Tomonobu Itagaki is hard at work (play?) on his current magnum opus, Devil’s Third. The title is being published by THQ, meaning Itagaki is getting the chance to work with a Western publisher on the title instead of the businessmen over at Tecmo Koei. Like ex-Capcom employee Keiji Inafune, Itagaki believes that the Western game industry does certain things better, and part of the problem is with management.
“In the U.S., more so in the U.S. than in Japan, I think there are a lot of top management people who actually know how to make games. I think there are more people here like that, than in Japan. I think it's a good thing,” Itagaki told Gamasutra in an interview.
“You to have talk about money, when you're doing business. That's the business aspect of it. But at the same time, those guys know how to make games, so they also know that it costs money to make good games -- especially good games. So those two aspects are on a direct one-to-one relationship. So I think it's very practical to be that way.”
“In Japan, management people, they sort of pretend they know what they're doing. Those management people, they say, 'I love games,'but they don't know how to make them. So the kind of instructions that they would give to the employees would be, "Okay, you've got to make it by when, and it has to be within this budget, and you have to sell whatever many copies." It's the opposite of the practical. It's not practical,” he explained.
Itagaki pointed the finger directly at executives who know nothing about actually developing games in one of his replies.
“In Japan, in this industry, they are lacking not just in technology, but the important thing is the creativity and ingenuity. They're lacking in that. So they complain a lot, they say a lot, but then they don't take action. So before they say anything bad or complain -- 'Do something!' is what I want to say,” he emphasized.
He also notes that Japanese developers may not have the necessary social skills to reach out to gamers worldwide.
“Japanese developers, they don't have the necessary social skills. The American social skills, European social skills,” he added. “So if those people don't have those necessary social skills, and if those people are the ones who are developing the game, no matter how much they try to make globally accepted, globally popular games, that work in different cultures, that might be very difficult.”
Is Tecmo’s former rock star right? Are Japanese developers lacking certain traits that are preventing them from competing on a global scale?
