Former Nippon Ichi Software president says the “salaryman-ification” of Japan’s game industry is why there are fewer “individual creators” like Hideo Kojima and Suda51 - AUTOMATON WEST

TalkingFlower@lemmy.world · 6 hours

“When asked how he feels about there being less prolific “auetur” developers in the scene, like Hideo Kojima, Suda51, SWERY, and Kenji Eno, Niikawa suggests that this might be due to the “corporate” nature of the video game industry. “That’s a bit unfortunate, to be honest. To put it in my own words, I feel like the salaryman-ification of creators keeps progressing,” he says. For context, a “salaryman” in Japan refers to white-collar workers, employed at large corporations, who stereotypically prioritize work over anything else and are subservient to their organization.”

“On the other hand, when you’re a developer who works for a company, various other factors, like company policies and decision-making, as well as profitability, come into play, making it more difficult for “individuality” to come through…”

Isn’t this also happening in the West? In any case, AAA rarely appeals to me; almost underground-like indies/mods/Foss games are the places to find the really experimental works.

yamper@piefed.social · 3 hours

imo this and the enshittification of games are symptoms of the same root cause. games are too big and expensive now. one auteur on a 1000 person team can’t have the same level of impact as one auteur on a 10 person team. they definitely have fewer opportunities to develop their reputation/skill/style on big teams

Devolution@lemmy.world · 3 hours

In the west, it’s enshittification. In the east, it’s salarymanification.

😂

popcar2@piefed.ca · 5 hours

This happened to the industry worldwide. As studios became way bigger and jobs became way more specific, nobody is really allowed to do anything outside of their field. Back then, companies were small and everyone had a hand at making the game. People also wore many hats so they would get experience on making different parts of the game from start to finish.

Now? In AAA companies you work some super specific field like “junior gameplay combat designer” and you won’t have the opportunity to work on anything else and you’re in a company with 500 people that all have different opinions so anything you suggest will be ignored.

balgruuf@nord.pub · 5 hours

Suda and Kojima make some weird shit and I love it.

bluetoofs@lemmy.world · 5 hours

“Enshittification.” It’s called enshittification, Kenji.

Mark with a Z@suppo.fi · 4 hours

Isn’t enshittification about products and services? I’ve never heard anyone use it for work culture, and I think “salaryman-ification” is more descriptive here.

Malta Soron@sopuli.xyz · 3 hours

Yeah, it’s mostly about platforms:

Enshittification, also known as platform decay, is a process in which two-sided online products and services decline in quality over time. Initially, vendors create high-quality offerings to attract users, then they degrade those offerings to better serve business customers, and finally degrade their services to both users and business customers to maximize short-term profits for shareholders.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification

athatet@lemmy.zip · 3 hours

I’m pretty sure it can be used for anything that is getting shittier.

Senal@programming.dev · 4 hours

i always thought of it as the general worsening of something in the pursuit of the short term increase in capitalist benefits (or the delusion of such).

It’s used a lot for products and/or services but underlying those is probably the enshittification of all the supporting structures, mental and physical health of the workers etc.

I could be wrong however.

bluetoofs@lemmy.world · 2 hours

It is. They’re being pedantic. It’s a complete made up term within the last few years to describe anything getting shittier for the benefit of shareholders. Applying it to a specific thing and saying it can’t be used to describe what this article is talking about is silly.

DABDA@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 hour

Here’s a quote from Cory Doctorow himself at the end of his book Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It:

The longer I think about this, the more names I come up with. I’m going to stop now, but I’ll leave you with one final word: enshittification.
Specifically, I am giving you explicit permission to use this word in a loose sense, whenever you think it makes sense to do so. As I wrote in my essay “Dirty Words Are Politically Potent”: The fact that a neologism is sometimes decoupled from its theoretical underpinnings and is used colloquially is a feature, not a bug. Many people apply the term “enshittification” very loosely indeed, to mean “something that is bad,” without bothering to learn—or apply—the theoretical framework. This is good. This is what it means for a term to enter the lexicon: it takes on a life of its own. If 10,000,000 people use “enshittification” loosely and inspire 10 percent of their number to look up the longer, more theoretical work I’ve done on it, that is one million normies who have been sucked into a discourse that used to live exclusively in the world of the most wonkish and obscure practitioners. The only way to maintain a precise, theoretically grounded use of a term is to confine its usage to a small group of largely irrelevant insiders. Policing the use of “enshittification” is worse than a self-limiting move—it would be a self-inflicted wound.

Mwa@thelemmy.club · 4 hours

I agree with this alot, enshittification sucks.
And i feel like the only AAA company that appeals me is Valve.
I still see Kojima in meme culture aswell.

taiyang@lemmy.world · 4 hours

There’s something rich about this coming from Nippon Ichi’s former head, the company that brought us the artistic masterpieces known as the Disgaea series. Truly visionaries, lol.

(PS I like the games and tbf, they’re… unique).