Yokshiki Okamoto is a games industry legend. He started at Capcom in 1984 and has his name on some of their biggest franchises, including Resident Evil, Devil May Cry, Street Fighter and the smash Monster Hunter. He's treated like a rock star in Japan, and has a keen insight into why some of his games do better than others outside of Japan. I met with Okamoto-san at the Tokyo Game Show last week and asked if he could offer any insight into the cultural divide between his country and the rest of the gaming world.
What are the strengths of the Japanese computer games industry?
The high level of polish it applies to its products.
What are its needs?
The courage to try new things despite the risk of failure or less polished products. Especially among management and investors.
What are the different strengths and needs of the European market?
I'm not certain; maybe football games?
You were the creative force behind Monster Hunter, a phenomenon in Japan, but a non-mover elsewhere. How would you design the game differently for a European market?
Monster Hunter emphasizes cooperation over competition, which suits Japanese audiences perfectly, since most Japanese people enjoy cooperating and being part of a group. This kind of gameplay is less suited to audiences drawn from Western cultures, which place a heavier emphasis on the independence of the individual from the group. In designing a game for a European market, I think it is vital to maintain an awareness of this sort of fundamental cultural difference.
I'll go out on a limb and try to give a detailed proposal here; I suspect that to be a hit in Europe, the same game would need to provide the player with a party of three realistic NPCs with good AI for offline play, sufficient to take on the roles you would expect to fill in online play.
Increasingly, the consoles are offering new independent distribution channels for community to upload and publish their own games. How might this drive variation and innovation in the content released by the traditionally-conservative Japanese publishing scene?
At this point the types of independent, community-driven efforts mentioned are still a relatively small issue, but it is possible they could bring about major changes. At this point theｙ still need to deal with the issue of allowing the user to quickly and easily distinguish good content from bad content.
Which non-Japanese companies do you feel produce the most innovative content that should work in Japan, but doesn't?
Rockstar Games. Rockstar is not unsuccessful in Japan, but their success here is on a much smaller scale than elsewhere in the world market. The low Japanese sales of the sandbox-style GTA series simply do not make any sense to me.
