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Volume 1 Chapter 215 Not even games

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    The problem I mentioned before is still a problem in the Japanese animation industry, and many capable people in the animation industry seem to have switched jobs to game companies. So game companies should be very prosperous?  It shouldn't have anything to do with the decline?  No!  The decline of Japanese companies actually only took a few years!  If these words were really spoken, they would really scare people to death!  Why?  Because these few years actually happen to be the most popular years for Japanese games!  For example, Japan's latest "Onimusha" gave up the completely virtual protagonist in the past, and actually found Takeshi Kaneshiro, a character who is famous in Japan, as a character prototype. The 3D character modeling is based on Takeshi Kaneshiro's  It comes from the appearance!  Such an approach is the first time in the gaming industry!  It can be said that such an approach has really enabled the game to develop into a movie!

    Then, games like "Metal Gear Solid", with the epoch-making functions of PS2, let everyone see unprecedented graphics and various interesting ideas. It can be said that they are really loved by players all over the world.  !  Then add something like "Final Fantasy", something like "Silent Hill", something like "Devil May Cry", something like "Resident Evil", it will really conquer players all over the world!  In such an era, what games can Europe and the United States take advantage of?  Apart from a Need for Speed, there really is nothing else [¨L nothing!  The rest are all kinds of messy ball games!  But in fact, the Japanese industry at this time has actually reached its peak, but in front of it is a long downhill road to decline!

    Why do you say that?  First, let¡¯s take the most basic engine of a game.  What is an engine?  The engine is equivalent to the heart of the game. The plot, copy, art, music, operation, etc. that players experience are directly controlled by the game engine. The engine will bundle all elements in the game together.  Play the role of engine.  simply speaking.  The engine is the main program that controls all game functions.  From calculating collisions, physics systems and relative positions of objects, to accepting player input and outputting sounds at the correct volume.  It can be said that with a good engine, the physical collisions and other things in the game will appear very real, then the characters will not walk like they are skating on the ground, then all kinds of lighting will look very real, and then you can have paper dolls.  The system allows the character to change the equipment and directly show the difference in appearance!  These things are all due to the engine!

    Europe and the United States are making games in such an era.  That is to develop a "universal engine" first, and then make several games on such an engine.  Take CS, which is still popular around the world, as an example. They use the goldsrc engine.  Then, in Europe and the United States, there is also the Unreal Engine that was inspired by "Unreal Tournament" back then. Its second generation has really blossomed in commercialization. In addition to Unreal Tournament, there are also "Splinter Cell" and "Rainbow Six".  As well as games such as "Lineage 2", they all use the Unreal 2 engine!  But Japan is different. In the past, when Japan made games, it never used a general-purpose engine because Japan missed the development of PC.  They have never made games for PC, they only make games for game consoles.  As for game consoles, their performance was very poor in the past.  So what is needed is various targeted mining performance!  There is no way to make a universal engine.  This general-purpose engine was developed too early, and the performance of the machine was not explored enough. If such an engine is used later, the game graphics produced will be different from other games!  Take SFC ten years ago as an example. The works in 1991 and the works in 1996 are really very different in terms of graphics!  It almost looks like products from two different consoles!

    So Japanese manufacturers want to make a game. Then they need to deepen their understanding of the machine and build the game from the bottom. It can be said that when building a car, they start from scratch every time to make the tires and then the engine. What?  All from scratch!  Indeed, this will allow each generation of products to have a deeper understanding and further development and improvement, but the cost will also increase!  Therefore, for games made in Europe and the United States, players all know what engine the game uses, but no one in Japanese games can tell what engine it uses!  This will inevitably lead to a long game development cycle for Japanese manufacturers and an increase in various costs!  In this way, although the quality of each new product is indeed better than that of Europe and the United States, it is just like handicrafts and large-scale industrial production. Swiss precision manual production cannot compare with the sales of watches produced on various production lines.  ah!  And Japanese games obviously can't sell for as high prices as Swiss watches, right?  So although the sales of one game in Japan can be very high, in Europe and the United States, an engine built with one investment can make five or six games. The sales of five or six games combined are always more than one game in Japan, right?  Moreover, the investment for five or six games is lower than the investment for one game in Japan!

    And what¡¯s very funny is that Japan¡¯s practice of starting from scratch with one development should have made Japanese game companies full of blackmail.The technology is right, but it¡¯s not actually the case!  Because the types of games favored by the Japanese market are very different from those in Europe and the United States. On the one hand, Japanese people play less ball games. On the other hand, there are also few FPS first-person perspective design games. What is popular in Japan are various RPGs.  Role playing games.  Role-playing games have very low requirements for physics engines and the like!  Moreover, Japanese role-playing games are just like reading novels. A single line of plot development is not like the open sandbox world of Europe and America for people to explore, so various physical effects, lighting effects and the like are more demanding.  Low!  So in the end, we can actually find that the technology of Japanese game companies is gradually inferior to that of Europe and the United States!

    And the Japanese are so unwilling to take risks and just want to make money by relying on mature technology, which slows down their cycle of updating technology!  According to statistics, the technology update cycle of the Japanese gaming industry is 5 to 8 years.  In other words, technology will only undergo major changes when game consoles are updated, which is simply unimaginable in the ever-changing technological field.  The Japanese once relied on exquisite and delicate art to equal or even surpass European and American games. This is where they are lazy as little Japanese, always trying to take advantage of others!  But when the technological gap widens.  You can imagine this feeling of powerlessness that is hard to catch up with - no matter how great the artist is.  But let them create a huge open living sandbox world.  That is probably something you will never see in your lifetime.

    The Japanese nation, which has a high degree of Westernization on the outside, still sticks to its own fortress on the inside. Some things remain unchanged for a long time, such as hierarchical divisions and the thinking of consecrating successful experiences, which leads to a lack of innovation.  Of course, this is not to say that the Japanese lack the sense of innovation, but as game companies gradually grow bigger and form a strict hierarchy, this vitality disappears.  I can¡¯t let my hands loose in planning.  It is also normal in the industry to always carefully select materials from your own successful things.  If you don¡¯t believe me, just take a look at those gold medal game producers. Few of them stay with their old clubs for a long time.  There may be many factors involved, but these people almost without exception choose to create studios and choose a work mode that is not tied to hands and feet. Is there anything implied in this?

    "Return to the origins" is a slogan that has been shouted out recently in the Japanese gaming industry. Behind the players' cheering responses is a fixed routine: when a certain series reaches its end, developers are forced to innovate but do so illegally, resulting in the work not being well received.  Not popular either.  After a few years of confusion, the new game announced a high-profile "return to the roots", and the gameplay and mode are the same as before.  Veteran players rejoice in nostalgia.  New players also want to try the classics after seeing it, and the game has gained sales.  Everyone is happy, and then forgotten again.  In addition, we all say that the Japanese nation is very good at imitating and borrowing from others, but at least in the gaming industry, they borrowed, but never borrowed the ideas.  Let us take an example, such as the qte system, which allows us to achieve gorgeous performances through simple button presses. Its popularity is essentially the inevitable result of the accelerated pace of life, and players no longer want to spend time thinking about delicate operations.  Many Japanese manufacturers only saw the popularity of qte, but did not know why it was popular, so games with outrageous qte numbers appeared one after another.  It seems that it makes people QTE at every turn, and makes players press the handle buttons wildly at every turn. It just makes the players look like idiots!  It can be said that you can¡¯t even copy others well!

    So now it seems that Japanese game manufacturers are quite prosperous, but in fact the bodies behind each one have been hollowed out by "drinking, sex and wealth"!  The results of it?  In a few years, it is estimated that under the combined effect of the above "sins", Japanese manufacturers, which are increasingly in distress, will begin to rely on the "fried rice" trick!  At that time, they will unscrupulously take out the popular games of the year and re-make them to make money!  Why is this so?  Because this is the least risky thing to do!  Making new works requires a lot of financial pressure, and it may not be easy to sell. Especially when the various technologies are not leading, or even the ideas are not leading, it can be said that it is not likely to be bought.  higher!  In this case, of course the Japanese have to find ways to make money easily that they are familiar with!  Isn't that just fried rice?

    Of course, the decline of Japanese games is not only the result of the failure of Japanese game manufacturers, but also the reason why a country like Japan is "closed to the outside world".  Islanders in a country like Japan always have different aesthetics from people in other places.  For example, take Japan's national-level game "Dragon Quest". Every new generation of such a game has to sell five to six million copies in Japan, but in other parts of the world it is sold for even a fraction.  stay home!  It can be said that only Japanese people like to play such a game!  So when Japan's economy becomes weaker and weaker, when Japan's GDP shrinks more and more, when the purchasing power of the Japanese market becomes weaker and weaker, these games that can only be bought in Japan will not be sold more and more.  Is it less?

    As we all know, Japan is an extremely traditional country in some aspects, such asFor example, under the company system, life-long contracts are usually signed based on seniority. This environment creates certain difficulties in innovation, so we see more and more famous game developers quitting large companies and starting new ones, such as Keiji Inafune, Hironobu Sakaguchi, etc.  Wait, the new partner they choose is often Microsoft, not Japanese manufacturers.  Compared with large companies, future game developers can develop games according to their own creativity and wishes, and are no longer limited to the platforms signed by large companies and console manufacturers. They can be x-wave x, ps2, etc., thus gaining complete control.  , we have also seen the emergence of many creative new types of games.  Obviously, after reaching a certain stage of growth, Japan's game industry environment is no longer suitable for well-known developers, and they desire a freer and freer creative space.

    In addition, the Japanese are very conservative and do not like open source and communication. Many old classic games in Europe and the United States have adopted the open source approach, making the codes of these games widely circulated among programmers, allowing many novices to quickly become familiar with the game.  Programming technology.  For example, "Doom" and "Quake" have adopted open source practices, which have benefited many technical personnel and also enabled the European and American game industries to gain a good accumulation of technology. Overall, the technology between various companies has  The gap is not too big, so after the rapid development of 3D technology and the complete popularity of FPS, many European and American game companies were able to seize this opportunity, take advantage of the situation, and adapt to the development of the times.

    While the European and American game industries continue to share and communicate, most Japanese game companies have strict barriers and rarely communicate and share. The technology of game development by companies such as Nintendo and Cap is absolutely highly confidential, just like the Shaolin and Wudang sects.  They will spread their own secrets and techniques. In this way, Nintendo and Cap can continue to survive, but most of those small and medium-sized companies can only sink or even be destroyed.  At the same time, as the game graphics become clearer and clearer, and there are more and more various graphic elements, the final result is that more and more capital investment is required for game development, which will inevitably clean up a number of small and medium-sized enterprises!  After all, not every company can withstand such huge financial pressure. Otherwise, if one game fails, the entire company will collapse!

    In addition, most of the experience in Japanese RPGs comes from stage plays. For example, the famous Japanese game producer Yuji Horii was originally a stage play script writer. The Dragon Quest series he created has profoundly influenced the development of Japanese RPGs.  , in an era when technology was underdeveloped, there was not much problem with this kind of stage play. However, with the advancement of technology and the characters and scenes developing in a real direction, this kind of stage play has exposed great shortcomings, so in  In many Japanese games, we can see that the characters are closer to real people, but their behavior is too artificial and they make too many unnecessary body movements, which makes the players feel very awkward. They look more exaggerated than real people.  The Japanese TV series are even exaggerated!  But when we look at those 3A masterpieces in Europe and the United States, the character movements are extremely smooth and natural, without those annoying exaggerated movements.  In this way, whose game has a better chance of selling well?

    So when Wen Xun says that the decline of Japan¡¯s ACG industry is imminent, it¡¯s not sensational. It¡¯s really insightful!  (To be continued)
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