You have to love whenever a Western developer decides to open his mouth and speak about things that he has absolutely no idea about, touting his own superior product over an entire countries’ video games. The offender today happens to be Assassin’s Creed III”s creative director Alex Hutchinson.
In an interview with CVG Alex has stated that he believes journalists are way too soft on Japanese developers and their videogames, especially when it comes to most Japanese games’ storylines which he says are “literally gibberish.”
He went on to say that he believes that “there’s a subtle racism in the business, especially on the journalists’ side, where Japanese developers are forgiven for what they do. I think it’s condescending to do this.”
He also went on to compare the standard Japanese game’s storyline to more popular western franchises such as Gears of War, saying that “Just think about how many Japanese games are released where their stories are literally gibberish. Literally gibberish. There’s no way you could write it with a straight face, and the journalists say ‘oh it is brilliant.’ Then Gears of War comes out and apparently it’s the worst written narrative in a game ever. I’ll take Gears of War over Bayonetta any time.”
Perhaps Hutchinson does have a few reasonable gripes with his complaints, as a large number of video game storylines coming out of Japan are often a bit fantastical and sometimes jumbled, but he also seems to think that just because he doesn’t understand, or care to understand, most Japanese games, that they are “gibberish.” Well my friend, when a fighting game, a genre not well known for telling a decent story, creates hours worth of entertainment with it’s story mode alone, I believe you should bite your tongue. Either way, do you believe that this man is correct in what he is saying?
