Good service and respecting consumers is key
You’ve heard it all before: The Japanese game industry is dying. Eastern design is hackneyed. Creators are complacent, relying on threadbare formulas as they sleepwalk on the road to stagnation. That’s one view, anyway. Marvelous AQL Europe boss Harry Holmwood offers another, suggesting Western developers can still learn a thing or two from the Japanese.
“It’s very easy to look at [Japanese] games and think they look alien, and to think that there’s nothing to learn from it,” Holmwood said during a presentation at the Develop Conference in Brighton, England. “But I’m absolutely confident that there are many things that are happening in Japanese games now that people are going to do in the West in five or ten years time, or in some cases now, with huge success.”
Holmwood cites good service, something he contends is of the utmost importance in Japan, as one example of this. The Marvelous AQL executive says his company keeps a team of fifteen to twenty individuals working on a project after launch to a maintain a healthy bond with its community, adding that companies should give players a reason to want to spend money on their products.
Marvelous AQL: Japan is a big opportunity for Western devs[Develop]