interesting article for consideration from Polygon writer Kazuma Hashimoto. here’s the opening:
In February, Final Fantasy 16 producer Naoki Yoshida sat down in an interview with YouTuber SkillUp as part of a tour to promote the next installment in the Final Fantasy series. During the interview, Yoshida expressed his distaste for a term that had effectively become its own subgenre of video game, though not by choice. “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. He stated that the first time both he and his contemporaries heard the term, they felt as though it was discriminatory, and that there was a long period of time when it was being used negatively against Japanese-developed games. That term? “JRPG.”
Not really shocked to read the reaction in these comments.
People always get irate when someone points out that language they’ve been using for a long time is actually inherently problematic and perform all kinds of mental gymnastics to avoid admitting it.
I mean, I do understand that JRPG is somewhat problematic.
The problems it’s not going to change because it’s too deeply ingrained, and if you try to introduce another term it’s just going to end up being either nobody understanding what you mean, or what is already happening where we try to briefly describe JRPGs as something else and people point to this other genre with that one mechanic that is still massively different from JRPGs.
Like we could just say “Dragon Quest-Clone”, or “Final Fantasy-Clone”, or “pokemon clone” but that’d be significantly more insulting to devs I feel, but really what people want are the kind of turn-based combat you’d see in Pokemon, Earthbound or Final Fantasy. But like the only way it’s changing 30 years later is if you use a term that’s much more “There’s no way you don’t know what this is” than JRPG.
I think those are honestly fair points, and I don’t see it changing in the mainstream either. That doesn’t mean that we can’t approach the situation with respect and understand that we can describe games using different terminology, even if it’s a little more difficult to do so.
The question is: Are we asked to change it? The quotes hark back to Japanese first impression of the west using the term. They did not state that they want us to use a different term, Yoshi-P recalled his teams impressions of foreign reactions to their products from 20 years ago. The referenced Interview with the Xenoblade Devs also does not echo the Sentiment Yoshi-P put forth. As far as I can see all articles putting JRPG out as a discriminatory term are referencing the same single Interview.
I haven’t really found anything else that touches on it either, but I do still understand the point. The idea that no one else went on record discussing it doesn’t make it a non-issue though.
Yeah… I wasn’t aware of the feeling of the Japanese developers, I grew up using the term, and when I saw and interview and realized how it felt for the developers? Heard that they cringe when they hear it, feel cut out of some game mechanics because of stereotypes, that they feel it means they don’t make “real RPGs”, I decided I was going to drop it.
While I had never said it to hurt anyone, they were hurt none the less.
I’m trying to take it out of my language and there was a time I went around announcing I was a big fan of the genre specifically!
Same honestly, pretty eye opening to how we just flat out miss things like that. I also always loved touting the genre as my favorite. Communication like this is pretty important because it’s a reminder that things which seem innocent could actually be an issue to others.