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Forum - View topicThis Week in Games - If 'JRPG' is a Dirty Word, It's America's Fault
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KabaKabaFruit
 Posts: 1879 Location: Winnipeg, Manitoba |
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I genuinely hate the term "JRPG" myself. The segregationism of the term feels like something the fandom needs to resort to in order to provide greater emphasis to RPGs made in Japan while in the good ol U.S.A., no such classification is needed for American RPGs. They're RPGs, period.
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onpufan
 Posts: 137 |
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I usually use JRPG to specify Japanese RPGs because I'm not a fan of alot of Western RPGs these days so I want to specify which games I like. But I agree there was and still is a big stigma against Japanese games and aethetics from American creators, journalists, and people in general. "Weeb" has become a very common slur I see people use to call even the slightest hint of Japanese or anime aesthetic in something. The worst examples in history I can think of is that Japanese indie dev asking Phil Fish a question one time at a convention and his response was basically "You guys suck" ,and the crowd cheering and applauding while the Japanese fan looked at him in shock. Another one was the whole Kotaku's Jason Schreier's beef with George Kamitani and trying to drag him for drawing sexy women back when Dragon Crown initially came out and the general attitude of "Japan needs to stop letting 13 year old boys design their games" attitude from American puritans. You still see dismissive attitude about Japan and anime to this day everywhere from major outlets so it has not gone away. I don't blame YoshiP for not liking the term. Especially when FF14 is often dismissed as "a dumb weeb game" from WoW players and others. "Japanese" is used like it's a negative adjective for some people
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AQuin1904
Posts: 267 |
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That Grendizer game really came out of left field. I'm only familiar with the series from crossovers, but I hope it turns out well. It looks like some species of brawler, so I'm hoping for responsive controls and a satisfying core gameplay loop. If they nail that down, I can do without the bells and whistles.
I've been told that this was partly due to popular engines of that generation lacking good Japanese language documentation, making it much more difficult for Japanese studios to jump on something like Unreal 3, but I'm not sure how true that is. On the JRPG thing, it's theoretically a useful label to describe something with a design in line a Dragon Quest or classic Final Fantasy, which is how some people use it. But a sizable contingent also applies to just any RPG made in Japan, at which point the category is so broad it doesn't really have value (the same problem plaguing "RPG" in general). The attempt to coin "WRPG" as a counterpoint was always pretty sad, especially when it was pretty much just Elder Scrolls-likes. And then you have CRPGs and... The whole thing just makes it clear once again that most video game genre labels are unintuitive garbage. Last edited by AQuin1904 on Fri Mar 03, 2023 11:38 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Beatdigga
 Posts: 4457 Location: New York |
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There was a period in the early 2000s where gaming journalists, when reviewing Japanese games, were at points one step away from being plain racist, going “Japan is weird for this!” and “Japan is stupid for that!”; most infamously X-Play, which justified it by going “We’re calling it like it is bro!” It’s that mindset that led to things like DMC Dante, among other attempts to be more Western that ultimately alienated audiences.
Being a producer on those games and being tied to that stigma could not have been fun. It’s no wonder they view labels like JRPG as a dirty word. On a more positive note, Grendizer’s game kind of looks like someone saw Transformers Devastation and like the rest of us lamented there was no sequel thanks to all the shenanigans with the license. So hopefully it plays well. That and Pokémon Concierge will likely keep getting White Lotus jokes made about it (affectionate ones at least, White Lotus did win 10 Emmy’s). |
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Silver Kirin
Posts: 1144 |
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- FFXVI: I remember hearing the term JRPG in the late 2000s on YouTube, to me it was a very strange term, I thought all games that involved turn-based battles, level growth and inventory management as an RPG, regardless of its country of origin. But yeah, it seems the last 10 years have been difficult for Japanese games to gain a foothold in the international market, particularly for smaller developers, only big developers like Nintendo, Capcom, Namco and Square-Enix stand out. RPGs like Xenoblade and Dragon Quest have had problems, many saying they're weird, having too colorful character designs or having antiquated mechanics. It's kind of amazing that Persona has managed to become incredibly popular, considering how much "anime" it is compared to other RPGs, and then there's Pokémon, but it always seems that they don't count it as an RPG.
The FFXVI team also talked about dubbing the game in other languages, I like the fact that they take into account markets other than the English-speaking one. - Grendizer: actually Grendizer is not very well known in Latin America (it's pretty rare to even find clips of it in Neutral Spanish, though there are), it didn't have as massive popularity like Mazinger Z. But I know that in Europe, particularly in France and Italy (where it was known as Goldrake/Goldorak) it was the series that started the anime boom along with other series like Candy Candy. This game looks like Grendizer in Breath of the Wild's world, I don't expect too much, but it's nice that Dynamic Pro let a foreign studio to develop a game. - Pokémon Day: haven't watched the Direct, though it seems it wasn't very good, the only thing that caught my attention was the stop-motion show that's coming to Netflix. |
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Traptrix Lover
Posts: 92 |
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The 2000s was when American gaming got a huge boon as well. Up until then Japanese systems and games dominated the scene. Back when 8 million copies was considered the best a game could ever sell in the year 2001 with Final Fantasy X. Once the end of the PS2 era came upon us and the Xbox 360 came out it shifted things a lot, especially since Sony fumbled the ball with the PS3 big time. People often forget that franchises like Call of Duty, Fallout, and Elder Scrolls were basically niche and unheard of prior to then. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Elder Scrolls 5 Skyrim, and Fallout 3 were basically the ones that went mainstream and saw massive successor for the first time and made them tentpole franchises in gaming. In essence, it was literally the jocks barging into the nerd's club room and taking over. The initial people were still there doing their thing, but they were now in the corner out of the way and would be called nerds and other names by the cooler, more mainstream people in the room who now ran the place. Not really a surprise to see the sudden shift in anti-Japanese sentiment from journalists and gamers when the American mainstream took over the industry when it used to be very niche and insular. Last edited by Traptrix Lover on Fri Mar 03, 2023 12:11 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Themaster20000
 Posts: 864 |
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People really forget how complicit a lot of game journalists were in making that mindset mainstream for the industry. Most infamous one I remember was IGN's " Top 10 Ways to Fix JRPGs",which was just an excuse for the editors to flaunt how much 'better' western games were. |
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FinalVentCard
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 539 |
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This phenomenon reminds me of how defensive some fans get when you tell them something like Avatar or Teen Titans is a kids' show, even though that's LITERALLY the target audience. These same people have no issue calling Teen Titans Go! a kids' show (because they don't like it). Just more proof that to a lot of pundits, JRPG is a dirty word. "This Japanese role-playing game can't be an RPG, I actually like it!" |
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FilthyCasual
Posts: 2266 |
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Anyways, I'm still pretty checked out of modern Pokemon. I never did finish Pokemon Conquest, but a new one or Mystery Dungeon would be fantastic. Or even another short and cheap puzzle game like Pokemon Picross. |
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snake-eyes
 Posts: 150 |
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It is not that Grendizer did not make it to The USA, it did it in one of the worst failings of marketing I have ever Seen. Jim Terry’s Force Five, Marvel Comics Shogun Warriors and Shogun Warrior Toys were not released in unison. To me, it was still great to get 25 Episodes a piece of not Just Starvengers aka Getter Robo G! There was also…Grandizer aka UFO Robot Grendizer, Danguard Ace aka Danguard A, and Gaiking aka Gaiking Great Space Dragon. Leiji Matsumoto had a space opera version of The Three Musketeers. Mr Matsumoto other work was Danguard Ace. Boston had all 25 eps M-F! I had a movie channel Spotlight, they had compilation films of…Grendizer, Getter Robo G, Gaiking and Danguard. Nickelodeon and strangely enough a religious channel aired Voltes V and Daimos as Starbirds. This happened in the early 80’s. Like you said I also saw Tranzor Z. We also had Science Ninja Team Gatchaman aka Battle Of The Planets and Space Battleship Yamato aka Star Blazers!
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doctordoom85
 Posts: 2093 |
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Actually, Dragon Quest 11 and Persona 5 sold around the same in worldwide sales, and Xenoblade 1 did sell less than either of them BUT it actually sold more copies in the US than Japan. |
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AiddonValentine
Posts: 2253 |
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Another thing that gets me is it's not like during the 7th gen Japan stopped making RPGs, they were making tons of them. Just not for consoles. Due to a shifting market, a lot of their titles moved over to handhelds. Valkyria Chronicles, Shin Megami Tensei, Etrian Odyssey, and freaking DRAGON QUEST all went to handhelds and they sold big because that's where the market was. Heck, Dragon Quest was having a full-blown revival in the West because of Nintendo localizing and publishing the DS and 3DS remakes of the older titles as well as Dragon Quest IX. As such, I don't think it was any coincidence that the stigma was exacerbated there as the West has always begrudgingly accepted handhelds, thinking of them as "lesser", and considering how they associated RPGs with big, splashy AAA affair that definitely colored their opinions And you can tell Yoshida really struck a nerve considering how there are now a lot of pundits coming out of the woodwork trying to claim they meant it as an endearing term and totally don't hate Japan which they try to prove with Google Trend charts (seriously), but then you got people like the Washington Post's Gene Park going "This you?" https://twitter.com/GenePark/status/1630969725118185481 https://twitter.com/GenePark/status/1630970557830164480 And Gamespot's Hana Kim saying she had to break it to a writer not six months ago that writing an article called "Why Japanese Games are Different" is, indeed, ridiculously racist: https://twitter.com/_hanatwothree/status/1630980041247948808 I always knew this day was going to come and people were going to be very, very resistant to talking about it because they knew what they were doing was wrong and that having to own up to it is humiliating. Whelp, maybe y'all shouldn't have done it in the first place |
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Silver Kirin
Posts: 1144 |
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I heard Dragon Quest XI did well in the West, but most of its sales came from Japan. I think the series never got its "big success outside of Japan moment" yet, kinda how Final Fantasy VII and Persona 5 became well known among the international gaming community. DQ VIII and DQ IX got pretty close, and I think DQ XI got a bit overshadowed by other games and it also got some criticism for its low quality music. Not to mention the lukewarm response the inclusion of Hero in Smash Bros. got, I know it was mostly because they were sword users, but it kinda of showed how little known they're outside of Japan, especially compared to the inclusion of Cloud, Joker and Sora who were much better received. I'm wondering what Armor Project is preparing for Dragon Quest XII. From what little is known, it seems they are planning a game with a more serious and darker story, and there's been talk of changing various aspects of the classic DQ gameplay. Perhaps they're trying to do something similar to FFXVI |
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Spoofer
 Posts: 356 Location: NY |
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The totality of my RPG experience is largely rooted in the Final Fantasy series, and even then I fell out of gaming completely around the FFXIII-era. But all the same I figured I'd offer my own impression.
JRPGs certainly helped win the console war for the PS1, and were a hugely popular genre/medium/brand/whatever you want to call it for the next two generations. I thought they were held in rather high regard, despite the emphasis starting to shy away from gameplay choices and freedom and leaning more and more into forced narrative (again, at least in FF's case). It did always strike me from friends playing Western RPGs that there were far more choices and freedom involved in those, especially once FF hit X and XIII and decided to become more fully linear (in XIII's case, not even pretending to offer anything besides holding forward through straight passages). The great irony is, FF's had the winning formula since FFXI imo, which has always been the truest to FF's NES origins emphasizing gameplay and adventuring over kidnapper-narrative (and even then, the game's narrative is among the best in the series, it's simply that the player is allowed to engage in it at their own discretion). With the success of XIV, which I haven't played but as I understand is FFXI-lite, you'd think SE would try to incorporate more of what makes those two games great (minus the communal aspects obviously) compared to constantly fumbling with their single-player installments where they try to make what they think its fanbase likes in other series or genres, or focusing too much on the narrative rather than the freedom of gameplay expression. Though the irony is I haven't played XII (too busy being addicted to XI at the time) or XV to know how close they got when they started dipping toes into the MMOs formulas. Idk, from the narrow lens of a has-been FF player, I get the evolution of the term's rise and fall, and have a sense (accurate or not) of the differences people allude to when making the distinction. Yoshi-P is really respected and seems to know what he's doing in XIV, so either way at least the industry's commentary has shaped him into a good developer. |
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Daze3x
Posts: 22 |
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It's kinda a shame JRPG seen as a dirty word because its predominant usage isn't dirty. Fans of JRPGs have used it for ages. Whole communities have formed around these games. If you ask JRPG fans, most of them aren't "RPG fans". They are "JRPG fans". It's a shame much of the coverage of Japanese games from around 10-15 years ago gave off the impression that it's a negative term, because it erases the fandom that formed around these games (I've seen older gamers say they've used the term for games since the PS1 era) and brings the racist losers interpretation of the term to the forefront. JRPG shouldn't be defined by these people. It should be defined by the fans of these games who formed communities and fandoms around it.
While there still is some negativity, I'm glad it seems JRPGs (and Japanese games more broadly) these days are generally more respected. And many JRPG franchises have started to see lots of growth too, with the newest entries in some series being the highest selling in its franchise. For example with Tales of Arise. And Xenoblade 3 is looking on track to become the best selling in the Xenoblade franchise by having huge early sales numbers compared to past games. Hopefully these days, developers in Japan will see JRPG as more of an endearing term, that millions of fans around the world enjoy games from. Ever since I started playing them around 10 years ago, its always been the best term to describe the types of games I like and to find like-minded gamers to talk about the stuff I like. I hope Japanese devs realize these are the communities that support them. We do genuinely appreciate the games they make. |
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