Interview: Kotaku’s Brian Ashcraft - Part 3

It’s late September, which means that the Tokyo Game Show is upon us! As gaming journalists from around the world converge in Tokyo, I warmed up for Thursday by meeting up with Brian Ashcraft of the Gawker-owned gaming blog Kotaku. Check out parts one and two if you missed them.

Dan Orlowitz: In your history of covering the Japanese side of things, is there a particular disaster that you remember?

Brian Ashcraft: One thing that does stand out, I remember covering the X-Box 360 launch in Japan, and it was like, one of the first big things that I wrote for Kotaku. When that event happened, I went to the one in Osaka’s DenDen town, and other people were saying, “The launch in Japan was a success.” Microsoft said it was a success and they said, “We sold out all of our consoles,” but it was like one store in Shibuya. I went there at 6 in the morning, and the store was open at 10 or 11, and there was no-one in line. And then some guy actually came around maybe 6:30, and he stood in front of the building for a few minutes, and then he left. And by the time the store opened there were 6 people in line. It was one of those things where the guy who works for the store comes running out, and he stopped and went, “There’s no one here.”

Events like TGS are great because you have all the companies there, and press conferences are great because they have new announcements, but the greatest stuff is going commando like product launches or crawling through arcades. That’s the stuff I really love.

DO: Like when I emailed you those PS3 photos. That was amazing for me because the Bic Camera guy dame-ed me out, but I was gonna get those photos one way or another.

BA: That’s one of the things that totally miffs me, how you can’t take pictures at stores, and at TGS you can’t take pictures of screens. Think about it this way; let’s say you go to TGS and you see something really cool, and you want to take a picture of that, and you want to take it home and show it to your friend… or the opposite is true, “This is not so cool.” It’s a control issue, and if you have a top-shelf product and you’re proud of it, you shouldn’t care.

DO: I remember the 007 booth at TGS 2004, there was an interior with guns on the walls and everything, but you couldn’t take pictures of the screen, and it was like, “What is this? That’s why I’m here.”

BA: Yeah, I don’t like that at all. There is for example, these kind of parameters. It doesn’t make any sense.

DO: But that doesn’t happen at all at E3.

BA: Exactly.

DO: I’ve noticed lately that despite the high-def wars that Japanese websites always have such low-def images… do you think that Japanese websites are eventually going to evolve and become as media-rich as American sites?

BA: I think I read somewhere that there are more blogs in Japan than in any other country, but it’s just people writing about their cats. The idea of being an actual publication, breaking news, interviewing people, doing journalism, hasn’t really gotten to people. I think that’s slowly changing here, with regards to high-def I think it’s ironic that most people in Japan have a high-def TV yet the biggest-selling console is not high-def.

DO: The PS2 and…

BA: Of course, the Wii.

DO: Well, Nintendo can do whatever it wants in this country.

BA: It hasn’t always been that way.

DO: Speaking of the olden times, how do you feel about the fact that retro gets more respect in the US in terms of the fact that there’s more older games in the store? I can go buy Famicom carts and systems, where in the US if you look hard you’ll maybe find some N64 stuff.

BA: I think a lot of it is based on the fact that you can’t rent games here, so there’s a huge second-hand market. If we could rent games in Japan, I don’t think you’d have such a good used market. For example, we can rent CDs, so… I don’t know… it’s so weird, isn’t it?

DO: And the second-hand market here is so much cheaper. I remember getting KH:CoM, they slashed about 2000 yen in a week. It’s like, why bother buying it new? It’s always such a high turnover.

BA: People when they buy games, they rent them, and then they sell them back as soon as they beat it. Last week people bought Crisis Core, they’re selling it now.

DO: How do you feel about the fact that arcades are still big here?

BA: It’s awesome, there’s a great arcade near my neighbourhood; I’ll go once or twice a week.

DO: Is mini-Bash gaming yet?

BA: Totally, I mean, I don’t know if it’s a good thing, because he’s 4.

DO: Well, how old were you when you started?

BA: 4-5. It’s kinda funny because it’s so normal for him, because in our house we have all of these systems. His mom - my wife - will sit down and play for two hours. It’s like watching tv for him, where he doesn’t feel like it’s a special thing, so he can pick something up, play it, and turn it off. Like where you can pick up a book, open it, say, “I don’t wanna read it anymore,” and go outside.

DO: Whereas for our generation, we always thought games were a special thing, we had to stop games for homework.

BA: Or, “If you do your homework, you can play games.” It’s kind of, our generation wasn’t the first, but we did come in at ground zero. The generation before us, they grew up on comics, which is why we’re getting all these comic book movies. I think that within the next 5-10 years we’ll start to see better videogame movies. There will be an X-Men moment, where people go, “See, this is how you do it.” I think they’re getting close to it, like Silent Hill; the movie was so-so, right?

DO: But in terms of getting the feel, it was closer than anyone has been.

BA: Right.

DO: Why do you think that in Japan, there aren’t as many game movies being produced?

BA: I think that a lot of the fodder is manga and anime, and people go, “Okay, we’ll turn it into a cartoon or comic book,” and the bigger slicker stuff, like MGS they’ll send to Hollywood. Sending it to Hollywood means sending it to Sony Pictures, which is a Japanese company. I think that we’ll be seeing more of them. We’re getting Castlevania, but it’s Hollywood doing it. I think that’s fine, it’s not a huge loss.

DO: I agree, but it’s interesting that you have American studios doing movies on Japanese games based on American culture.

BA: I’d like to see domestic studios doing movies on domestic games. There’s obviously a lot of good directors in Japan, but the quality is hit or miss.

DO: So earlier you shared the 360 disaster; what’s your personal favorite memory about reporting in Japan?

BA: Nintendo opened a hanafuda museum in Kyoto prefecture about a year and a half ago and I went to the opening, on the first day. It was great, and it was great because it was a beautiful building, all of the staff were wearing beautiful kimonos, and just going into that place, which was built to show off some old cards, and the bottom floor had a bunch of high-def screens embedded in the floor, and you could use a DS to find things on it. So a map of Kyoto City would pop up and you could locate something, so it’s like, “Okay, I want to find Honkyu department store,” so I’d tap it on the DS, and below me a bird would appear and point in a direction, and I’d walk towards that, then I’d get to the Hankyu department store, and I’d stop and do something else.

DO: Wow.

BA: And there were other games, like traditional card games, basically matching games. And it was me and a bunch of old ladies, you know what I mean? It’s not one of these standard Nintendo lines of ‘casual gamers’, you know? It wasn’t about there being a DS, or about Nintendo, it was about… you’re in a room with a bunch of old ladies, playing. And it was a very nice experience. When I look back on that day, I think, “That was a lot of fun,” and after that I had a really great bowl of soba.

DO: Well, you can’t beat that. So, obviously we’re both in town for the big show. What are you looking forward to at TGS?

BA: I’ve been scheduling for 3 weeks so I already feel exhausted. I’m excited to see… well, I saw Rez HD the other day.

DO: Bastard.

BA: Metal Gear Solid, of course. I think it’s a shame that Nintendo’s not here. It’s not so fair to Microsoft, because Microsoft is going to be there and a very small portion of people are going to care. And so, that’s bad for them I guess; basically Sony gets the show. That makes it slightly unbalanced. If Nintendo was there, that would balance it out, and Microsoft would dovetail somewhere. That dynamic would be better. We go to E3 or American shows, and all three are there… we go to TGS and it’s Sony (dot dot dot) and Microsoft.