Former Nippon Ichi Software President Sohei Niikawa talks shares his opinions on the current state of Japan's game industry.
“When asked how he feels about there being less prolific “auetur” developers in the scene, like Hideo Kojima, Suda51, SWERY, and Kenji Eno, Niikawa suggests that this might be due to the “corporate” nature of the video game industry. “That’s a bit unfortunate, to be honest. To put it in my own words, I feel like the salaryman-ification of creators keeps progressing,” he says. For context, a “salaryman” in Japan refers to white-collar workers, employed at large corporations, who stereotypically prioritize work over anything else and are subservient to their organization.”
“On the other hand, when you’re a developer who works for a company, various other factors, like company policies and decision-making, as well as profitability, come into play, making it more difficult for “individuality” to come through…”
Isn’t this also happening in the West? In any case, AAA rarely appeals to me; almost underground-like indies/mods/Foss games are the places to find the really experimental works.
EVERY industry in Japan is a corpo cubicle slave farm. And 90% of people aren’t paid enough nor have enough free time to even think about pursuing the indie path to freedom. Also society doesn’t exactly encourage pioneering and risk taking.
Also most corpos in Japan will fire you if you have a side hustle. Even if it just a small YouTube channel. They see a side hustle as not being dedicated to the corporate mission. So many devs don’t even dare to make a game on the side
Source? I can see people violating their visa conditions but, AFAIK, there are very few cases in which a company can legally stop you from working a side hustle or fire you for one. The one exception to that is conflict of interest/non-compete.
Some companies can have social media policies that would make youtube a bit more annoying, but not impossible.
This happened to the industry worldwide. As studios became way bigger and jobs became way more specific, nobody is really allowed to do anything outside of their field. Back then, companies were small and everyone had a hand at making the game. People also wore many hats so they would get experience on making different parts of the game from start to finish.
Now? In AAA companies you work some super specific field like “junior gameplay combat designer” and you won’t have the opportunity to work on anything else and you’re in a company with 500 people that all have different opinions so anything you suggest will be ignored.
imo this and the enshittification of games are symptoms of the same root cause. games are too big and expensive now. one auteur on a 1000 person team can’t have the same level of impact as one auteur on a 10 person team. they definitely have fewer opportunities to develop their reputation/skill/style on big teams
I agree with this alot, enshittification sucks.
And i feel like the only AAA company that appeals me is Valve.
I still see Kojima in meme culture aswell.
Isn’t enshittification about products and services? I’ve never heard anyone use it for work culture, and I think “salaryman-ification” is more descriptive here.
i always thought of it as the general worsening of something in the pursuit of the short term increase in capitalist benefits (or the delusion of such).
It’s used a lot for products and/or services but underlying those is probably the enshittification of all the supporting structures, mental and physical health of the workers etc.
It is. They’re being pedantic. It’s a complete made up term within the last few years to describe anything getting shittier for the benefit of shareholders. Applying it to a specific thing and saying it can’t be used to describe what this article is talking about is silly.
Here’s a quote from Cory Doctorow himself at the end of his book Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It:
The longer I think about this, the more names I come up with. I’m going to stop now, but I’ll leave you with one final word: enshittification.
Specifically, I am giving you explicit permission to use this word in a loose sense, whenever you think it makes sense to do so. As I wrote in my essay “Dirty Words Are Politically Potent”:
The fact that a neologism is sometimes decoupled from its theoretical underpinnings and is used colloquially is a feature, not a bug. Many people apply the term “enshittification” very loosely indeed, to mean “something that is bad,” without bothering to learn—or apply—the theoretical framework. This is good. This is what it means for a term to enter the lexicon: it takes on a life of its own. If 10,000,000 people use “enshittification” loosely and inspire 10 percent of their number to look up the longer, more theoretical work I’ve done on it, that is one million normies who have been sucked into a discourse that used to live exclusively in the world of the most wonkish and obscure practitioners. The only way to maintain a precise, theoretically grounded use of a term is to confine its usage to a small group of largely irrelevant insiders. Policing the use of “enshittification” is worse than a self-limiting move—it would be a self-inflicted wound.
Enshittification, also known as platform decay, is a process in which two-sided online products and services decline in quality over time. Initially, vendors create high-quality offerings to attract users, then they degrade those offerings to better serve business customers, and finally degrade their services to both users and business customers to maximize short-term profits for shareholders.
There’s something rich about this coming from Nippon Ichi’s former head, the company that brought us the artistic masterpieces known as the Disgaea series. Truly visionaries, lol.
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EVERY industry in Japan is a corpo cubicle slave farm. And 90% of people aren’t paid enough nor have enough free time to even think about pursuing the indie path to freedom. Also society doesn’t exactly encourage pioneering and risk taking.
Also most corpos in Japan will fire you if you have a side hustle. Even if it just a small YouTube channel. They see a side hustle as not being dedicated to the corporate mission. So many devs don’t even dare to make a game on the side
Source? I can see people violating their visa conditions but, AFAIK, there are very few cases in which a company can legally stop you from working a side hustle or fire you for one. The one exception to that is conflict of interest/non-compete.
Some companies can have social media policies that would make youtube a bit more annoying, but not impossible.
As much as I love Japan (lived there for 3+ years), their corporate culture and neoliberal political establishment are fucking awful.
I blame post-war US occupation for introducing capitalism.
Which in itself is huge because typically its impossible to get fired.
Just add it to the pole of evidence that capitalism is the antithetical to creativity and innovation.
It’s either “the antithesis” or "is antithetical’.
Yea. Probably just fat fingered it and autocorrect changed the word without me noticing.
This happened to the industry worldwide. As studios became way bigger and jobs became way more specific, nobody is really allowed to do anything outside of their field. Back then, companies were small and everyone had a hand at making the game. People also wore many hats so they would get experience on making different parts of the game from start to finish.
Now? In AAA companies you work some super specific field like “junior gameplay combat designer” and you won’t have the opportunity to work on anything else and you’re in a company with 500 people that all have different opinions so anything you suggest will be ignored.
Back then there weren’t 2 dozen coding laguages, 3D modeling and animation, and often time extensive voice acting either.
imo this and the enshittification of games are symptoms of the same root cause. games are too big and expensive now. one auteur on a 1000 person team can’t have the same level of impact as one auteur on a 10 person team. they definitely have fewer opportunities to develop their reputation/skill/style on big teams
That and stock market infinite up. That’s why Valve is doing well because they are a private non-stock company
Yeah, there are still indie titles with infamous creators. It’s just that the limelight is now taken by big corporations with big marketing budget.
In the west, it’s enshittification. In the east, it’s salarymanification.
😂
Something, something, pot, kettle, something, something
Both are overworked and underpaid, plus abused by middle management.
Suda and Kojima make some weird shit and I love it.
Surely there’s an indie scene in Japan, no?
Yeah, small horror games Chilla’s Art, Garage: Bad Dream Adventure, Elin for sandbox RPG, pretty sure there are many anime games out there as well.
I agree with this alot, enshittification sucks.
And i feel like the only AAA company that appeals me is Valve.
I still see Kojima in meme culture aswell.
“Enshittification.” It’s called enshittification, Kenji.
Isn’t enshittification about products and services? I’ve never heard anyone use it for work culture, and I think “salaryman-ification” is more descriptive here.
i always thought of it as the general worsening of something in the pursuit of the short term increase in capitalist benefits (or the delusion of such).
It’s used a lot for products and/or services but underlying those is probably the enshittification of all the supporting structures, mental and physical health of the workers etc.
I could be wrong however.
It is. They’re being pedantic. It’s a complete made up term within the last few years to describe anything getting shittier for the benefit of shareholders. Applying it to a specific thing and saying it can’t be used to describe what this article is talking about is silly.
Here’s a quote from Cory Doctorow himself at the end of his book Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It:
Yeah, it’s mostly about platforms:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification
I’m pretty sure it can be used for anything that is getting shittier.
There’s something rich about this coming from Nippon Ichi’s former head, the company that brought us the artistic masterpieces known as the Disgaea series. Truly visionaries, lol.
(PS I like the games and tbf, they’re… unique).