West is incredibly complex compared to the Call of Duty, Uncharted roller coaster ride. Literally unless all one has played is Final Fantasy 13, Nintendo games, and crappy DS releases I don't know how one could come to this conclusion. Sit either of Blow or that idiot Fish in front of something like Knights in the Nightmare and I don't even think they could understand the game.

The thing I hate most about the explosion of overrated pixel art 2D Indie platformers that prey on nostalgia(because that's what 90% of these "challenging", "innovative", "bold" games are) is not that these developers get exposure to promote their game(which is great), but that they now have a platform to express their insipid opinions now in the form of documentaries, conferences, etc. And are glorified for it as if long working hours and crunch aren't a huge issue with the industry, and that these indie guys are heroes because they're priviledged enough to spend however many hours a day making a game without having a job or deadlines etc.

All of this criticism towards the Japanese game industry has nothing to do with a decrease in quality imo, it's just that the industry has evolved in a direction people do not want. All of the handheld Mario rehashes or Street Fighter 4 and the like which show minimal evolution from games made decades ago get praised by these people all the time, it just shows that really these people mean the opposite and they want more of what they're familiar with and nostalgic for. For me, back in the early 80s something like Robotron destroyed anything made in Japan, but since the last two generations unless I want to play PC strategy games(which isn't my thing, not to mention those types of games are made in Japan too) I literally almost can't find a deep and challenging singleplayer experience made in America or Europe. I used to play lots of Western games but almost everything I play is from Japan now. The only games I consitantly try made in NA or Europe are sandbox games most of which I don't think are particularly well designed but are still amusing to dick around in. So I'm like the opposite of the general trend.

Yeah there are some things Japan is terrible at(just as there are things every region is terrible at)like the reliance on archaic Final Fantasy 7 esque cutscenes for story or online functionality, and sure to some extent(although Capcom's games this gen have been pretty amazing graphically speaking) graphically they are not on par but that's only the result of PC developers taking over the console space and bringing in the tool sharing practices which has been combined with bigger teams etc.

It's not as much that Western developers are better, it's that the PC people now have huge teams and are making mainstream games(whereas Japan has very little mainstream, some of the most popular games like Dragon Quest or Pokemon do not have budgets and team sizes anywhere near the level of AAA Western games). And the hubris is genuinely uncalled for, if you actually look at AAA development more and more people are leaving the industry to make I-Phone and Facebook garbage and most of the top publishers are way out of control with budgets in the West. Japan simply cannot keep up with the marketing power(Nintendo are the exception) or natural ability to appeal to Westerners but in a way they are better prepared for any possible collapse(in terms of studios shutting down and the like, nothing like the 80s crashes) that is going to occur because at this point so much of the Japanese market is already niche-oriented and reliant on a smaller, more consistant customer bases. Whereas in the U.S. console space in particular, you're a AAA monster or a indie game, or you're probably not making money.

[bcass]

The creator of vaporware indie darling Fez just made a complete ass of himself while publicly humiliating someone.

Fez isn't vapourware. It was submitted for certification a few weeks ago. Oh, and it looks and sounds absolutely fucking glorious. Far more interesting than 99.99% of the shite populating retail shelves.

Surprised at the faux outcry over the quite literally astonishing and unprecedented revelation that a programmer has revealed himself to have a massive ego. Who'd have thought it?

[bcass]

Keiji Inafune agrees with Fish:

http://www.vg247.com/2012/03/08/inafune ... se-minded/

[Elixir]

Congratulations to Fish, he's created something which is pretty much Echochrome with Mario (both of which are Japanese original), then turns around and attacks the Japanese industry for having terrible games.

Indie game developers are almost as monotonous as bronies.

[bcass]

Graphically it does resemble Cave Story, but the concept of a rotating tower with platforms comes from a 1987 British game - Nebulus.

[Gus]

It's no wonder the gaming industry outside of Cave is in the shithole with idiots like Fish making games.

[mesh control]

^^^
lolz

[bcass]

Indeed. Even as a huge Cave fan, I regard that as one hell of a blinkered outlook.

[Elixir]

Posted this elsewhere, guess I'll post it here too.

Japanese games are almost always made for a Japanese audience and the fact that they're even translated is a privilege. I mean, it's not like they have to. Some even with bug fixes that were originally in their Japanese releases, yet fixed for localization. They're almost always poorly reviewed by western reviewers, yet companies are still gladly translating them. Some of the localized translations are really good, even though there's always going to be one dude out there nitpicking over single word differences, ignoring the fact that he wouldn't be able to understand the full sentence in Japanese to grasp the context. Despite all of this, they're still localized, and they're still very much playable.

I'm not saying that all Japanese material is automatically better, no. There's a plethora of Japanese material, currently untranslated, that just isn't worth translating as it's simply not good. Of course most of this logic is lost, since the people interested in Japanese material will praise anything inaccessible to them, as if it's automatically an untapped goldmine.

Why is it that whenever an actually decent indie game comes along, people begin to praise it like it's the best thing since the parting of the waters in the Bible? Like Aquaria, Limbo or Braid.

I also like how indie gamers and indie developers seem to be anti-mainstream and act advantageous over the larger teams, who focus more on putting effort into polycounts and shaddow effects than the actual gameplay itself. That's what nets you $60 USD currently, but these indie developers think that their lower priced game with an infinite amount of time invested within (because they're unemployed and have no life, duh) is automatically better by proxy. Like, are all indie gamers and developers unemployed 30 year olds, or poor as shit 14 year olds with massive egos? Seriously, I don't understand the kind of people that will gladly spend $60 USD on a shitty 5 hour western game that they won't remember in six months, but they won't spend the $40~$60 USD on a 2D game, or Japanese RPG which will obviously have more content, and be more value for money in the long run.

I just can't get over how hypocritical this whole thing is. What he said wasn't constructive criticism at all.

[bcass]

Japanese games are almost always made for a Japanese audience and the fact that they're even translated is a privilege. I mean, it's not like they have to.

Given the size of the Western market (which dwarves the Japanese market) I'm not sure that's true. I mean, compare sales of the last few Zelda games. If they had to rely on Japan sales only Nintendo probably wouldn't be making Zelda games any more.

I don't think it's fair to tarnish all indie devs with the same brush either, just as it isn't fair for Fish to tarnish all Japanese devs. There are lots of great things coming out of the indie scene at the moment, and has been for some time now. It takes a lot of balls to decide to go it alone and actually start creating something rather than sitting on the side lines gesticulating.

[Marc]

These people aren't doing us a favour, they're translating game for the dough, simple as. Far as content goes, GT4 has a shit ton more than OutRun 2, but I know which I'd rather spend on.

[Elixir]

Given the size of the Western market (which dwarves the Japanese market) I'm not sure that's true.

Namco pretty much dropped the entire Tales series in the west. It just wasn't worth it in their eyes. Most jRPG localizations take 8+ months, even the far less popular Atelier series.

Ar Tonelico 3
01/28/10 -> 03/15/11

Atelier Totori
06/24/10 -> 09/27/11

Atelier Rorona
06/25/09 -> 09/28/10

Yakuza 3
02/26/09 -> 03/09/10

Resonance of Fate
01/28/10 -> 03/16/10

Final Fantasy XIII
12/17/09 -> 03/09/10

Translators are paid by the amount of lines they do. Localizations are a company's afterthought, and these translations take time. If the companies were so worried about profit, don't you think they would be releasing a western counterpart much earlier? Such is the case with Square-Enix and Sega. If it wasn't for third party publishers like Atlus USA and NISA, half of these games would have remained in Japan. And that's exactly what they are, third party to their Japanese counterparts.

[bcass]

I meant in terms of overall market size, not just based on a handful of niche jRPGs. RPGs are something of an exception since they're so dependant on large amounts of translation work.

[TrevHead (TVR)]

I know there is some good stuff to come out of the western indie scene, but what irks me is that many of them have to be so arogant about it. They make one game and they think they are better than everyone else. Whats worse is that as the indie scene becomes more successful is that its slowly turning into industry they hate. Take the IGF and GDC theyre slowly be coming just another Hollywood and Spike TV.

Fez has been talked about and promoted for so long that im sick of hearing about the damn game. Whats worse is that its won awards at IGF in two seperate years http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/03 ... s-critics/

I suppose its the same with anything thats underground like music, once it becomes successfull it loses touch with its roots

[Elixir]

I was only using RPG as an example, since RPG is the most mainstream genre Japan has on offer.

Anyway, Inafune's points actually make some sense, and isn't merely just "your games suck" followed by "well I didn't mean to be blunt but they still suck".

[kid aphex]

'Holistically', I think it's very important that the Eastern design style survives, as it serves as a perfect complement to the pursuit of the blending of games/cinema that most Western developers are currently involved in.

Japanese games are more 'traditional'; that is, even the silliest modern jrpg being released today serves as a reference to the aspects and design styles (mechanics) that have traditionally defined videogames.

For many reasons, this generation has afforded the industry with a ton of perspective on East/West design disparity, but... so few QUALIFIED people exist in the western press to defend the intelligence of certain Japanese design principles that you only get one side of the story. The West, with it's success and booming market, is too busy charging ahead in full confidence to take a moment to reflect on it's own shortcomings. Ideally, both schools of design would take advantage of the unique juxtaposition this generation has afforded them, and a sort of exchange would take place. I'm not too sure that's gonna happen though.

[Estebang]

Surprised at the faux outcry over the quite literally astonishing and unprecedented revelation that a programmer has revealed himself to have a massive ego. Who'd have thought it?

Is this supposed to be some kind of excuse? "Yeah, some other people have massive egos, so this guy gets a free pass!"

Graphically it does resemble Cave Story, but the concept of a rotating tower with platforms comes from a 1987 British game - Nebulus.

This is a meaningless comparison. The placement of Nebulus' platforms and enemies is fixed. Fez's environment morphs itself to reflect the camera angle. Plus, I haven't seen anything that indicates all of Fez is just towers.

The character sprites and tilesets are heavily derivative of Cave Story. Not to mention that there is no challenge to be had, and thus no reason to play. Cave Story at least had some bosses that put up a fight and a difficult secret final level.

A game that's had no release date for about three years is as good as vaporware. I don't know why the indie journlolist blogosphere is still giving Fish the time of day when his entire career currently only consists of a couple trailers.

We should probably merge these posts with the "Japanese gaming is dead" thread.

[Estebang]

UPDATE:



Just fucking go to hell already, Fish. Still willing to defend the man, bcass?

[bcass]

Surprised at the faux outcry over the quite literally astonishing and unprecedented revelation that a programmer has revealed himself to have a massive ego. Who'd have thought it?

Is this supposed to be some kind of excuse? "Yeah, some other people have massive egos, so this guy gets a free pass!"

Free pass? What on earth are you rattling on about now. Programmers have big egos, get over it. They aren't actually hurting you. It's just a bunch of words on the internet. This faux outrage is total nonsense. In all likelihood he's doing it to garner media publicity. As someone once wisely said (and I'm paraphrasing here, before you get all anal) all publicity is good publicity.

Graphically it does resemble Cave Story, but the concept of a rotating tower with platforms comes from a 1987 British game - Nebulus.

This is a meaningless comparison. The placement of Nebulus' platforms and enemies is fixed. Fez's environment morphs itself to reflect the camera angle.

Total bollocks. You control a little character that works its way up a series of rotating towers. The first instance of which was Nebulus in 1987. I'm not saying he copied Nebulus, I'm just stating how similar the idea is.

The character sprites and tilesets are heavily derivative of Cave Story. Not to mention that there is no challenge to be had, and thus no reason to play. Cave Story at least had some bosses that put up a fight and a difficult secret final level.

Now you're just being idiotic. Only someone truly pig ignorant would come to this conclusion before actually having played the game.

A game that's had no release date for about three years is as good as vaporware. I don't know why the indie journlolist blogosphere is still giving Fish the time of day when his entire career currently only consists of a couple trailers.

Yet more spectacular, entirely predictable ignorance. Fish used to work at Ubisoft. He's probably forgotten more about game development that you'll ever know.

Just fucking go to hell already, Fish. Still willing to defend the man, bcass?

He doesn't need me to defend him. To be quite frank I've seen you act like just as much a dick on this forum.

[Deca]

Yeah I think forgetting everything you know about game development is a prerequisite for working at Ubisoft actually.

[bcass]

Nah, they've made the odd decent game. There are far worse publishers out there.