Assassin’s Creed III creative director Alex Hutchinson believes that Japanese games are given an easier ride by the press compared to Western titles.

In a recent interview with CVG he claimed that the reception of Japanese developed games by the press is always unfairly favorable. When asked how Nintendo continue to resurrect the same franchises over and over he replied, “You want my real answer? I think there’s a subtle racism in the business, especially on the journalists’ side, where Japanese developers are forgiven for doing what they do. I think it’s condescending to do this.”

“Just think about how many Japanese games are released where their stories are literally gibberish. Literally gibberish. There’s no way you could write it with a straight face, and the journalists say ‘oh it is brilliant’,” he added. “Then Gears of War comes out and apparently it’s the worst written narrative in a game ever. I’ll take Gears of War over Bayonetta any time.”

“It’s patronizing to say, ‘oh those Japanese stories, they don’t really mean what they’re doing.’”

Hutchinson quickly added that he’s glad that people are talking about Assassin’s Creed III‘s story, “The best thing about it was that people had a view. That was perfect. People were debating it. We had no interest in writing about the patriots or the defenders of king and country. I mean, these are very boring stories. It’s funny to see these debates online, and we just gave up trying to communicate on it because the game will speak for itself.”

I believe that if a game’s narrative is awful then it doesn’t matter where it is developed, I’m sure there are some journalists who favor Japanese games, but he shouldn’t tar us all with the same brush. To be fair to Hutchinson, I don’t think that he actually meant to use the world racism, I think he was aiming more toward a bias when it comes to Japanese games.

However, I still don’t think that there’s even a bias across the board, like I said earlier there will always be some extremes in the industry, but there’s more than enough level-headed, unbiased opinion to balance it out.

Do you think there is a bias? Let us know in the comments below.