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Hideki Kamiya has disagreed with Square Enix's Naoki Yoshida, saying that Japanese developers should be proud that they have their own term.
Hideki Kamiya, a legendary Game Designer, Vice-President of PlatinumGames, and the creator behind such titles as Resident Evil 2, Devil May Cry, and Bayonetta, has recently weighed in on the controversy surrounding the term "JRPG", saying that Japanese developers should be proud that there is a separate term to distinguish their RPGs.
For those unfamiliar with the matter, the "JRPG controversy" was started back in February by Square Enix's Naoki Yoshida, the producer of several Final Fantasy installments, including the recently-released Final Fantasy XVI, who voiced his discomfort with the term "JRPG", considering it to carry an undertone of discrimination.
During an interview, Yoshida elaborated that approximately 15 years ago, the term "JRPG" emerged with the intention of categorizing a specific genre of RPGs originating from Japan. He pointed out that this term was coined by Western media and emphasized that Japanese game developers themselves do not typically employ it when conceptualizing their role-playing games.
"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 was in the past," Yoshida told in the interview. "It wasn't a compliment to a lot of developers in Japan."
Image Credit: PlatinumGames
Interestingly, it appears that not all Japanese developers share Yoshida's viewpoint on this matter, with Hideki Kamiya, a figure of comparable significance within the game industry, holding a contrasting stance.
Speaking to VGC, Kamiya contended that the term is one that Japanese developers ought to embrace and, from his perspective, the distinctions between RPGs and JRPGs are warranted due to cultural differences between Western and Japanese devs and their projects. "I have a positive sentiment when it comes to the term JRPG. Indeed, I think it's something that we should be proud of," the developer said in the interview.
"So when it comes to the term 'JRPG', this is something that ties into this – these are RPG games that, in a sense, only Japanese creators can make with their unique sensitivity when it comes to creating these experiences," Kamiya told VGC. "I think it's certainly something that should be celebrated moving forward, and someone should actually aim to make a 'king of JRPGs' game to express that. As Japanese game creators, we're very proud of the actual term JRPG."
Image Credit: PlatinumGames
Furthermore, the developer went a step further by introducing a brand-new designation, "J-Action," and expressed that he wouldn't object to categorizing Bayonetta as a J-Action game.
"If Bayonetta was labeled as a 'J-Action' game, I would not have anything against that nomenclature," he said. "We are very proud of Bayonetta and the character we came up with because she is the essence of our kind of unique creativity as Japanese creators."
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