Hideki Kamiya thinks Japan should be proud of ‘JRPG’ and wants to use ‘J-Action’
PlatinumGames vice president Hideki Kamiya has said he thinks Japan should be proud of the term ‘JRPG’, amid fresh claims it could be considered discriminatory to Japanese developers.
The ‘JRPG’ term was popularised in the early 90s as a means for press and video game fans to differentiate between PC RPGs, which were mostly made by Western developers, and console RPGs, which were mostly made up of Japanese franchises such as Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest.
However, in the years since, as interest in Japanese-made RPGs declined, there were some instances of discriminatory language used to describe them, by both critics and developers (as summarised in a report by Polygon), and some Japanese creators spoke out against the term.
Earlier this year, Final Fantasy 16 producer Naoki Yoshida told Skill Up that he wasn’t a big fan of the ‘JRPG’ term at all, saying that in the past, it felt like a discriminatory term with negative connotations.
“For us as Japanese developers, the first time we heard it, it was like a discriminatory term, as though we were being made fun of for creating these games, and so for some developers, the term can be something that will maybe trigger bad feelings because of what it was in the past,” he said.
In a recent interview at PlatinumGames’ headquarters in Osaka, VGC asked famous Japanese designer Hideki Kamiya, creator of Bayonetta and Devil May Cry, if he shared Yoshida’s views.
Kamiya’s answer was extensive, and he argued that the term is something Japanese developers should be proud of and, in his opinion, cultural differences justified the differentiation in subgenres.
“I have a lot to say on this,” Kamiya replied. “Just to be clear first though, I have a positive sentiment when it comes to the term
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