[Nomura] And I’m not really sure what the intent behind that is.
You can’t be sure of the “intent” (whatever this esoteric word means) behind anything except your own actions and words. As such, it’s useless to ponder about it.
[Nomura] It just always felt a bit off to me, and a bit weird. I never really understood it – or why it’s needed
JRPG and WRPG are effectively two RPG subgenres. They could as well be called “storyline-driven RPG” and “mechanics-given RPG”, but given the relative prominence of Japanese designers behind JRPG, they ended being labelled based on being made in Japan vs. Europe+Canada+USA.
And just as any words referring to media genres, you aren’t supposed to take those as well-defined groups. It’s perfectly possible to get a bunch of Japanese game designers make a WRPG, or a bunch of Western/Canadian/American ones making a JRPG. In fact you’ll often see mechanics from one subgenre in the other. (Good examples of that would be Pokémon Red/Blue on one side and Undertale on another.)
[article writer] it’s always good to keep in these kinds of perspectives, and consider whether we need to drop it or not.
The association isn’t even remotely othering, given that it highlights the relative prominence of Japanese games in the RPG market.
[Nomura] Certainly, when we started doing interviews for the games that I started making, no one used that term – they just called them RPGs
And I bet that plenty people simply called it a “game”. Context. Use it, Nomura.