BioWare has expressed their negativity on Japanese role-playing games in the past. Today’s no different. The studio’s Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk have said in a recent interview that the Japanese RPG market has gotten “weaker and weaker” and that “the traditional, very structured, old-school structure RPG” just aren’t “as strong a market” anymore.
“I think what happened is they got very complacent for a very long time,” Zeschuk told IndustryGamers. “They kept making the same thing, and the same thing, and, in a sense, almost provided an opening for all of us to jump in with our style of games. I know first hand that they’re looking at our games now; they’re kind of looking at our stuff, the Fable stuff, and Fallout, and all that, and going, ‘what are these things?’ I think they had gotten used to making the same thing over and over, and it was working.”
“I think the other thing, too, is that the Japanese market has gotten quite a bit weaker and weaker. It’s just not as strong a market. It used to be a tremendously strong game market, so I think they’re kind of looking at it going, ‘man, we’ve got to figure out where else we can sell these,’ and I think the traditional, very structured, old-school structure RPG wasn’t selling anymore; so now, I think we’re going to see some changes.”
Muzyka added onto Zeschuk’s statements, saying that RPG developers in general need to begin innovating rather than sticking to the same formula. He says, “…everybody’s got to be always innovating and always trying to look for new opportunities to build on what they’ve done before. Any group, not referring to any particular one, [but] any studio or group, or any country that has certain development aesthetics, you know, from past times, that doesn’t continue to innovate will get left behind.”