Yasuhiro Wada, the creator of Harvest Moon, is chief creative officer of Marvelous, the Japanese publisher behind No More Heroes, Little King's Story and Muramasa: The Demon Blade. We met with him to talk about his views on the current state of Japanese game development, which he believes is failing to provide enough variety and fresh ideas and is resulting in a contracting games market in the country. But his views aren’t taken very well by Japanese gamers. Here, he speaks frankly about why, along with how the 360 has failed to take off in Japan and why Marvelous’ games review well but don’t do so well at the cash till.

You recently wrote on Marvelous’ blog a message to Japanese gamers. What was it about?
Simply put, I think the population of gamers in Japan is shrinking fast. Every year, we see the number of active core gamers decreasing. I think this is due to the industry. Publishers, developers and creators alike are not trying hard enough to bring original creations on the market. I have the feeling that those gamers are feeling bored, that they have had enough. At Marvelous, it is my ambition to make new and original games that are not only appealing to those gamers. I wanted those users to look at our games. The objective was by answering the needs of those gamers so they would find video games fun again. Doing so, we would see the population of gamers growing again.

Strong IP, series or popular characters are the main focus today. They are seen as secured elements in a very risky environment. Publishers and developers have used this for years, leaving little place for originality and new contents. I think this is why gamers are leaving video games. I believe that variety is the only way to bring more people into gaming.

What was the reaction of Japanese gamers to your message?
It was quite negative. Of course we had some positive messages pushing us to deliver more original contents, supporting us. But many criticised the fact that such a high-ranking person from a video game publisher is telling those things in public.

Do you feel that such negative reactions are due to a lack of communication between users and publishers for too long?
My message on the company’s blog, I found that actually very few really understood its full meaning. Too many actually focused on a one part, out of its context inside the message. For example, people only got the “today, video games are not selling” sequence and made some sort of negative campaign. I was sad that my message did not go through but only bits of it, in a very negative way. That was quite a lesson for me and in the future I know now that I will have to be very careful how I want to tell or present things. I still think that there is a very important relationship to develop between the industry and its users. This first experience won’t stop me from developing such relationship in the future, but, with double care in the way I will do it.

How do you see the Japanese video game market today?
I think it is really getting tough. It is divided into a small, very hardcore group of gamers and another far much larger but very light population of users. This population of very light users is not really interested in buying more games but the ones they bought with their system. As a direct result, a very small group of titles, like three to five per cent of total number, is actually making for more than 80 per cent of sales.