Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima has weighed in his thoughts on the whole western versus eastern development debate. The legendary game developer focused his thoughts on the game environment in each type of development.
“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,” Kojima said through his Twitter account. “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.”
While I fully respect the game’s Hideo Kojima creates, I have to disagree with him here. I think his descriptions for both western and eastern game environments work hand-in-hand with each other, meaning that both types of developers go about creating “beautiful artwork” and using technology to “draw out the environment”.
What are your thoughts?
Thanks, GamerNode.
actually he made a follow up after this post:
http://twitter.com/Kojima_Hideo?utm_source=shinichiro_beck&utm_medium=twitter&utm_term=shinichiro_beck
it seems alot of idiots at GT are quick to Criticize him without reading the post, bunch of dumbasses.
translated version:
“In working on my next project, I’ve implicitly told my staff to throw away the ‘old’ way of creating. We should be creating a beautiful world, not a beautiful picture. Designers should learn to more effectively use the programs and technology around them to create a more lively and complete world, and not focus simply on creating disconnected parts. We should strive to design a complete ‘world’ not a collection of complete ‘parts’”
“No matter how beautiful of a picture you may be able to draw of the Tokyo Tower, it’ll never be on par with the real Tokyo tower, a culmination of architectural technology. With the real Tokyo Tower, you can climb it, gaze at it. With the advancement in computer technology, games have transitioned from 2D to 3D, and with it the gamers’ tastes have also transitioned away from valuing just a ‘picture.’”
—- Taken from gamefaqs user: Prime .
Kojima: “In the future of Kojima Productions, I want to mix the Western and Japanese way of designing. Using hardware technology, software technology, and also game design, to overcome our obstacles. That’s how I think we’ll reach the next Metal Gear Solid. So I want to really challenge this wall of impossibility together with American and European developers, who really specialise in software design.”
he actually wants to combine both East and West values. maybe this is his taboo project? anywazy people are alreading flaming kojima just because his first tweet. oh well haters gonna hate.
here;s the actual post from Prime:
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/927750-playstation-3/56747434?page=3
I definately agree that both Western and Eastern developers care very much about ‘beautiful artwork’ etc in their gameworlds. I think the only real difference is the style of the art; ie Japanese designs/Anime crossed with a more Western look.
I love both styles of art and really don’t care which part of the world it was created in, as long as the game is good!
They can hate all they want, but their gonna be the first ones to get this new MGS when it comes out anyway :P
I like both styles. I don’t really understand why can’t Japanese just make games as they always had…
Aside from the technical aspects that are used to build the environment, I believe Japanese games manage to blend distinctive fantasy elements. I cannot speak much for Western games, but it seems like the tolkien-esque setting is always used.
As I said, I haven’t played many Western games and I’m usually playing RPGs if anything. For many JRPGs, their settings are easily memorable for me. It goes without saying that generic settings are fairly hard to distinguish amongst games.
Beautiful artwork is the most important aspect of a game. This is why Japanese games are always better.. No more ‘westernizing’ or outsourcing development to the west please. I love & play Japanese titles BECAUSE they are Japanese. PS3/360 SNATCHER / POLICENAUTS / ZOE 3 PLEASE!!!