Naoki Yoshida had a surprisingly terse response to a question asked about Final Fantasy 16. But, if you had been a gamer since the 1990s, or at least the 2000s, you will probably know what Naoki is talking about.
As reported by RPG Site, SkillUpYT was part of a panel interview, and Yoshida’s comments were being translated by KojiFox.
Yoshida had mentioned while talking about Final Fantasy 16, that the action game genre had advanced and was now the norm. SkillUpYT’s first question to Yoshida when he got the chance, was he implying that JRPGs hadn’t advanced in the same way as action games?
This is how Kojifox translated Yoshida’s response, relayed back to us by SkillUpYT:
“One thing he wants to get across is that when we create games, we don’t go into them thinking we are creating JRGPs, we are just creating RPGs. The term JRPG is used by western media rather than users and media in Japan.”
“This is going to depend on who you ask but there was a time when this term first appeared 15 years ago, and for us as developers the first time we heard it, it was like a discriminatory term. As though we were being made fun of for creating these games, and so for some developers the term JRPG can be something that will maybe trigger bad feelings because of what it was in the past. It wasn’t a compliment to a lot of developers in Japan. We understand that recently, JRPG has better connotations and it’s being used as a positive but we still remember the time when it was used as a negative.”
I obviously don’t have the time to examine two decades worth of video game related internet culture in this article. I will point to these tweets from Dreamboum and sasuraiger on Twitter, that provides some context to the situation Yoshida is alluding to.
Dreamboum: “This quote from Naoki Yoshida really sheds a lot more light about the “JRPG” moniker. I think a lot of people who were there recognizes how JRPG was short-hand for “anime trash”.
We still see it today, this is why the Soulsborne series are often not considered “JRPGs” to ppl.”
Sasuraiger: “Early to mid 00s, people were “post ff7” and Japanese RPGs were now kind of normal. GenX mainstream nerds really just didn’t like the aesthetic in general and were pretty loud about it. Similar story for anime.
From the kinds of conversations you’d see online, I think there was a “this is moving in on our turf” kind of perception from comic book dudes and dnd dudes. Well it did lol. Also classic 00s homophobia re the pretty boys; there was a comedy central cartoon about it.”
To this discussion I will add the fact that JRPGs may be most commonly associated with Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, but also including a wide variety of Japanese games, such as Pokemon, Persona, Shiren the Wanderer, and yes, even the likes of Dark Souls.
Furthermore, JRPGs can trace their roots to Western RPGs. Japanese gamers also played the likes of Ultima, Might and Magic, and Wizardry. In fact, Wizardry has a richer history in Japan than America, with 39 spinoff games seeing publication there vs the eight main games by Sir-Tech.
You can watch the interview below and decide for yourself what to make of it. The relevant section comes in at 27:53.
