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Yet Japan has had a flourishing video games industry since the 70s starting with arcade games. I would have liked the article to touch on such counterexamples a

Yet Japan has had a flourishing video games industry since the 70s starting with arcade games. I would have liked the article to touch on such counterexamples and what is different in their case.

noobermin 4y ago
This is a question mark for me. In nintendo in particular, many of the software engineers ended up being quite important in the company, although there were also game designers so may be the logic is different here?
Barrin92 4y ago
You can successfuly export Japanese games, they're valued because they are different. You can't successfully export Japanese enterprise or user software because it really predominantly is designed for the Japanese market which is very unique. It's not even awful as the author claims, just different. People always create these complicated narratives for why non Anglosphere countries don't create many consumer or business facing software products and the answer is simply because they're at a comparitive disadvantage both in terms of culture and scale.
Laremere 4y ago
The article/podcast mentions how quality hardware engineering was still valued, and used Nintendo as a specific example of success. Sony was mentioned as being outside the keiretsu system, and afaik Nintendo has never been involved with one either. This also correlates well with my personal knowledge of the industry. Japan has a great track record of game design, but they aren't exactly known for innovation in software specifically. Some examples: Teenagers from the UK where hired to write the code for Starfox, because they could and Nintendo's programmers couldn't. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=to4Ekb0kXiE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=to4Ekb0kXiE Xbox spearheaded the consoles in the online space, and Nintendo is still far behind. Japan runs circles around the rest of the world when it comes to making successful fighting games. Yet western modders are also known for coming in and fixing online play by adding network rollback.
- Dalewyn 4y ago
  I agree, I think a lot of people here in this thread gloss over the fact that /games/ involve a lot more than just code. There's writing, graphics, music. I'm sure we all agree some of our fondest memories are from Japanese video games. Japanese video games are successful because they are great works of art. But what we're talking about here is Japan's software industry at large. The majority of software aren't artistic programs, they are programs written to enable someone's productivity. The quality of the code consequently becomes a larger or even the only factor, and Japanese programmers on average really suck at their job compared to their peers from other countries.
- hcs 4y ago
  The example that comes to my mind is that Square hired Iranian-American Apple II expert Nasir Gebelli to program their Famicom games.
- astrange 4y ago
  Nintendo does have a pretty strange corporate structure though. A lot of their games are made by separate companies part-owned by Nintendo whose headquarters is coincidentally on a floor of a Nintendo office building. It even applies to their QA department (https://nintendo.fandom.com/wiki/Mario_Club https://nintendo.fandom.com/wiki/Mario_Club).
  - fomine3 4y ago
    Such corporate structure is very common in Japanese big company because of how salary decided. Salary was basically decided by age (but it's changing/changed now). Some division like developing (for non-software company), QA, support, are often separated from main company to make salary table different.
tarsinge 4y ago
My take is that Japan due to their focus on hardware has a very good low-level programming culture that is still relevant for console games. I dabbled with SNES programming recently and what Nintendo, Capcom, Konami, Squaresoft... could do with assembly in the 90's is very impressive. The failure talked in the article is about higher-level programming and application software.
PurpleRamen 4y ago
Japanese games usually have a pretty low software-quality. They are full of strange bugs, lacking good UI&UX, are technical inferior to the western state of the art. Even AAA-Games have often insane bad details on non-game-parts. They often compensate this with good or at least different content, but as we are talking here about software, engine-features and -quality do matter. To name some prominent example: the latest Pokemon-game released 2-3 months ago, is infamous for how bad the graphics were, how many bugs it has(had?) and how bad the performance is. And this is from an old established company, making billions with their games.
- bowsamic 4y ago
  Pokemon is a pretty extreme example though. In my experience, Japanese games are generally less buggy than AAA games from the west. Though they are less graphically ambitious
Tiktaalik 4y ago
hah yea as someone in the game dev industry learning that the Japanese are bad at software is news to me! They've had their ups and downs but will regularly appear with a piece of software and technology that roasts what western developers have built.

Yet Japan has had a flourishing video games industry since the 70s starting with arcade games. I would have liked the article to touch on such counterexamples and what is different in their case.

noobermin 4y ago

This is a question mark for me. In nintendo in particular, many of the software engineers ended up being quite important in the company, although there were also game designers so may be the logic is different here?

Barrin92 4y ago

You can successfuly export Japanese games, they're valued because they are different. You can't successfully export Japanese enterprise or user software because it really predominantly is designed for the Japanese market which is very unique. It's not even awful as the author claims, just different. People always create these complicated narratives for why non Anglosphere countries don't create many consumer or business facing software products and the answer is simply because they're at a comparitive disadvantage both in terms of culture and scale.

Laremere 4y ago

The article/podcast mentions how quality hardware engineering was still valued, and used Nintendo as a specific example of success. Sony was mentioned as being outside the keiretsu system, and afaik Nintendo has never been involved with one either. This also correlates well with my personal knowledge of the industry. Japan has a great track record of game design, but they aren't exactly known for innovation in software specifically. Some examples: Teenagers from the UK where hired to write the code for Starfox, because they could and Nintendo's programmers couldn't. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=to4Ekb0kXiE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=to4Ekb0kXiE Xbox spearheaded the consoles in the online space, and Nintendo is still far behind. Japan runs circles around the rest of the world when it comes to making successful fighting games. Yet western modders are also known for coming in and fixing online play by adding network rollback.

Dalewyn 4y ago
I agree, I think a lot of people here in this thread gloss over the fact that /games/ involve a lot more than just code. There's writing, graphics, music. I'm sure we all agree some of our fondest memories are from Japanese video games. Japanese video games are successful because they are great works of art. But what we're talking about here is Japan's software industry at large. The majority of software aren't artistic programs, they are programs written to enable someone's productivity. The quality of the code consequently becomes a larger or even the only factor, and Japanese programmers on average really suck at their job compared to their peers from other countries.
hcs 4y ago
The example that comes to my mind is that Square hired Iranian-American Apple II expert Nasir Gebelli to program their Famicom games.
astrange 4y ago
Nintendo does have a pretty strange corporate structure though. A lot of their games are made by separate companies part-owned by Nintendo whose headquarters is coincidentally on a floor of a Nintendo office building. It even applies to their QA department (https://nintendo.fandom.com/wiki/Mario_Club https://nintendo.fandom.com/wiki/Mario_Club).
- fomine3 4y ago
  Such corporate structure is very common in Japanese big company because of how salary decided. Salary was basically decided by age (but it's changing/changed now). Some division like developing (for non-software company), QA, support, are often separated from main company to make salary table different.

tarsinge 4y ago

My take is that Japan due to their focus on hardware has a very good low-level programming culture that is still relevant for console games. I dabbled with SNES programming recently and what Nintendo, Capcom, Konami, Squaresoft... could do with assembly in the 90's is very impressive. The failure talked in the article is about higher-level programming and application software.

PurpleRamen 4y ago

Japanese games usually have a pretty low software-quality. They are full of strange bugs, lacking good UI&UX, are technical inferior to the western state of the art. Even AAA-Games have often insane bad details on non-game-parts. They often compensate this with good or at least different content, but as we are talking here about software, engine-features and -quality do matter. To name some prominent example: the latest Pokemon-game released 2-3 months ago, is infamous for how bad the graphics were, how many bugs it has(had?) and how bad the performance is. And this is from an old established company, making billions with their games.

bowsamic 4y ago
Pokemon is a pretty extreme example though. In my experience, Japanese games are generally less buggy than AAA games from the west. Though they are less graphically ambitious

Tiktaalik 4y ago

hah yea as someone in the game dev industry learning that the Japanese are bad at software is news to me! They've had their ups and downs but will regularly appear with a piece of software and technology that roasts what western developers have built.