An Englishman in New Tokyo

Land of the Rising Fun?

For Capcom, one of the Japanese companies most vocal about working alongside Western developers in recent years, the gamble hasn't paid off in quite the same way as it has for Square-Enix. Bionic Commando performed poorly at retail, leading to the closure of the GRIN studio that made it. Indeed, in Capcom's 2010 forecast, director Haruhiro Tsujimoto pledged to shareholders his intention to bring development of new IP back to Japan. (Capcom also declined to be interviewed for this feature.)

"I thought Capcom was aiming in the right direction," says Kay, "but sadly it seems they have got cold feet. I hope they'll reconsider their strategy. It's partly cultural; things are always slow to change in Japan. The way Japanese studios work has been perfectly fine for the last few decades, right up to this new generation of consoles. Only recently have studios and publishers been forced to consider the necessity for change, and that is always a difficult thing.

"There very well might also be an element of hubris involved. Japanese games in the past have made quite a splash worldwide and even today a lot of Westerners will defend and praise Japanese games simply for being Japanese. You have to admit that it must be hard for a designer who has made several million-selling, critically acclaimed titles to consider things need to change. It will take a few major studios closing down and some major financially disastrous titles before we will see some real change."

Q-Games, NanOn-Sha and Score Studios are all smaller Japanese developers eager to grasp change ahead of disaster. "At Q-Games we only do work that we find interesting and fun," says Cuthbert. "It's a very simple moral to abide by. To be brutally honest, I think many of Japan's current issues stem from the fact that many companies do the opposite of that, and are motivated by money. That said, there are a lot of small startups focusing on iPhone or Facebook games in Japan right now working with two or three staff, and some of these could develop into fully-fledged games companies."

Kay's Score Studios, developer of the iPhone's Flock It!, fits Cuthbert's vision of hope. "Currently there are only two of us working here, with the occasional outsourced third or fourth, working on iPhone initially. We have worked hard on our own technology for our multi-platform strategy so we plan to expand to other platforms soon.

"My business partner and I are foreigners with long years of experience both in Japan and abroad. This places us uniquely right in between the two powerbases, with solid understanding of both. Once we start to expand we will certainly pitch ourselves as a bridge between the West and Japan that has so long been missing, as Capcom's recent troubles can attest to.

"You know, I don't want to overplay the death of Japanese game making. The industry is going through some changes right now, for better or worse. Some Japanese companies are still making games that are successful globally. I think it is more a fact that Western game development has grown and matured to a point it can easily compete. While younger generations grew up with Sonic and Mario, current generations are growing up with Halo and World of Warcraft.

"Japan will never again be a pinnacle of game development simply because competition is too stiff. I'm sure once the dust has settled and Japanese companies have become more global-minded, in more than just sound-bite platitudes, it will once again be seen as a powerful player. Just not the only one any more."