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So, I have to ask. Why isn't JFPS a thing?

Western FPS sell fairly well, generally receive positive reviews, and have a not-insignificant fan following in Japan. My guess is that it's a combination of the following: Developers who make a lot of games "for export" (e.g. Capcom) usually stick with the genres and series they have the most experience making. The developers who make games for the domestic market focus on genres that are more popular at home.

Also, the motion sickness argument sounds dubious, and anecdotal at best.
 
They don't have 'the way of the gun' in Japan?

America and Western culture has a gun history. A gun connection. A gun dream. Japan dreams of other things. Giant insects destroying their cities and towns.
 
Apparently for a really long time Japanese gamers didn't like games with lots of perspective movement, including first person. That explains why top-down games, isometric games, and fixed camera angles were prevalent on the PS1 and PS2. Also, many of them seem to need to see a character on screen for some reason.

RE4's over-the-shoulder view was a compromise between this few and first person shooter combat, which is what started out the blueprint for the TPSs we have today.
 
For the same reasons Eroge and visual novels aren't made by western developers. Vastly different cultures, westerners like to shoot Russians and Middle Easterners in the face, Japanese gamers don't.
 
The motion sickness thing is probably more that they're just not used to the visual dimensions and movement patterns of first-person games.

I remember Doom making me dizzy the first few times I played, but after that, no problem.
 
sixteen-bit said:
y4uWoL9.jpg
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Probably more First Person Fighter than a shooter, but this game was the fucking shit.
The best story on og xbox for sure.
 
Orayn said:
Also, the motion sickness argument sounds dubious, and anecdotal at best.
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A better argument is their lack of exposure to FPS. PC was never super popular. N64 (Goldeneye, Perfect Dark) was never super popular over there. And certainly not the original XBOX. 360 of course didn't do that great. A lot of them probably JUST got into fps last gen, especially on PS3.
 
In a world filled with way too many FPS games, why are you asking more? It's a good thing Japanese developers don't give a shit about them or first-person games in general.
 
Famassu said:
In a world filled with way too many FPS games, why are you asking more? It's a good thing Japanese developers don't give a shit about them or first-person games in general.
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Because we've seen what Japanese developers could do for TPS with Vanquish and would love to see them do something similar for FPS.
 
It's a difficult market for Japanese developers for multiple reasons.

First person shooters are mostly limited to military otaku in Japan, in appeal. And Japan hasn't developed many military games outside of Konami. Which is mostly limited to Kojima's vision.

In the limited cases where games in Japan have a military focus, they are usually either about aeroplanes, or robots, or are cinematic stories like Metal Gear. Third person perspective lends itself better to cinematic storytelling. Or at least, that appears to be what a lot of Japanese developers have decided.
 
Mr. Nobody said:
absolutely, put all that creativity to use in those upskirt pantsu simulators.
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Damn right !

BigDes said:
I am unsure of why a game being in first person is uncreative
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It was a pop at how uncreative I find FPS in general, Japanese devs have plenty of First Person games non of them are shooters though.#

Besides Light Gun games are both First Person and shooters, so its not like the concept is alien over there.
 
TC McQueen said:
Basically there's a huge cultural gap between our culture and theirs, and one thing that doesn't cross the gap is violent FPS games. Dunno why, given how violent their other media can be, but it's there.
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Western games typically represent power through symbolism, the symbol very often being the gun.

Japanese games are more often about the power of the self or the inner-self, which is an idea that comes from Buddhism and Shinto religion. This idea manifests even in some of the rare shooters that have come from there.

Like Vanquish. You use guns in Vanquish, but the true source of Sam's power is the suit he wears. Power of the self.
 
Motion sickness? That could use a study, just so we can figure out if it's even worth bringing up in future discussions.

Games like Outtrigger can fill this gap a tad, but just think: Japan never had an equivalent to Doom, a game that consolidated a genre in turn with vast customization of the audiovisual experience. There's just not that much exposure to Western design trends starting with and expanded off of Doom, and Japanese PCs at the time couldn't have run the game if they wanted to (for the same reasons visual novels became popular—only the Sharp X68k could scroll quickly enough!).
 
Orayn said:
Are you trying to tell me that a camera perspective renders games inherently uncreative?
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Not uncreative, but FPS games have a hard time differentiating themselves from competitors and it does limit what you can do with gameplay a bit. I mean, a game like Vanquish would never work as a first-person game and if they had made Demon's/Dark Souls first person the combat would probably feel very cumbersome like Elder Scrolls games, and no one wants that.
 
BigDes said:
Ah, Madden syndrome. I see.
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Not really, I just hate FPS, I hate Madden as well ... so maybe you are on to something.

One thing I will say though, personally I find myself detached from the character I am playing if its First Person, mainly because I can't see him/her for the majority of the game, Japanese gamers/developers like story driven games so I would think this has an impact on the perspective they use.
 
Famassu said:
Not uncreative, but FPS games have a hard time differentiating themselves from competitors and it does limit what you can do with gameplay a bit. I mean, a game like Vanquish would never work as a first-person game and if they had made Demon's/Dark Souls first person the combat would probably feel very cumbersome like Elder Scrolls games, and no one wants that.
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How was the combat in the King's Field games? They were the kinda prototypes to the Souls series and they were first person I believe.

Genuine question btw, I don't think they ever got released over here (UK) so I never got a chance to play them
 
Can you imagine Halo with random battles, underaged, scantily-clad children, 200+ hours of grinding before the final boss, 30+ missable achievements, chibi adults, and turn-based gunplay?
 
dante81 said:
I remember the protagonist throwing up into the toilet.
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A shame no modern games have copied that.

Think of how much more visceral that scene could be with modern fluid rendering techniques.
 
BigDes said:
How was the combat in the King's Field games? They were the kinda prototypes to the Souls series and they were first person I believe.

Genuine question btw, I don't think they ever got released over here (UK) so I never got a chance to play them
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King's Field was pretty simplistic with slow movement/turning and only one attack button, but you had a limited stamina pool like the Souls series so you couldn't just endlessly hack away at enemies. Honestly, I think even first King's Field has better melee combat than Skyrim or Oblivion.

Shadow Tower Abyss, which contributed quite a bit to the design of Demon's and Dark Souls, changed things up by ditching tank controls in favor of dual analog and giving you five different melee attacks with each weapon. It also featured guns, oddly enough.
 
Famassu said:
Not uncreative, but FPS games have a hard time differentiating themselves from competitors and it does limit what you can do with gameplay a bit. I mean, a game like Vanquish would never work as a first-person game and if they had made Demon's/Dark Souls first person the combat would probably feel very cumbersome like Elder Scrolls games, and no one wants that.
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I see what you mean on a certain level, but I think I disagree overall. Not against your particular examples (partly because you're absolutely right, but also because those games were built with third-person in mind), but a first-person perspective executed appropriately is more intuitive than a third-person viewpoint because of how we see the world in our own lives.

There's nuance to doing it right, in terms of perspective animations and appropriate field-of-view settings (just as there are for third-person games), but a viewpoint that eliminates the issue of a "bad camera angle" and "bad camera behavior" altogether seems pretty important. Considering how even games like visual novels in conversation scenes tend to have player viewpoint as a first-person view (character portraits addressing "the player" rather than the character), I think that's understood conceptually even when it isn't acted on in all gameplay.
 
Montresor said:
Can you imagine Halo with random battles, underaged, scantily-clad children, 200+ hours of grinding before the final boss, 30+ missable achievements, chibi adults, and turn-based gunplay?
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I hate japanese gaming so much. Not afraid to say it.
 
My take: Japan is an arcade nation. They like guns and military stuff if you look at light-gun games or shooters like 1941. FPS just never were arcade games, and never became as embraced as other genres.
 
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