Later the indie dev said he’d most likely be labelled as ”some kind of big racist now” for his comment. Not all of them ‘suck’ he clarified, ”just… a lot of them.” Fish sees no need to apologise.
He wasn’t making a slur against Japan or its culture, just that its latest offering of games isn’t all that. Naturally his comments have stirred up reactions, as you’d expect.
”At tonight’s IGTM Q&A, some Japanese guy asked us what we thought of modern Japanese games, and I said I thought they sucked,” confirmed Phil Fish. ”So I guess I’m some kind of big racist now.”
”I’m sorry Japanese guy! I was a bit rough, but your country’s games are f*** terrible nowadays.”
”Well, you know, not ALL of them. Just… a lot of them.”
Fish wasn’t making a statement covering all of Japan. ”No I didn’t. I made a statement about modern Japanese games. Not the country, not the culture,” he defended. Fish adds that Braid creator Jonathan Blow ”totally agreed” but he wasn’t being targeted like he was, adding that Blow called them ”joyless husks”.
”I’m not seeing anybody form a lynch mob about that,” he said. Later he made the reference that Japanese games are ”just two western games duct-taped together,” which seems a nod and wink to Spy Party creator Chris Hecker’s comment that the Nintendo Wii was ‘two GameCubes duct-taped together’.
Back in 2010, Mega Man creator Keiji Inafune decried the ‘fall’ of Japanese video games: ”I look around Tokyo Games Show, and everyone’s making awful games,” Inafune said. ”Japan is at least five years behind.”
Are modern Japanese video games a major disappointment to you?
