As Final Fantasy 16 boss Naoki Yoshida puts it “discrimination,” is it time to ditch the term “JRPG”?

probably the funniest thing final fantasy 16 Yesterday’s preview had nothing to do with the game. This is an off-the-cuff comment from the game producer, Naoki Yoshida – A comment inspired by a quote from an interviewer sparked some heated debate online.

Yoshida dislikes the term “JRPG,” which means Japanese RPG — and went on to explain that when he first heard the term, he found it a “discriminatory term.”

Yoshida, now one of Japan’s most famous and important creators, made these comments in an interview that formed part of YouTuber SkillUp’s excellent FF16 preview. The comments were picked up in text form by RPG sites and quickly became a trending topic.

Yoshida’s comment was inspired by SkillUp asking him and FF16’s top creative team if they felt the “JRPG genre” hadn’t progressed as far as recent action games have. In the back of my mind, I can imagine Yoshida’s expression at this moment – I’ve interviewed him more than 10 times, and he cringes when he doesn’t like to ask questions continuously.

So, he probably pulled that face and spoke in Japanese for a while, and then Michael Christopher Koji Fox, head of western translation for FF14 and FF16, the interpreter, offered the following:

“One of the things he wanted to express was that when we make games, we don’t think we’re making JRPGs, we’re just making RPGs. The term JRPG is used by Western media, not Japanese users and media.”

“It’s going to depend on who you ask, but the word first came up 15 years ago, and for us developers, the first time we heard it, it felt like a discriminatory word. Like being made fun of for creating these games, for some developers the word JRPG might trigger bad feelings for what it used to be. It’s not a compliment to many developers in Japan.”

“We’ve learned that recently, JRPGs have had better connotations and it’s been used as a positive, but we still remember times when it was used as a negative.”

Yoshida also pointed out that the definition of a JRPG is often basically a description of Final Fantasy VII—putting the subgenre in compartmental constraints that he doesn’t think make sense at all.

“We were going to create an RPG, but to be compartmentalized, they felt like it was discriminatory,” Fox explained Yoshida’s comments.

That’s an interesting comment, right? This is food for thought, and as someone who has spent a lot of time thinking about how to categorize and explain the differences between the many genres of RPGs to find purpose, it really gave me pause.

I totally understand where Yoshida is coming from. People of a certain age will remember a time when Western game development and the media had a genuinely obnoxious slant toward Japanese games, and it was easy to argue that it was downright racist.

I remember very well having a website dedicated to the role-playing game genre. Of course, we also cover Mass Effect and Skryim, etc., but a lot of the site’s coverage is still devoted to RPGs outside of Japan. It’s been a tough time for the genre.

As that tough time wore on, the JRPG name was used derisively by Western players and even developers. It certainly existed before then – we use “JRPG” to classify games on the RPG site, the year it was founded, which was 2006 – but about five years later, the term The use of the pattern began to turn negative.

This is the time of day for many Japanese developers, especially in the role-playing game space, who are struggling with the transition to HD. This is an era of screaming interview comments about “HD towns are hard” and how “boring” the towns people liked in the old games, to explain why they’re missing in the new games. This is an era of cancellations, delays, and games being remixed into entirely different titles. This dovetailed brutally with the rise of modern Western-made RPGs, with the likes of Bethesda, BioWare, and CD Projekt RED enjoying huge success, to name a few.

“Your game sucks,” Fez creator Phil Fish said to some poor unsuspecting Japanese developers who asked him on a GDC panel what he thought of modern Japanese games.

Fish’s comments could be the standard-bearer for the whole attitude as he doubles down on Twitter. “The game in your country is fucking bad right now,” he said. Jonathan Blow, almost moved to tears, thinks people aren’t seeing a deeper meaning in his navel-style platformer, joining in calling the Japanese game a “boring shell.” Fish later apologized.

Honestly, it’s pretty bad. During this time, I remember forums such as NeoGAF and GameFAQs, as well as certain corners of the gaming medium “JRPG”, being used derisively, and sometimes racistly. “Oh, you like Japanese role-playing games, the kind with a male protagonist as the main character?” That tone. On the RPG site, we get it all the time. So I get it, I know.

I haven’t thought about it all these years, but Yoshida’s comment reminds me of that era. Thinking about it now, it’s no surprise that attitude left a scar and remains a touchy subject, especially within Square Enix, a company that was arguably the hardest hit at the time.

But — wow, this “but” has been brewing for several paragraphs now, hasn’t it? ——But, but… I still use the word JRPG. For me it’s become a useful shorthand – I think it’s the main way it’s used today. Yoshida seems to be basing this, at least in part, on his comments on the term’s now more positive comments as well.

For me now, in Our Lords 2023, JRPG has not meant “Japanese RPG” for a long time. The word has evolved and the cheap xenophobic context is now just etymological. I use the term “JRPG” to refer to the subset of design and style icons that were bred in Japan in the 80s and 90s.

Almost every role-playing game—Eastern or Western—is a descendant of Dungeons and Dragons. But East and West are going in different directions. The West on PC is arguably more faithful to D&D’s origins; leading to things like Ultima, Wizardry, and from there you can trace the lineage of everything from Starfield to Diablo. The Japanese mostly worked on consoles, and their role-playing games changed accordingly; simpler inputs, and a stricter separation between combat, exploration, and story scenes that the hardware required.

Both sides have developed their own tropes and traditions, which is what I really mean by JRPG. In today’s world, which is so international, cross-contamination is natural. We’ve seen a lot of Japanese-made RPGs take important cues from popular Western titles. FF16 was the poster child for this, in fact, but it also went the other way.

Undertale comes to mind in the West, but wouldn’t exist without Earthbound. South Park: The Stick of Truth owes its battles absolutely to Paper Mario — and the SNES golden age of Japanese-made role-playing games from cult series creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone is largely in this way. Chained Echoes recently channeled Chrono Trigger. Ubisoft’s Child of Light owes a lot to Final Fantasy and even Grandia. These games are ubiquitous, though often indie titles. If you asked me what type of games these are, I’d describe them as JRPGs.

For the same reason, I wouldn’t really describe Final Fantasy XVI as a JRPG. I wouldn’t describe any Souls games that way either. Elden Ring does feel like a throwback: it has more in common with traditional Dungeons and Dragons than it did with the later evolution of the “JRPG” era. It has no tropes, so it’s not a JRPG…even though it’s an RPG made in Japan.

Basically, I’ve always thought of the term as something like “CRPG”, “TRPG”, or “ARPG” – descriptors that help narrow down the exact genre and style of a game within a very, very broad genre.

If I say CRPG (Computer Role Playing Game), you probably know what I mean. Isometric views, lots of text boxes and selections, spawning loot, and managing a sizable party—these game-defining things arose when these games were only playable on computers, hence the name. If I say ARPG (Action Role Playing Game), you know I’m talking about visceral real-time hacking, slashing, and maybe shooting, and RPG progression that involves more streamlines than those fuller, richer CRPGs The role process of the system. We could even point to series like Fallout, which started out as a CRPG and turned into an ARPG after Bethesda bought it.

So if I say JRPG, I think most of you see what i mean. I never mind keeping Jay, which originally stood for Japanese, as it paid tribute to where these stylistic elements flourished. Also, I’m a Westerner; so what do I know?

Now the word is everywhere. You can find lists of the best JRPGs in many of the major gaming media outlets, the PlayStation Store has a JRPG Spotlight sale, Xbox’s official blog puts all posts about a particular genre of game in the “JRPG” category…and Nintendo is in there too. It’s a thing.

Terminology that makes developers uncomfortable or evokes negative memories is also not good – so maybe we need a new word. I think it’s fair to say that video games have stretched and transcended old genre definitions for some time now. That’s why we end up with really rubbish type descriptors like “Soulsborne” or “Metroidvania”. Maybe we should add “JRPG” to that list now that all games in this style are not made in Japan anymore.

I thought it was good, but… the thought of a real Japanese developer stopped me. Yoshida’s comment was indeed thought provoking – but I don’t quite know the answer yet.