Ok,
not completely. The cowboy era of video games has been over for a
long time now, because it was the 1980s. Back then we weren't even
sure of what a video game was,
so experimentation wasn't just encouraged, it was unavoidable. The
gradual transformation into a business model of high-budget, low-risk
repeats, with a slew of barely distinguishable annual releases
(looking at you, Call of Duty
and Battlefield), has
been thoroughly discussed, and in light of similar developments in
other art forms, shouldn't have taken us so off guard. The parallels
with, say, the film industry are pretty clear; you could make a case
for both Citizen Kane
and Ocarina of Time
being titles that codified significant innovations that we now regard
simply as fundamentals of the craft, with each occupying, on the
macro scale, a similar spot in the timeline of the industry's
maturation. So it follows that video games might echo film's trends
towards the lowest common denominator.
This
shift, of course, is precisely what has led to many big-name
developers feeling creatively stifled. Most gamers' thinking seems to
be that creativity is simply incompatible with corporations who care
about nothing but the bottom line (as though corporations should be
focussed on making charitable donations to struggling artists
instead). To some extent maybe this is true, because business is
about selling a lot of product, not birthing a high-quality product.
Do you think the producers of Furious 7
are hanging their heads in shame because they made the horrifying
mistake of greenlighting a movie in which Vin Diesel drives a
supercar through a penthouse window, blasts through the sky and
crashes into an adjacent building? No, they're congratulating
themselves on an awesome job, because Furious 7 made
147 million dollars on opening weekend.
On
the other hand, I don't think it has to be this way, either. I think
a business is much stronger when its employees are proud to be a part
of it, and when management truly believes in the company's mission
and the product or service it offers. Plus, if we're trying to move
as many units as possible, it makes sense to develop a high-quality
product (especially with a video game; unlike quality parts in a
machine, which cost more to manufacture, an engaging story or
interesting art direction need not affect retail price).
Trouble
is – every single time a developer tries something new, gamers
ignore it. Every single goddamn time. People complain about how samey
games are nowadays, and then when something different comes out
they're not interested because it's too different. This is what has
led to the current state of the industry, and it's really no surprise
that many of its pioneers are striking out on their own. The
editorial says, “Capcom's powerhouse producers Shinji Mikami
(Resident Evil) and Keiji Inafune (Mega Man) are long gone. Tomonobu
Itagaki (Ninja Gaiden) is no longer with Koei Tecmo.Castlevania chief
Koji Igarashi left Konami last year.”
The
article wants to point to this as a sign that the age of the Japanese
auteur is over – but uh, no it's not. If anything this demonstrates
that the age of the Japanese auteur refuses to die. When the creative
types find themselves in an environment no longer conducive to what
they want to do, instead of rolling over and churning out soulless
remixes of last year's work just to cash a paycheque, they're
changing the game...so to speak. One guy not mentioned is Sonic
co-creator Naka Yuuji, who left Sega to form a studio called Prope.
Its first game was a Wii title controlled solely by placing the Wii
remote on a table and tapping it. The second one was about playing
catch with strangers. These projects would never have seen the light
of day at a big company, but by breaking off, Naka was able to
dispense with the business management that had come to dominate his
day-to-day, and get back to actually making games – and making the
games he wanted to
make.
We're
walked through the recent director shuffle for Final
Fantasy XV, which “previously
was the domain of Square Enix's last remaining Big Name Director,
Tetsuya Nomura. But after years of development hell, he quit (or was
asked to quit) the project and replaced by upstart director Hajime
Tabata.” It goes on to describe the tentative, almost crowdsourced
development path he took, asking fans to review the demo and
responding to their feedback.
This
sounds like he's listening to his audience, but really it's a
hesitance to take decisive action. I submit that this lack of a
strong voice is something that has plagued the franchise for years,
and it's a big part of why recent entries have been poorly received.
Ok, yes, Final Fantasy
fans are implacable hipsters who believe that the only “true”
Final Fantasies are the ones they happened to play as a kid, but you
kind of have to admit that the recent games are kind of a homogenized
mess. They're so wrapped up in trying to recapture the spark of the
old days that they verge on ripping themselves off. Ironically, Final
Fantasy XIII seems to have been
so polarizing because it did
have a strong voice, owing to Toriyama's puppy love of protagnist
Lightning. You could love it or hate it, but other recent Final
Fantasies have tried to cater to the old fans and created only bland,
sanitized imitations of the real deal. The editorial is absolutely
correct in the claim that Final Fantasy is throwing away its top-down
approach, I'm just not sure that's indicative of a trend. The only
way for the franchise to survive, creatively, is to start taking a
stronger stance again, even if some people won't like it.
But
it's not just all that, though. The main thrust of the article is
patently ridiculous. “It may not be a stretch,” it says, “to
say that there will never be another Kojima, no one creator who holds
such sway over a massive big-budget gaming enterprise. It's too
expensive, too risky a business to be left up to the creative whims
of a single auteur.” What? No. It is definitely too much of a
stretch to say that, and for one very, very big reason. I'll get to
him in a minute, but before I explain why the Japanese auteur is not
financially dead, I'll give you an example of why he isn't
spiritually dead, either.
That
example is Suda51, not only one of my favourite creators of all time,
but possibly the most auteur auteur, ever. His breakout hit, kil
– well actually breakout isn't such a great word for it, because it
was a commercial disaster. But the game that first brought him
significant attention was killer7,
in which you play as a disabled old man who physically transforms
into his seven alternate personalities, all of whom are assassins.
You get a new weapon from an angel, witness a lethal game of Mahjong,
and fight a mutated cult leader whose weak point is his afro.
That
was in 2005, and he's still making games. Actually, if you ask me his
fame has worked against him – I couldn't possibly explain killer7
adequately, and if you're
interested then you should play it blind anyway, but I'm trying to
make it clear here that it was just an absolute peyote safari through
the anime halls of government. Anyway, killer7
was known for being both weird and difficult to understand, and while
he hasn't yet made something as complex, Suda51 has carried on with
the weird. If you take a look back at his older projects, even the
ones over which he had free reign, you can see that they were much
more restrained. You could see this as him coming into his own and
slowly overcoming a latent fear of breaking boundaries, but I'm not
so sure.
I
have a feeling that it may be a response to an expectation for
weirdness, and that he couldn't make something more normal again even
if he wanted to, because it would compromise his Suda signature. I'm
still loving his work, I just fear he's accidentally typecast
himself. Which is exactly the opposite that a creator known for
breaking boundaries should be. John Grisham writes legal thrillers,
and then one time he wrote a novel about a guy who goes to Italy to
play American football. That's the kind of move I'd love to see from
Suda51 – peculiar has become the norm for him. I'm not saying that
he now needs to do a “normal” game just for balance, but it would
be awesome to see him do something truly unexpected once again.
Either way, even for the more standardish Suda titles, you can still
hear his voice in every detail. The instant I boot up a new Suda
game, I know it's a Suda game, and I feel as if we are having a
conversation, as if, somehow, I have the slightest idea of what's on
his mind or what he's like outside of interviews. That is
an auteur.
So
as to the claim that nobody can entrust the success of a product line
to one single person?
The
piece concludes: “To the extent [that third-party publishers]
produce massive blockbusters at all, expect them to be designed by
committee, crafted to alienate as few people as possible. If you want
to be an auteur, you can do it on your own dime.” In other words,
Nintendou and Sony can take creative risks that a company like Capcom
just can't afford. The editorial mentions Nintendou's new
relationship type deal with Tecmo Koei, but neglects to point out
that it does, in fact, have at its creative helm the undeniably
greatest video game creator to ever create video games. It's Miyamoto
Shigeru, the father of Mario, Zelda, a dozen other series, and
arguably the entire video games industry, because he was integral to
the success of the NES and the NES saved gaming when everybody else
had abandoned the “fad.”
Even
if you've never played one of his games (unlikely), you've played one
that's been influenced by them. That's because every game owes
something to the progress he made, singlehandedly, back in the 80s.
This is a man who built the fortune of a massive international
company on the back of a plumber saving a princess from an ape. He
took his childhood memories of exploring the woods behind his house
and turned it into an epic quest to explore a mystical land and
vanquish evil. He was gardening one day and thought, “Know what
would be great, is a game where the whole thing takes place in a
garden, except you're a crash-landed astronaut, and you grow an army
of aliens who help you get things done.”
Sorry.
Miyamoto has shown no sign of leaving Nintendou, and Nintendou is
still going strong. As long as that's the case, I'd say the age of
the Japanese video game auteur is in no danger.
