What is ‘coolness’?Permalink
“Go skydiving!” Hideaki Itsuno exclaims at his 2019 GDC talk detailing the combat design of Devil May Cry 5. Not as a silly joke to complement the important, technical parts of his talk. No, ‘Go skydiving’ is his premier piece of design advice to a room packed to the brim with aspiring game designers.
Itsuno wraps many exciting activities under the emblem of ‘skydiving’: travel, attending sports games and concerts, venturing into the unknown. The ultimate goal is to build a well of emotional experiences that can’t be replicated with verbal or written description. This well, although abstract and ethereal, becomes the game designers’ greatest asset for creating raw emotional experiences. I didn’t quite internalize it the first time I heard it. I was there to hear about the implementation details of a complex action game, after all. But in the years since, ‘go skydiving’ has become my guiding light through an age of artistic drought.
The room for a Devil May Cry 5 design talk was packed to the brim, of course, because developers across the globe are obsessed with Japanese games. Partially because of their historic dominance, but primarily because of how ‘cool’ they are. Video games in general, at least right now, aren’t ‘cool.’ More people play them but they don’t command the cultural attention as an artistic medium they once did. How am I defining ‘coolness?’ Beyond raw popularity or recognizability, ‘coolness’ represents cultural allure and taste-making value. A work of art is ‘cool’ when it’s treading new ground, attention-grabbing, and confident in its own direction regardless of external validation. To create ‘cool’ art requires a tasteful amount of experimentation and mainstream inaccessibility, two things that are gigantic no-no’s in the modern business world. High budgets and long development periods enforce sticking to tried-and-true trends instead of the raw artistic experimentation of gaming’s heyday, the golden era of the sixth console generation (1998–2009).
Japanese games from that era like Final Fantasy VII, Smash Bros Melee, Silent Hill, Resident Evil and Metal Gear Solid still command fierce fanbases who cannot help but be magnetized to their cross-generational appeal. Since then, we’ve been experiencing the entropy of video game coolness with the onslaught of remakes, remasters, and IP crossovers that reference that era without creating anything new to challenge or evolve it. Epic Games’ Fortnite recently added Raiden and Solid Snake from the Metal Gear franchise despite the last mainline entry, MGS:V, being a decade old.
Raiden Concept art by Yoji Shinkawa / in-game model in MGS2 (2001) / in-game model in Fortnite (2024)
It’s easy to see why they did this; Metal Gear characters and art-style command attention and coolness even amongst audiences who are completely unfamiliar with the franchise. Solid Snake is an easier sell than a character like Viktor Reznov from the objectively much more popular Call of Duty franchise because Call of Duty isn’t ‘cool’ in the way Metal Gear is. Nevertheless, we will eventually run out of ‘cool’ characters from the era in which they were allowed to be made, and the event horizon of our coolness heat death is rapidly approaching.
Japan’s ‘cool’ dominancePermalink
Every time a modern game of high artistic merit does release (and it’s usually from Japan), it has now re-upped itself as a permanent context that will be copied or compared against for the next decade. The current ‘cool kids on the block’ are undoubtedly FromSoftware of Elden Ring fame, and for how much I love them, it’s regrettable to see every modern action franchise develop in their Erdtree’s shadow. Take Game Science’s Black Myth Wukong, a game developed and advertised as a shining beacon of Chinese mythology. Wukong aims to depict the Journey to the West myth and Wuxia (武俠), a uniquely Chinese form of theatrical martial combat found in Chinese cinema, most famously Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (Ang Lee, 2000). I was excited to see them adapt the spatial combat style to video game form.
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (2019, FromSoftware)
Black Myth: Wukong (2024, Game Science)
Unfortunately, Wukong follows the FromSoftware mold to a tee, specifically their samurai action game Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. Sekiro’s deflection-based gameplay evokes the defensive precision and discipline of a shinobi warrior, marking its gameplay as distinctly Japanese-themed. Tragically, Wukong’s minimal variations can’t avoid feeling like a Japanese samurai game with a superficially Chinese coat of paint.
Elegantly mixing verticality, wallrunning and melee combat, the Ninja Gaiden games are perfect Michelle Yeoh simulators.
Taking inspiration from spatially rich games like Ninja Gaiden II or Bayonetta would have better fit the Wuxia theme. Watching any gameplay from those two titles feels more in line with what you might see in a fight scene from Crouching Tiger than anything in Sekiro, and by extension, Wukong. The cruel irony here, though, is that both Ninja Gaiden and Bayonetta franchises are Japanese-produced. Even in my criticism of a Chinese studio to make their game more distinctly Chinese, I use Japanese products as reference points. Japan is John Coltrane on Giant Steps, switching through keys at breakneck speed, and the rest of us, from Shanghai to San Francisco, are Tommy Flanagan trying desperately to catch up.
Despite literally taking place in Japan, Assassin’s Creed: Shadows repeats the stagnant open world formula with zero learnings from Japan’s innovations in the genre.
Don’t feel too bad for China, because Japan is even beating us at our own game too (and I’m not talking about Shohei). The Open World genre, starting with Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto III and popularized most famously by Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, quintessentially represents the American spirit. It’s a game genre about exploring a new world and conquering it, piece by piece; what could be more ‘American Cowboy’ than that? Despite this, the genre-defining open world games as of now are all Japanese. Nintendo’s Breath of the Wild and FromSoft’s Elden Ring are credited for revitalizing the genre with bold direction and experimental design that recontextualizes how exploration can be encouraged. Just this year, Nintendo’s open world Xenoblade Chronicles X edges out Ubisoft’s open world Assassin’s Creed: Shadows with the former scoring an 88 on MetaCritic and the latter scoring an 81. Even in the game genre that is most American by principle, it is ironically Japan treading new ground as to what is possible with the medium of video games.
“[Kena: Bridge of Spirits] uses Japanese iconography… presumably [only] because it looks cool, because due to missing worldbuilding, none of it is referenced anywhere.” (Malindy Hetfeld, Eurogamer)
The solution is decidedly not to make our games more ‘Japanese’ in an aesthetic or superficial sense. While the world has many lessons to internalize from Japanese design, I feel we are too comfortable in aping their aesthetics without ample narrative justification. Yes, yes — I grew up with Naruto and Ghibli films too — and Japan themselves have spent billions of dollars to hold their throne as the premier cultural exporter of the world (‘Cool Japan’ Project). However, when projects from outside Japan release with all their aesthetic trappings — Shinto imagery and anime-inspired character designs — but none of their core principles or explicit call-outs to Japanese culture, it can’t help but feel a bit embarrassing. If nothing else, it’s certainly uncool; clawing desperately for the exotic appeal of its inspirations without the confidence and focused vision to back it up.
What makes Japan so cool, anyway?Permalink
Does Japan have a secret sauce? Some umami ‘coolness’ that we can’t access without starting a new studio in Tokyo ourselves? Well, no, I don’t think so. To be fully honest, even Japan isn’t as cool as Japan anymore. Hayao Miyazaki of Studio Ghibli famously lamented on the state of the Japanese animation industry. His “anime was a mistake” quote, although arguably mistranslated and bereft of context, still resurfaces to poke fun at less-than-impressive seasonal shows.
The full quote points to an educated frustration with the state of his industry: “You see, whether you can draw like this or not,” Miyazaki explains as he sketches a character, “depends on if you can say to yourself, ‘Oh, yeah, girls like this exist in real life.’ If you don’t spend time watching real people, you can’t do this, because you’ve never seen it… Almost all [Japanese] animation is produced with hardly any basis taken from observing real people, you know. It’s produced by humans who can’t stand looking at other humans. And that’s why the industry is full of otaku!”
Otaku (Japanese term):
A young person who is obsessed with computers or particular aspects of popular culture to the detriment of their social skills. (Oxford Dictionary)
A similarly unfortunate fate has befallen the games industry, both in terms of consumer-base and production. The population of people making and playing games are overrun with a disinterest in life and culture outside of digital worlds. I can imagine a statement similar to Hayao Miyazaki’s coming from the lips of Hidetaka Miyazaki, director at FromSoftware, who credits much of his inspirations to novels, manga, and architecture studies outside of just video games. Miyazaki was famously inspired by getting his car stuck during a particularly gnarly snowstorm for the unique co-op features of the Souls franchise. Meanwhile, every new ‘Soulslike’ game made in Elden Ring’s image feels starved of any other cultural nutrition than the video games themselves. Video games aren’t cool, they haven’t been cool in a long time, and it feels like we all wordlessly expect that by following in Japan’s footsteps they’ll become cool again. I’m here to tell you that no, that won’t happen. Not without understanding that life experience and a wide cultural diet is what’s necessary for creating good, cool art.
Indie as a responsePermalink
A common rebuttal is to associate the entirety of our cultural drought with the much maligned ‘AAA’, or popular high-budget video games produced at multi-billion dollar companies like Activision-Blizzard, Rockstar, or Ubisoft. For true, real artisanal experiences, one must seek out indie games! There are many strong contenders for ‘good video games’ in the indie space; games that tell interesting stories, dazzle with vibrant visuals and keep players coming back for refined, polished gameplay. Despite this, the indie space is stuck in a rut of constantly reinterpreting nostalgia without any reinvention to push it forward. We are currently in a 90’s nostalgia phase, which means roguelikes, platformers, and survival horror games are all in vogue. A Y2K nostalgia phase peeks around the corner with several indie action and adventure games currently in development. These projects revere their inspirations but fail to justify themselves evolutionarily. If you really love Zelda enough to make a whole new Zelda game of your own, matching everything up to but just short of IP infringement, why would I play yours instead of just playing Zelda?
‘Central character overlooks grassy green expanse…’ describes nearly half of new adventure game announcement trailers in the years since Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
Indie falls into the same trap as AAA, stuck looking backward and lacking inspiration beyond the video games that spawned it. Between Steam’s 2-hour rule and the market of public opinion on Twitter, the indie game market highly optimizes for easily digestible mechanical or narrative gimmicks. This context for development and marketing does not foster the experimentation or artistic excellence found in the Y2K Japanese golden age, and I can’t say I’m looking forward to the troves of games made by other people who really really love that era but have nothing else to say about it. Even if indie games are good, even if they are great, I don’t believe they will stand the test of time in the same way that golden age games do. My 15-year old cousin just told me she’s getting a PS2 second-hand for Silent Hill 2. She was born almost a decade after that thing came out! Do we truly believe that anything released as of late has that same cultural pull?
Randomly remembering that:
Classmates at my prestigious game art university said Silent Hill 2 looked ‘old’ and ‘ugly’ and the ‘dialogue is trash,’ which makes me chuckle when thinking of my little cousin’s opposingly strong curiosity. No shade, we were 20 years old, all love <3
On the topic of Silent Hill, just take a look at their development team. Team Silent exudes the confidence and aura of a historied group of artistic collaborators. From the development documentaries, it’s easy to observe that their office is filled with books on art, history, classic literature, architecture, and philosophy. You can imagine they’d take smoke breaks to discuss topics that have nothing to do with video games at all, yet effortlessly and unambiguously filter into the trilogy of masterpieces they were about to create. Not to mention they dress well too! This is the atmosphere in a studio required to create a timeless work of art, beyond any technical expertise at programming or design or whatever else.
“That’s just how they do it,” or Japanese mysticismPermalink
Designer at Capcom working on Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite
I’m sure you may have come to the following conclusion: “this writer is tragically butthurt that he wasn’t born in 1980s Tokyo so he could have burgeoned into the Japanese golden age during his 20s.” I’m sure I gave off that impression, but to be honest, no. As much as I cherish and respect the golden age and the numerous classics that era of Japan has given us, my dream is for the rest of the world to catch up. I’m tired of Japan being the only voice of reason in the medium I love so dearly. Much of the conversation around Japan seems to align their stellar products with an unreplicable Japanese-ness, and I could not disagree more. It’s a niche fact that acclaimed Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa named Bengali-Indian director Satyajit Ray, notably his film Pather Panchali, as one of his premier inspirations:
“The quiet but deep observation, understanding and love of the human race, which are characteristic of all his films, have impressed me greatly. I feel that he is a ‘giant’ of the movie industry. Not to have seen the cinema of Ray means existing in the world without seeing the sun or the moon. I can never forget the excitement in my mind after seeing [Pather Panchali]. It is the kind of cinema that flows with the serenity and nobility of a big river. People are born, live out their lives, and then accept their deaths. Without the least effort and without any sudden jerks, Ray paints his picture, but its effect on the audience is to stir up deep passions. How does he achieve this?” —Akira Kurosawa
Pather Panchali (1955, Satyajit Ray)
Yojimbo (1961, Akira Kurosawa)
Just reading that passage alone may enlighten you as to the magic of Kurosawa’s own work: Japanese cinema classics like Rashomon, Seven Samurai, and Yojimbo. These works are talked about as if they spawned from nothing else but uniquely Japanese sensibilities for serenity, gracefulness, and technical craftsmanship, when in reality even legends crafted with a nod toward their own (in this case Bengali) heroes. Kurosawa’s work was lightning-fierce, and we still feel his influence into a medium he was never alive to observe. Sucker Punch Studios’ Ghost of Tsushima shipped with a ‘Kurosawa Mode’ for their samurai game to pay homage to the legendary director, and Japanese titles like Sekiro, Rise of Ronin, and Onimusha are undoubtedly developed with his films pinned tightly to the wall.
I would describe my own Japanese heroes, ranging from Shinji Mikami to Fumito Ueda to many more, with the same reverence that Kurosawa paid to Ray. Never having played Dark Souls or Resident Evil 4, games I hold dearly to my heart, may be as debilitating to me personally as never having seen the sun, moon, or a beautiful eclipse. Now, as a person of Bengali heritage, I feel some responsibility to put my culture back on the map and close the loop that was started nearly a century ago. I’m excited to produce works that are inspired by the Japanese masters but indelibly marked by my own cultural upbringing. Let’s not kid ourselves into believing that artistic inspiration and technical craftsmanship are ‘just how the Japanese do it’ as an excuse for our own shortcomings. Many of the legendary creators of that era — Kamiya, Mikami, Ueda, Kojima, Itsuno, Inaba — are now heading new studios working on completely new IP’s or revitalizing classic ones. As an avid fan, I’m more than excited for their work, but eager to see the rest of the world rise to the competitive challenge.
How to be Cool 101Permalink
Well, how can we achieve that? Like any other early-in-career, I work a technical industry job, absorbing as much knowledge and experience as possible. I dream of starting a studio one day, aware of how many others have the same dream and how hard I’ll have to work to truly achieve it. Even beyond my own ambitions, however, I dream of a world where all together we aspire to create artisanal experiences that reach beyond games as meaningless toys for wasting time. I dream of another golden age, but this time at a global scale instead of centralized to three companies in Tokyo. I dream of video games respected as artworks on the level of film, literature, and music, and the creators of those video games revered as the great artists of our generation. I dream of making a video game that, a decade after its release, a culturally curious young girl like my little cousin will fight tooth-and-nail over Ebay bids and retro stores in order to get her hands on. Is there any better feeling than sinking your teeth into a video game like that?
This dream, however, requires more than just video games. In fact, it requires the exact opposite. It requires creators who are cultured, historied, filled to the brim with ravenous hunger for life and death and everything in between. It requires creators who are sharply dressed and have a crazy look in their eyes. It requires creators who speak several languages and have seen many corners of the world. It requires creators who watch the sun and moon, sitting patiently for beautiful sunsets and mesmerizing eclipses. It requires creators who have read the classics, and the contemporaries, and some shitty reality television too. It requires creators who have gone skydiving, felt the wind cut and stab at their cheeks and smiled ear-to-ear the entire fall.
If you work in the games industry, or aspire to, or love video games and art in general in any capacity at all. Please, please, please. I beg you. Go skydiving. More than ever, art needs to be interacted with by people who have gone skydiving. In front of the screen, yes, and behind it too.
For Legal Reasons:
‘Go skydiving’ is defined as an allegory for reading, studying, travelling, meeting new and different kinds of people, interacting with foreign cultures, learning a new language, trying new hobbies, exercise/working out, becoming a sports fan, switching up your fashion, and/or going to music shows. I am not responsible for skydiving (or otherwise) related injuries.
P.S: On AI Art (not sure about keeping this part)Permalink
Maybe you’ve gotten to the end of this blog and are still wondering what the big deal is about ‘coolness.’ So what if art nowadays is less ‘cool’? Does it need to be ‘cool’? Isn’t ‘coolness’ arbitrarily exclusive and immature? I’d like to point you to last week’s Ghibli AI Art fiasco.
Popular meme images converted to Ghibli-style with ChatGPT.
With ChatGPT’s image generation feature, troves and troves of users converted every kind of image to AI-generated artworks in Ghibli’s famous house style. Hayao Miyazaki has been outspoken about his distaste for AI-generated artwork, and it’s clear to see why. A studio that has dedicated its entire artistic portfolio to capturing an impressionistic portrait of life has been sullied against their will for corporate, anti-artistic greed.
There’s a lot of talk on the pro-AI side of ‘democratizing art,’ and making art accessible for everyone. So let me clearly state, in no uncertain terms: art shouldn’t be democratized like this. You shouldn’t get to make art that looks like the art cool, interesting, skilled people make if you yourself aren’t cool, interesting or skilled. Art has already been democratized in the sense that making great art is accessible to everyone of all races, creeds, and economic statuses. There has been widely celebrated art created by the homeless, the disabled, and the most ostracized minority members of society. The only limiting reagent is whether you have something valuable to say; a limiting reagent that has proved debilitating for a certain crowd. I live in San Francisco, and it’s clear to see that the Bay is filled with individuals of privileged socio-economic backgrounds who can buy any experience money can buy and yet are permanently stuck reaching toward the uniqueness or individual confidence that others easily exude. These are the people prompting and peddling AI art; unromantic, culturally unrefined ignoramuses who wouldn’t know ‘cool’ if David Lynch came down from the smoke room in Heaven and handed it to them on a silver platter.
AI Art is only going to get better at doing what we were kind of already doing before it hit the market; copying, and copying, and copying. What were funny pitfalls months ago — fingers, text, continuity — have been overcome swiftly by hardworking, highly paid and hopelessly uncool AI engineers. The only thing AI Art can’t ever be is ‘cool.’ As a machine, it can only move all of its creation towards a middling median, appealing to all but loved by none. So you, the human artist reading this. You need to be cooler than the techbro down the street. Don’t worry, you have quite the head start. And, after that — you need to make cool art. Art that is somewhat inaccessible, foreign, or hard to grasp. Art that is magnetic and interesting without needing to bend over backwards for broad appeal. You need to make the art that cool people will gate-keep away from the lames who use AI art for no other reason than “they just wouldn’t get it.”
And you, non-artists who have gotten this far. Poptimisim is over, okay? Start making fun of your friends who only watch mainstream things again. Yes, you are a better, cooler human being because your Spotify end-of-year has more than just artists with 10M+ monthlies. Our society depends on a healthy amount of gatekeeping and snobbiness, and the pendulum has swung too far the other way. This healthy pretentiousness is the coal that fuels our society to both make and appreciate the kinds of art that AI could never make.
Godspeed! Go live life and make masterpieces that only seasoned, interesting, cool people can craft!
Follow me @wheatpenguin on Twitter.
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