Jonathan Blow on Video Games from Japan
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Jonathan Blow on Video Games from Japan
Clip from Jonathan Blow
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#jonathanblow #gamedev #webdevelopment #programming #japan
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I like how even though J Blow doesn't like japanese games he still respects the person asking the question and gives him a proper and detailed response.
JBlow did a good job at salvaging the question, but the more valuable take away is attitude. While sometimes curmudgeonly, Jon's personable and is immensely passionate. Fish chased clout and washed out. What you get out is what you put in.
The first answer was very rude. Fortunately the latter ones made up for it a little, also thanks to explaining reasons.
You correctly bring up the point of games being too easy and holding the player's hand too much. I think it's a flaw of modern games in general, and not only Japanese. Games that have to sell and aim to make everyone happy. With exceptions of course.
I think this talk is older, with breath of the wild it seems nintendo really took these criticisms to heart.
The talk is from 2012 during this time a lot of Japanese games were doing forced tutorials in very annoying ways, some jrpgs had huge walls of text you had wait for, and then do quests for the tutorial it was super time consuming.
Since then things have changed a lot, Nintendo released games like Breath of the Wild, fromsoftware became a lot more popular which got a lot of Japanese devs to increase difficulty.
Today I find that there are way more issues with western games than with Japanese and they are not related to tutorials.
I am glad to hear these answers, and that things have turned better.
@@_KondoIsami_glad to know that this wasn't a recent meeting.It's so misleading to post something like this
Kratos: walks into a room
Atreus the very next second: HEY, MAYBE WE SHOULD CLIMB THAT YELLOW-PAINTED LEDGE!
😒
Current day western "games" are D tier movies
Funny how they brought up cracks in the walls as a sign of a bad design and nowadays every linear game uses specific colors or other very visible signs for every wall the player can climb over.
yellow paint
@@krux02 It's not yellow paint for effortless navigation, but it's the piss of disrespect that developers want you touch while playing the game.
@@youtubeenjoyer1743No, it’s because as players, you don’t want to admit that a lot of you are pretty clueless
Where one player might pick up context clues, another will not. So you have to design the game in a way that is as accessible as possible, to the largest number of people possible, to make up for the insane budget required for triple A development
So yes, unfortunately, most of the time developers cannot afford to risk losing that 5, 10, or 20% of the player base whose IQ is on the lower end of the spectrum
They need those people to enjoy the game just as much, which often leads to the rest of us being coddled
@@ORDlNANCEThat is unfortunate, but it's one of the most important reasons of modern games sucking so bad. Some games are much better than others, and usually this is the reason why.
@@ORDlNANCE
Some good points, but take a second to read your own writing.
Why do gamers need to acknowledge a lot of them are clueless if it's only 20%, or maybe even 10% or 5% of them that need this kind of stimulation?
And this leads to a more important point - why do we need to hold back criticism of games because of the perverse profit incentives of the AAA gaming industry? Why do we need to care if executives can buy more yachts? It's their decision to position their games this way - financially speaking - so it's sensible for anyone not interested in that paradigm to be critical of it. Similarly, there are likely ways to allow for such accessibility features without making the game less enjoyable for others, but these avenues aren't explored (likely because exploring and implementing them would cost time and money that reduces your infinite capitalist growth).
In other words, you're describing the greedy incentives that lead to poor game design choices, not the calculated artistic choices leading to a particular product. A fair thing to highlight, but not relevant to a game design discussion.
I wish if the Japanese guy had a response because he might feel the same way actually.
I feel like almost all these criticisms could be applied to western games of the time as well
Today: Aside from the occasional indie game, Western games are so unbearable, I don't even think about them.
How are Japanese games in general any better? All of the problems Jon mentions in the video still apply
@@slynt_ Japanese games got better since then. Compare the lengthy tutorial in The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword to the immediate freedom in Breath of the Wild, even though the latter is much more mechanically rich.
What would you consider to be worthwhile Western (non-indie) games that came out in the past few years?
Rocksteady Studios is pretty much dead and they were my favorite Western developer during the PS3/360 generation.
Bethesda has finally been exposed as a maker of terrible games. I never liked their games. The only good thing Skyrim had going for it was its soundtrack.
Halo is dead.
Rockstar Games after L.A. Noire (which they only funded and published anyway, to be frank) feature terrible gameplay, terrible stories, bland, uninteresting characters, and satire so dull and unbearable, it could be written by a grade schooler.
The sandbox aspect was kind of fun when GTA3 came out, but so many games have that now that it's not even worth mentioning anymore.
Like with many other Western developers, I admire Rockstar's technology, but if the games are bad, they are worthless.
@@slynt_ Becuase most of complaints only apply to 7th gen shit
@@slynt_ Lmao, they don't, japanese games don't hold your hand and every western dev are copying dark souls, probably the less hand holdy, challenging games ever, western games are braindead woke garbage hours of walking listening to some characters talk, cope
@@zackie8172 Well done, you named literally the one and only Japanese game studio that doesn't put 2 hours of baby tutorials in their games. I honestly don't know what planet you or other weebs are living on with the other stuff you're saying. Name a recent Japanese game that isn't made by FromSoft that doesn't have an unskippable baby tutorial
this must be an old clip since Phil Fish doesn't look homeless yet
Yea, it's over a decade old. Very famous clip.
2012
And Jonathan Blow isn't just ranting about vaccines and pronouns.
@@ahoyichimi ive never heard of that, where exactly is he doing this?
I can't believe that guy made it WWII all over again with that poor Japanese guy. Shameful behavior if you ask me.
Yeah, Phil Fish isn't exactly renowned to be the polite type...
You know autistic people can say pretty insensitive things.
@@Spiderboydk yes it was totally rude
@@Spiderboydk he dream to create super mario. But he failed😂
Now these days the western games are the ones that suck, full of boring tutorials and loot boxes. The irony
The first half of this clip is almost cartoonishly disgraceful.
With earnesty and respect, a traveler requests insights into the courts opinions of his homelands exports.
The vain nobleman seated beyond the broad, elevated table bluntly demeans them as he smugly preens his coifed hair.
The unrestrained chortling of his plump, sycophantic friend echos over the hushed crowd and small piles of half-eaten turkey legs as the rest of the court smile stiffly with downturned gazes.
I get what you're saying and kinda agree with it, but I think it's more of a cultural thing. Like, maybe western humor deals better with self-deprecating stuff, so when someone criticizes someone in such an obviously "evil" way, people in the west tend to take it in as a joke, and that japanese guy apparently didn't
Don't get me wrong, Phil Fish is a major asshole, but it seems to me like he meant to be funny more than he meant to be evil there, and people most likely laughed not only because it is somewhat funny for some that Phil would act like that, but also to instinctively try to de-escalate the situation and make the japanese dude not feel the full rudeness of the comment
Jonathan Blow is right though, too much hand holding takes away any possibility for discovery from the player.
@@MrTofusi01There is no justification for trying to be "funny" in this way to a stranger. I personally think this is rude even if you know each other but especially when there's someone from a different culture who clearly isn't fully fluent in english and can't understand all the nuanced "jokes" Fish could be making, it's extraordinarily rude.
@@ArthurSchoppenweghauer Fucking lmao, the irony when western games are more handholding now than Japanese games.
@@MrTofusi01 This would still be considered rude behavior even in the west, even with sarcasm people tend to apologize or try to give a more serious answer but the guy kept going. I have never seen someone be so berated and then the other guy was just laughing. Like how do you even do this.
Blow says that... and at face value it makes sense?
But then he goes on to play BotW and suddenly all that stuff about not needing a tutorial rings very very hollow.
The video of Blow playing BotW is still viewable in its entirety on TH-cam.
That video is so, so funny. I recommend it
it’s been a while since i saw that playthrough but i don’t think he wanted a super verbose and laid-out tutorial with tons of text but rather a linear and structured level that let the player learn the basics on their own. tutorial doesn’t mean walls of text that tell you how the game works
You misconstrued what he said in this clip. He argues against overtutorializing and excessive hand-holding, not against tutorials and affordances in general.
@@SpiderboydkAgain, the entirety of the video is available on this platform.
@@makotoikari4854 Again, you misconstrued what he said in this clip. It does not conflict with that other video.
Thankfully Jonathan clarified things.
I clicked hoping this would be his current opinion, now that some Japanese games like Elden Ring, Sekiro, even indies like Palworld have become quite good (in fact that talk looks old enough to consider games like Nier Automata), while at the same time the west has collectively forgot how to develop a game or write a story, everything now begins and ends with ticking off a DEI checklist, with few exceptions. That said his criticism is still valid, a lot of Japanese games tend to be too hand-holdy.
Classic. The first time I watched this I didn't really listen to Blow because I was too distracted by Fish but he makes somes really good points.
This was in 2013. Surely someone at Ninetendo heard this because 4 years later they released Breath of the Wild!
It seems that japanese developers heard that talk and for the last years have been pushing to the opposite direction. Zelda, used as a bad example here, is amazingly non-linear today and you can even advance the game without having crucial items on you. FromSoftware have been pushing boundaries on non-linear, non-handholding gameplay. Capcom has done an amazing world to explore with Dragons Dogma 2.
Sucks because JP guys are not used to sarcasm as we are here in the west, so when they were jokingly mocking his question he probably felt a bit awkward.
Nah, the "ironic exaggeration" is just a veneer Phil Fish employs trying to get away with his arrogance, it's obvious once you've seen his other interviews
For the unaware, this video is from 2012.
Hard agree with Blow on this. Treating the player like an idiot is a severe mood killer. There's irreplicable joy in discovering something on your own.
My opinion on this did a 180 pretty recently. I find the western perfection games like half-life 2 hugely limited by that specific pattern. You treat your player as an idiot as well, but in a different way and try your best to hide it from them. The entire design of the game comes from the need to gradually introduce mechanics and balancing novelty with boredom. Watch GDC talk from Yoko Taro on his approach to story in games. When your focus is first and foremost on emotional impact, you may introduce some quick "into your face" guidance early in the game so player can learn them fast and keep exploring the world and story instead of surprising themselves with suddenly breakable wall or a button they never knew what it did. It's a different approach, and I think Jon would argue story games are less "games", which is fair, and I'd rather have both western games and Japanese games instead of convincing Japan it makes bad experiences.
This one's a classic. Poor guy 😂
I'm very old school. I think every game should explain all of the rules in detail. I believe that's how we operated since the royal game of ur. If your game is boring after you've explained all the rules, you've designed a game that's boring to play.
Phil Fish, first guy, was later on condemned as racist for that comment. He acknowledged that it was rude and apologized. Mega-man co-creator, Keiji Inafune, defended this remark however, and saw that as necessary criticism. IMHO comment itself was not racist, as it was directed towards games/product not people, but was not very productive either, it's Jonathan Blow who was able to be constructive.
It was obviously not racist because race wasn't part of either the question not the answer but I do agree it was rude.
love how the video cuts just when we hear a kamikaze plane
I have skip games because you need to play the tutorial.
I tried Monster Hunter World and the tutorial literally lasted like an hour, and I'm not even sure it was over yet. I just gave up on it. So boring, I don't know how people play games like that
@@slynt_ it gets good at hour 37
@@AnimeGIFfyThe sad thing is that even though you're (probably?) taking a piss, enough people say something like that unironically
@@mrpissed kinda both. Monster hunter takes quite a long time before it gets fun. Well it's more like it gets fun and then becomes unfun again at the end.
This isn't a japanese thing literally every major game developer does this.
Gotta respect how Phil manages to make a new enemy every time he opens his mouth.
this is a hard watch
I don't get what's so funny about being an asshole to that guy. Could've Been more civilized and respectful and the point would come across better. Jon was the only who cared to say it succinctly, which is sad honestly
Could I get some sauce, please?
Damn that must have stung for the guy that asked
Turns out the dude they were insulting has worked on way more important games than all of them combined
All of these hipsters were only briefly a thing because of Indie Game the Movie and these idiots have done nothing of value since except for Blow who is on a whole different level
I kinda Half-Agree
Edmund McMullen did pretty well with the Binding of Isaac, but his subsequent game has been in development for ages
Name the game
is this guy the Downwell guy?
@@youtubeenjoyer1743 it’s called Mewgenics
I believe in the message, but the problem is that gamers can't figure anything out for themselves anymore, so anything untold is never figured out and becomes a big hole in their experience.
They talk of "japanese games" as if it's a specific genre or something... this is so ignorant. there is so much variety of games coming from Japan... I don't quite get this "category". at least JB said there are "exceptions" like Dark Souls. Maybe they were thinking about JRPG's in particular?
Though to be fair, this was recorded before many brilliant non-linear games came out in Japan. but still.
Obviously they talk of japanese games as in a sample representative of the overall game design direction in Japan.
I don’t think it’s ignorant… I think it’s ignorant to ignore regional trends
Also, the Japanese guest is the one who made the differentiation.
Design is philosophy. If cultures can have their own philosophies, which they do, why would that differ in Game Design?
Different demographics play different things. To ignore that, is to ignore objective data
@@ORDlNANCE Sure, I somewhat agree. The culture of those who made the game will show up in what they create. Japan is, at least in the recent past, a very insular and unique culture so that will be noticed in their games.
Still, it is difficult to make general statements about games coming out of an entire country though. Like in terms of hand-holding, there are many japanese games on opposite sides of the spectrum. I am not sure if there even is an "overall game design direction". Different companies of different sizes make different kinds of games.
There's maybe one thing i can say, which is that lately, AAA gaming is doing pretty badly in general, in terms of how they scope the games, how long it takes them to finish games, how badly they run, how generic they turn out to be. But Japanese AAA is doing much better than western AAA at the moment. It's how I see it. Though they still share some of the same problems sometimes, like performance problems with Dragon's Dogma 2. They are still also plagued with the same anti-consumer practices. So are they really doing that much different? haha.
It is much more useful to talk about specific genres, or game studios, or companies, or even better: specific key individuals in the industry.
About your last point though, games are made for different demographics. Many japanese games are made for the western market. So I'm not sure what you meant there.
@@lucy-pero You just said “made for the western market”.
If you can “make for the western market” you can “make for the eastern market”.
You knew very well what I meant. Stop looking for things to take offense at.
I think his perspective comes from a lack of experience. There are plenty of japanese games that are not handholdey, and don't explicitly show or explain things to the player. Breath of the Wild is all about discovery and exploration, Dark Souls is the definition of trial by fire and even Super Mario is just, here's a game, figure it out, and the design helps the player, but its not explicitly told.
This is a clip from 2012 which was far before BOTW came out. More recently it seems Japanese games are less hand-holdy than they were back then, like with botw or totk.
It's interesting hearing his comparison of the first zelda vs "the latest" zelda (at the time), because if you were to make that comparison today, botw or totk are definitely examples of more hands-free design.
He also does mention dark souls / demon's souls (the only 2 souls game that were out in 2012) as exceptions too.
@@DeltaForce1522 I know, I've seen this clip in the context of the FEZ dev before. I intentionally included SMB too because it's even older. It just bothers me that he lumped an entire country's games together. It's like saying japanese games have too long cutscenes because MGS does.
@@AlexAegisOfficial That's fair. I do think it's also fair to point out a general trend though, and "japanese games" do tend to have a certain style, just like "western games" do as well.
Megaman Zero 1 alone is far better than all games he ever made in his life all combined.
Jon Blow, or Phil Fish?
Jon’s games are quite good for very different reasons.
But for Phil? That wouldn’t be hard to imagine, as afaik, to this days he’s still only made a single game
give this person a TRUE
Brutal, poor guy
Looks like the panelists don't know any Japanese games besides Nintendo games and Final Fantasy
Who's gonna tell Phil Fish and Jon Blow that there Japan ≠ Nintendo?
Phil is one to talk on quality of games; and so brashly too. Fez was (still is?) a buggy mess.
jblow is from new york
My extremely scorching hot take is that Phil Fish was kind of right, but not for any of the reasons he thinks. JP game industry has been dead since 2019, and Chinese and Korean developers have ripoff anime games with more soul, love, and care than your typical cashgrab Cool Japan + Blackrock sponsored modern audience slop with terrible optimization/localizations/PC ports (still) from Bandai Namco/Sega/Atlus/IF/Tecmo/Capcom/Square Enix. We know the real reason that Yakuza got renamed to Like a Dragon, and it has nothing to do with localization accuracy (their localizations are dogshit) and everything to do with Sega being paid by Cool Japan to not mention the Yakuza (even if it's not glamorizing them).
Western games are literally a rotting corpse, and the corpse of JP games became cold fairly recently ago. People really don't give them enough flack for failing at the most basic stuff, and this is coming from someone who would've defended them up until 2018. Western games aren't kicking their ass, this is like how Microsoft and Sony both have been screwing up this generation and there's no winners. China and Korea are kicking everyone else's asses, unfortuntately.
But we know that Phil Fish would think that reason for coming to the same conclusion is complete garbage. At least Jon's opinion is reasonable, but I'd argue that western AAA games treat you like an even bigger idiot.
I mostly disagree with John, which is whatever he's made masterpiece games and I've made LudumDare games lol, but I actually agree with him on this one.
From when is this?
2013. Before gamergate when western devs were respected
Typical arrogant Western game designers. Remember when they said Elden Ring was trash because of the UI? The only good Western games these days are indie titles or passion projects from small or mid-sized studios. Triple A games from large studios and publishers are consistently trash, even ignoring the overt political messaging.
EDIT: At least Jonathan Blow gave him a real answer (even though every criticism of Japanese games he provided applies just as much to Western games). The first guy was just a jackass.
The guys on stage are western indie developers. Actually, I think western indie games are largely overrated anyways, and are pretty much carried by their status as being "not AAA" in the "indie vs. AAA paradigm."
@@rayecastMany indie titles are overrated, I agree, but because they're cheap and fast to develop and usually do one thing very well, they can cater to a niche audience without being considered a financial failure. This is far better than the alternative of creating a game that is watered down mush to appeal to the masses.
I wish back when the whole Elden Ring drama happened, it had been about some of the actual issues the game has, especially in comparison to Dark Souls 1 and Demons’ Souls
Who are "they"?
Elden ring does have shit UI, and shit open world, and unimaginative rehashed dark souls combat system with literally every single animation taken out from the previous From Software games. The UI is bad not because there is no quest log or arrows (there literally are arrows pointing to where you need to go, and A MAP WITH INFINITELY VISIBLE BEACONS), but because it shows too little information and still manages to obstruct your view. The open world is trash, because it's objectively worse than what the previous dark demon blood souls games had to offer. It's too large and sparse.
Yes, triple A games from large studios are mostly trash, but it's not exclusive to western gamedev; the same can be said about japanese games. Have you played FF16? SF6? Monster Hunter? It's all garbage.
Elden Ring is indeed trash, but that doesn't mean it cannot be sold to hardcore wannabes.
never played Elden Ring?
that would have been quite a feat in 2012.
@@Tsunkuotaku ah it's that old
Jon Blow said "besides Dark Souls etc."
All of your idea is came from the japanese games that's the real thing and all this mens in the table like's to cloning from super mario to dark soul. Admit and credit to japanese developers!
I'm embarrassed to see this video. I don't feel like an idiot playing zelda TOTK at all. It teaches you the basics but then you're up to discover how to interact with the world. Suggesting we should go back the first Zelda level of crypticity in the internet days is non-sense.
This video is from GDC 2012, the newest Zelda that they are talking about is Skyward Sword.
damn that first panelist makes me cringe. was that a recent panel? which western games are so superior to japanese games nowadays?
Mo, it was something like ten years ago and the first guy was the creator of FEZ I believe
I can think of hardly any game dev more pretentious than Phil Fish. FEZ really sucked and I'm glad he is no longer around.
One of the worst and most embarrassing clips of all time.
They’re right even to this day. Time is a flat circle.
how?
@@anonymousinfinido2540 same problem with most Japanese games besides the few fromsoftware titles (which have their own issues)
@@Junglewarfare hmm
Some of my favorite games I've played over the last few years have been Japanese games. Mario Wonder, Tears of the kingdom, Pikmin 4, Monster hunter rise/world, multiple final fantasy games, resident evil, fire emblem, dark souls, etc. These guys are a bunch of arrogant pricks. What the hell have they made that I want to play?
Keep in mind this clip is from GDC 2012, a time where that was more prevalent in Japenese games compared to recently where I'd say the situation has improved.
@@DeltaForce1522 2012 probably wasn't a great year for japanese games, but I played MH3U for the first time this year and loved it and it was released december 2011. It was also the year that I played resident evil revelations, mario kart 7, kingdom hearts dream drop and Super Mario 3D Land which I enjoyed in 2012. None of those were elden ring levels of good, but still not terrible.
I think both answers are completely idiotic.