Luminosity and Obscurity

Tokyopia has an interview with Mizuguchi up. Is it just me or is it difficult to get Japanese game designers to talk about their art? Of course part of it is the language barrier - the interview, it says, used both English and Japanese but most of Mizuguchi's answers sound like they were in English, rather than translated from Japanese. There are gems of ideas dropped in here, but not fleshed out the way I *think* many Western developers would have elaborated. I've noticed this also in lectures given by Japanese game designers, even in Japanese. They don't say much, and when they do, it tends to be almost naively simple, self-deprecating, or very, very practical.

Has anyone else noticed this? I wonder if it has to do with a cultural difference in approaching creativity? For westerners, it seems a much more transparent process - contrast for example Will Wright's interview in the Onion, which illustrates a fairly typical approach to explaining game design ideas to the public. Japanese designers seem to (deliberately?) emphasize the more obscure sources of inspiration. Perhaps they aren't used to explaining it, or they prefer to hold the mystery in reserve?

Perhaps this can be related to tendencies in mainstream film. Even mainstream Japanese action films leave much more in the air, many more loose ends at the final frame. They don't necessarily explain why anything happens. You're supposed to figure that out on your own - or realize that not everything happens for a reason. Mainstream Western films, however, fall all over themselves to explain every. single. thing. to the point where you feel like bashing your head into a wall screaming "I GET it! There's a war between the vampires and the werewolves and he's their only hope!" (I watched Underworld recently.)

Interestingly, in the comments the interviewer notes that he prefered Mizugichi's English remarks over his Japanese answers: "In english he talks about chemical reactions, in Japanese, he just kinda sounds like any other game developer." I'm curious about this. Granted, I've only heard about a dozen Japanese game developers talk about what they do - but they were all so different from the many dozens (hundreds perhaps?) of British, French, and North American developers I've heard or read interviews of. Was my sample size just too small to generalize?

Comments

[ryan]

yeah, this interview is kinda weak... some of my co-workers speak to mizuguchi-san relatively regularly. one gentleman claims that he usually speaks quite deeply and profoudly about his games when questioned, and has no trouble providing compelling information about them. (assuming there's a competent translator around.) now, most of these conversations have taken place in casual/party situations, rather than conventional developer interview-like set-ups. so, i guess i'd chalk the quality of this interview up to either poor translation or infamiliarity with the interviewer.

though, i think you could be correct about japanese developers in general... your point about filmmakers is totally valid. japanese audiences are more comfortable with narratives that are affected by ideas with mystical/magical origins than US audiences; this is why many films from the region don't end in completely obvious or logical ways. i think this is more interesting, in many ways, because then the artwork is able to raise more questions and the viewer is left to come up with his own answers.

though if a creator was questioned about the choice to leave the narrative open, and was unable to give a fulfilling answer, then i would be skeptical of the validity of said choice... or at least his motive for making it.

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