Fall of the Empire?

It took ten years for me to notice that my favorite segment of the video game industry is having serious problems. I speak of course about the Japanese electronic entertainment industry, which is experiencing some trouble on the international level and continues to subsists mostly locally. How long will it last? I’m under the impression that the Japanese video game creation model had lost its independence in favor of Western productions, which in turn resulted in Japanese artists being out of work.

I’m under the impression that the Japanese video game creation model had lost its independence in favor of Western productions.

Only a few game studios in Japan, including conglomerates such as Square Enix, Bandai Namco Games and Konami, reign supreme on the international market, but with no greater successes to their name, except for well-known franchises (Final Fantasy, Metal Gear Solid, Resident Evil). I’m under the impression that Japanese companies are making a heavy-handed attempt to liken their games to Western productions, while forgetting their own roots. The results of such actions vary, but lead mostly to poor results.

What drove me to write this article is the dwindling amount of good music from Japanese composers, for whom I not only have a particular soft spot, but thanks to whom I had developed the interest in video games to begin with. However, let us start from the beginning. The 80’s have come to be remembered as a special time for gamers, a rise of a new era for the video game market both in Japan and the US. The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) was a revolutionary console in many respects, but what is especially etched in my memory are the soundtracks from its games.

In the 80’s the US was bewitched by consoles, particularly the Famicom (released there as the “Nintendo Entertainment System”). The games were completely different than Western productions and that originality lead to their success among foreigners. – Michał Mazur (PSX: Extreme)

That period turned out to be extremely creative for music composers – in spite of being limited to 5 mono channels, all the beeps and bloops sounded like melodies in the end, which we hum to ourselves even today. One doesn’t need to search far to find examples from Super Mario Bros, The Legend of Zelda (Koji Kondo), Dragon Warrior (Koichi Sugiyama), Castlevania (Michiru Yamane), Mega Man (Manami Matsumae), Final Fantasy (Nobuo Uematsu) and several others.

As time went on and the 90’s came, there was a rise of new technologies providing new possibilities for not only video game creators, but also composers, whose popularity was slowly on the rise. Nintendo consoles had ruled the market for a long time, when Sony made its contribution to electronic entertainment in the form of the PlayStation. This changed the way music was written drastically, which led to the emergence of talented Japanese composers.

Over time there eventually was a supersaturation of Japanese games and the companies themselves stopped investing in new productions. Releasing sequel after sequel with the same old and tried concepts has left those games in the shadow of Western titles. One could say the disciple has surpassed the master.

This does not mean of course that Japanese games aren’t liked anymore. It’s just that good titles come more rarely than they used to and the big competition in the form of Western games has left them far behind. – Michał Mazur (PSX: Extreme)

The advent of a new generation of consoles and soaring demand for video games have drastically changed the outlook on the game and music creation process. Several factors have contributed to those changes, one of the main ones being the age of the target audience. People fond of Japanese brands and franchises had grown up and the majority of them don’t buy the story of a teenage hero anymore, instead wanting to identify and connect with adult characters, sometimes as a result of their own personal experiences. Another factor that contributed to the trouble in Japan turned out to be the lack of a proper attitude towards globalization on the Eastern developers’ part. Keiji Inafune, the creator of the Mega Man and Dead Rising series, vouches for the veracity of these words and in one of his interviews acknowledged the growing infirmity of the Japanese electronic entertainment industry and the lack of any action which would improve the situation in Japan.

What is the upshot of this? The lack of good releases contributes to music composers being out of work, especially in the case of freelancers who aren’t on anyone’s payroll. Many of them, due to not having managers or a good command of English, can forget about going back to work. What should change then? One obvious solution is for indie studios to support Japanese artists. Good examples come in the form of the fledgling Brave Wave music label and Scarlet Moon Productions, who have already promoted a few composers from the East. Bandcamp has definitely helped, but it’s still not enough. Personally, I believe that until game studios in Japan change their policies, we won’t be seeing good games for a long time, and by the same token good soundtracks.