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Inafune looking to restore Japan's place in gaming, says North Americans want Japanese games

by rawmeatcowboy
24 June 2015
GN Version 5.0

Coming from a Wired interview with Keiji Inafune...

“My energy, my essence of me being Japanese and putting these ideas into what will hopefully be a global success is what I’m hoping will stir more energy, more positive vibes… in our game development community back home. In small ways I’m trying to trigger, and influence and affect, our creation and development community so that we can be that healthy, strong, energetic, aspirational Japanese development community that we feel like there once was.

We’re here at E3. If you took the number of Japanese creations, games made by Japanese teams, you may be able to—we’re talking about highlights—count them in one hand. If you think about the years before that, maybe half of E3 highlights… we had enough healthy Japanese games making those lists. We’re still struggling. That voice is still very small.

When you start making a [traditional] game, you always have this vision of the finished product, and that’s 100 percent. By the time you’re done, the percentage decreases, because you’re like, I think I have to cut this part, I don’t have the budget for this. The finished product will be less than 100 percent for sure. But in [Mighty No. 9]’s case, since it’s a Kickstarter project… if we make all the stretch goals, it means I could do everything I envisioned. That’s exactly what happened.

I think we proved that the North American market really wants games created by Japanese creators. If you want Japanese games in the States, maybe you should just ask the creators to start a Kickstarter.”

[Link]