"Gameplay is Japanese developers' strongest suit": Indie developer behind incredible anime FPS series reckons Japanese devs keep flubbing shooters by chasing Call of Duty too hard

The developer of indie FPS Beyond Citadel has shared why they believe the Japanese games industry never really nailed the FPS formula.

Even going back to the roots of the genre, the FPS has predominantly been made in the west, with the likes of Id Software, Bungie, Rareware, and the roster of Call of Duty development teams and spinoffs like Respawn being the names who revolutionized the genre. I pride myself on knowing a bunch of obscure games, but when I think of Japanese-developed FPS games I can only conjure up Jumping Flash and Resident Evil Village, which are platformer and horror games respectively.

The developer of the indie FPS games The Citadel and Beyond Citadel, Doekuramori, spoke about this on Twitter (translated by Automaton and machine translation). The developer speaks about how Japanese attempts at the Call of Duty style failed because "Japanese developers tried playing in a field that they were inherently not great at, and they failed."

They elaborate, saying that Call of Duty's success came from "how effortlessly cool it was" thanks to the production value, adding: "Entertaining the player with production, as CoD-like games should do, means that you have to sacrifice the gameplay. It's one or another.”

They add "gameplay is Japanese developers' strongest suit," and that to succeed in the FPS market, Japanese developers need to "stop trying to make CoD." Furthermore, they say: "Without its production, Call of Duty would just feel empty. Just because something was popular, doesn’t mean it needs to be copied."

While you're here, why not check out The 25 best FPS games to play in 2025?