A comment by John Beeler on Greg Costikyan’s blog entry about GDC and the agonies of independent game development:

As a postscript, I think we’re being fairly PC-centric here. Japanese publishers are generally embedded with some kind of “stuff” that American pubs aren’t; a kind of belief that video games are inherently _art_ on the highest level. Take a gander at Panzeer Dragoon Orta, or Gunvalkyrie, or Guilty Gear XX (as indie a game as one can get with Capcom’s monopoly), or ICO, REZ…the list goes on, and sadly it’s all Japanese.