Josh Ling @ Adopt Me!

Watching that Death Stranding demo more and I genuinely can't get enough of how flustered the GB guys are at its mechanics being so actively oppressive. It's true; few Japanese games like it attain mass exposure abroad, so their goals and design language aren't well understood.

There are a subset of Japanese games less interested in being immediately fun in the traditional sense because, in the end, prioritizing fun in design limits the experiences that can be conveyed. Engagement becomes the key goal, which fun can lead to, but they aren't synonymous.

Appreciating their intent often requires players invest a certain level of trust in such games at the outset, rather than having that trust earned by being fun or "addicting." The designer forms a contract that, even if it's not enjoyable now, it will go "somewhere" eventually.

Disaster Report, a series of games about somberly navigating disaster-stricken Japanese cities, is like this. Deadly Premonition, an open world detective game, is like this. No More Heroes, a game that explores masculinity in a largely desolate open world, is like this.

Even games as popular as Nier Automata are like this. Why does it specifically go out of its way to tell players to keep playing after they reach Ending A? To tell players less familiar with routes and whatnot in Japanese story-driven games that it hasn't played its full hand yet

These sorts of Japanese games are often described as "janky" and they very often do have legitimate design problems, but often times it comes from a deliberate intention to be emotionally evocative, to create a certain unease and disorientation to explore a greater point.

They're not games for everyone and I'm not dismissing those who don't enjoy them. But dismissing them because they don't adhere to certain standards of Western "polish" can result in missing the forest for the trees and not learning how they communicate with players differently.