Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth developers debate JRPG term with opposing views
"It just always felt a bit off to me, and a bit weird."
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth producer Yoshinori Kitase and creative director Tetsuya Nomura have discussed the term JRPG, and shared contrasting opinions.
Nomura said he felt negatively towards the term, while Kitase was more accepting of its use to highlight the different approaches taken by Japanese game companies.
"I'm not too keen on it," Nomura told The Guardian in a new interview. "Certainly, when we started doing interviews for the games that I started making, no one used that term - they just called them RPGs. And then at some point - I can't remember exactly when - people started referring to them as JRPGs. And I'm not really sure what the intent behind that is. It just always felt a bit off to me, and a bit weird. I never really understood it - or why it's needed."
Kitase took an opposing view.
"Personally, I don't see it as that derogative," he said. "I think obviously with modern gaming, titles developed in the west are the majority now. So if [JRPG] is only used in terms of differentiating - maybe showing off a slightly different approach to games or a unique flavour in terms of Japanese-made games - I'm absolutely fine with that."
Debate around the term JRPG was sparked by Final Fantasy 16 producer Naoki Yoshida when interviewed by Skill-Up during previews of the game in February. Yoshida was visibly uncomfortable with the phrase.
"This is going to depend on who you ask but there was a time when this term first appeared 15 years ago, and for us as developers the first time we heard it, it was like a discriminatory term," said Yoshida.
"As though we were being made fun of for creating these games, and so for some developers the term JRPG can be something that will maybe trigger bad feelings because of what it was in the past.
"It wasn't a compliment to a lot of developers in Japan. We understand that recently, JRPG has better connotations and it's being used as a positive but we still remember the time when it was used as a negative."
Since then, the term has been widely discussed with various opposing views.
Bayonetta creator Hideki Kamiya, for instance, said he believed Japanese developers should be "proud" of the term, which he said reflects the "unique sensitivity" of Japanese creators in the games they make.
Kitase and Nomura are hard at work finishing up Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth ahead of its PlayStation 5 release on February 29th next year.
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