Kotaku 
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Denver, 8:22 PM
Wed Dec 9
60 posts in the last 24 hours
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Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
12/08/09
That's fairly bad. Imagine if some of those working at Nintendo had refused to help work at Retro Studio's with Prime. Or if Kojima didn't work with the team working on the new Castlevania
12/08/09
Of course, much of that has turned around in the past ten years, but there remain issues none the less. There's nothing wrong with the differences between our cultures, but even today they present a number of problems for the development and localization process.
If you want an especially candid look at how Nintendo and Taito treated their American counterparts during the late 80's -early 90's, check out this interview: [www.nesplayer.com]
12/08/09
12/07/09
Anybody that has worked on a team knows how frustrating it can be, and that's with someone from the same culture.
Now throw in a different language and a different culture and you have the potential to create a fuckton of more problems.
12/08/09
Problems are always going to be present. If a developer were to assume that foreign developer would have the same cultural aspects, that would be silly.
I think that Capcom should make it more routine to have this type of situation assorted, so they have a clear idea of what to do. Putting something off, do to "cultural differences" leaves no real room to expand. That is, if the project was intended for the need of foreign developers in the first place.
12/08/09
The comment doesn't imply that one culture is any better than the other culture.
12/08/09
It's like, "Well, it didn't go smoothly, so lets not do that again." Rather, it should be. "Well, it didn't go smoothly, where can we improve for the next time."
Chalking something up to cultural differences doesn't necessarily work around the problem, it ignores it completely.
If you plan to work with Foriegn developers, come prepared for the unexpected, and the best way to do that is to be adaptive.
Edit: Or maybe the title is very misleading.
12/08/09
Of course that won't get some good ol' fashioned cultural wars going and then the advertisers start getting antsy.
12/08/09
To crib Charles Johnson's term, this is a non-troversy.
12/08/09
Like I said before, with it does have a misleading article title, and non-informative context inside, I felt like I was reading something out of (insert celebrity insider magazine).
I still stand by what I said that Capcom should make working with the West more routine.
12/08/09
12/07/09
Seriously companies here in Japan need to stop thinking the solution to their "problems" is tossing IPs to overseas companies to work on with idiotic hopes that it will suddenly fill in the gap why certain IPs dont do as well internationally as they do domestically.
Either hire people who know what they are doing and somehow manage to fit them into the team or just go about doing what you know how to do best. *Besides stuffing shit up with brilliant decisions.
12/07/09
12/07/09
Doesnt work when both sides dont want to play nice.
Even if they do when there is communication problems we get the "Tower of Babel" situation on hand. Which causes more work for everyone.
12/07/09
No where does he say "Cultural Differences Mean Capcom Developer And West Can't Collaborate". He was talking about not being able to have a Japanese team and an American team smoothly work together as one development team because of cultural differences (language barrier???). He didn't say "OMG those Americans smell! I don't want to work with them".
12/07/09
12/07/09
12/07/09
12/07/09
I don't think "going west" is the answer here. Japanese games have become increasingly appealing only to the Japanese, which is what I think they should be working on. Instead of throwing their hands up and just giving the IP to a third party, why not just try to make the game more appealing to both markets? You know, like you USED to do before this generation?
12/07/09
12/07/09
12/07/09
It's said that in Western cultures, it is the speaker's job to make sure he is understood, but in Japan, it is the listener's job to interpret what the speaker wants. That may be part of it.
12/07/09
That makes sense, thanks. I've taken a course or two on communication, that dealt with communication in an international context. I believe one of the points made was that Westerners tended to be very straight-to-the-point, while "Easterners" tended not to do this so much.
12/07/09
The first step is for both the Western and Japanese teams to acknowledge that there are cultural differences in the first place. Once that's done, both teams should be more willing to accept those differences and figure out ways to work around them (or, better yet, simply learn how to work within them) for the betterment of the product.
I lived in Japan for a year and while I'm certainly not as well-versed on the culture as many of the commenters here, or even some of the staff, I did get to experience Japanese culture first-hand. Is it different and sometimes baffling? Absolutely. Am I glad I got to experience it? Definitely. Do I want to learn more about it and better educate myself? Without question, and that's the sort of attitude both the Western and Japanese teams need to have to continue to put out quality products, especially in a multi-national company like Capcom.
12/07/09
What, exactly, is the noticeable difference brought about by a multicultural team?
Do you strive to create a multicultural team, for example, by spreading people of various cultures on key positions instead of merely choosing people based on their track record, regardless of culture?
Unless we can verify the advantages, perhaps Takeuchi-san just doesn't think it is worth the organizing troubles.
12/07/09
12/08/09
And as for as the quality of the product being better, what I was trying to articulate was that if a product is going to be marketed to both Western and Japanese audiences, it seems that having Western and Japanese teams working on it would improve the overall quality (in terms of being accepted by a multicultural audience).
The best example of what I'm trying to say is of Ryan Payton's influence on Metal Gear Solid 4, which, despite being a Japanese-developed game, is largely considered to be more Western-oriented than previous games in the series due to his work. Critical acclaim for the game indicates that his contributions to a primarily Japanese product resulted in a title that was better than it would have been otherwise.
12/07/09
And what's with Takeuchi-san seperating Japan from the rest of the world? I thought we were past all that, apparently I thought wrong.
12/07/09
The word gaijin is symptomatic of the problem, I think. It's not like when you use the wrong word and say Indian instead of Native American or what have you--it's a legitimate word that means "anybody who isn't us" and few Japanese see that as a problem.
12/07/09
12/07/09
12/07/09
This leaves one other possibility. Hmmm....
12/07/09
"No you will not get that transfer. Now get back to work."
12/07/09
Just because you like the games that Japanese dev teams made does not mean that you will necessarily find it easy to work with them.
I am the only foreign employee in the Japanese company where I work, and there are a *lot* of cultural differences with the way that business is handled, and I often see that many non-Japanese find it difficult to work with Japanese businesses.
And to luke:
"Well, they won't with an attitude like that!"
Are you saying that he should lie and say that it's really easy for cross-language and cross-cultural development? Just because someone says it's not easy to do something, they suddenly have a bad attitude?
12/01/09
12/01/09
12/01/09
12/01/09