When Westerners think of Japan's technology, they automatically think of how advanced it is in comparison to their own. Well according to Konami's sound director, Akira Yamaoka, that just isn't the case.
Yamaoka has recently been working on the new Silent Hill 5 game - The first game in the series to be developed by Westerners. And as a result, he believes that when it comes to developing games, Japan is falling behind America! Apparently Japanese game developers are in trouble.
(go to source for full interview)
As part of an extended interview published today on Gamasutra, Konami sound director Akira Yamaoka has been discussing both progress on the Western-developed Silent Hill 5 and the state of Japanese development, suggesting "Japan is in trouble" when it comes to game development sophistication.
The interview, originally printed in the December 2007 issue of Game Developer magazine, has been expanded for its appearance on Gamasutra, and includes Yamaoka answering why Konami chose California-based developer The Collective for the currently in-development Silent Hill 5: "Basically, their graphical skill... and also they really understand the world and concept of Silent Hill."
"There's a huge gap, actually. They're very advanced. I'm Japanese, and I think this is not just with Silent Hill but with the whole of the industry -- I look at what American developers are doing and I think wow... Japan is in trouble."
"There are two reasons I think. One is that the development environment in Japan is divided into developers and publishers. Publishers have to create a game in a short amount of time at low cost, and it's a lot of pressure on them in that respect, and they pass that on to the developers. So basically it has to be done as quickly and cheaply as possible. And the people doing this are getting old like me. And tired! And the salary isn't that great."
"The second reason is that... well for example, on another project [we] were in development for a while, and we realized that we needed a new driver for some graphics program. That happens of course. So we looked around for it, and we found it, OK. Same maker, same everything, should be fine right? But the problem is they're all in English. So we get this thing and we have to localize it into Japanese."
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Maybe his tastes are not easternish.