Then maybe have the teams be fully Japanese. I knew two of Japan Studio's ugliest, most boring looking games (Knack and Puppeteer) were probably not really Japanese games without even looking at their credits.
Not to sound like a weeb, but if your most dogshit looking games can be blindly picked out with confidence that they aren't actually Japanese, then that probably says something about them.
The excerpt I quoted did read like a red flag to me for the following reasons:
-Doucet was initially appointed as the studio director of Japan Studio in
February 2020. Talent was bleeding left and right not long after (
main key artists such as Shunsuke Saito and Kentaro Motomura left,
Masaaki Yamagiwa is now working
with Team Ninja, Keiichiro Toyama created the
Bokeh studio, Masami Yamamoto
has founded his own studio too, etc.)
-Team Asobi studio is flaunted (
once again since last year) for having many people of different foreign backgrounds like they're "diversity hires" while still reassuring that the staff is primarily japanese, without detailing whoever are in the key positions.
So, who are the Asobis then? Well, since we are a PlayStation game development studio located in the cool and vibrant Tokyo, the majority of the team are Japanese. We also have several members coming from various other countries: England, Germany, France, Scotland, Korea, Spain, and Colombia. It’s important for us to have this mixed background to help us create games that are universal. And of course, we all share that same love for Japan: its craft, its pop culture, its gaming heritage but also its beautiful seasons, wacky innovations (so many!!) and delicious food!
-Promoting the games as "japanese" while still appealing for a global audience as the primary focus, likely meaning none of the problematic stuff from those icky japanese bastards that could reach & corrupt those little poor western sensibilities.
-Ever claiming the "japanese feeling" is solely on a gameplay basis, and not a combination of several things (like art direction) tied to the mentality & culture of the people who worked on those japanese games. Like there is a reason why western games and comics as a whole have gone down to the shitter in the past decade, and that's the obsession of social politics (while hiding behind the excuses of "maturity" and "growing up") leaking into everything.
also people forget that Japan Studio acted as a middleman between SIE and japanese third-parties for game projects (like Millennium Kitchen, From Software, etc. in the past) which I doubt Team Asobi will fill the same role.
I could be eventually wrong on the account of Team Asobi but it's hard to trust such claims as innocuous considering the climate we currently live in, and the way people in positions of power (such as localizers) treat japanese media in general.
Not to forget Asobi is directly affiliated under SIE California which burned nearly every bridge with the japanese market.
archive.ph
Kutaragi fucking wept.
