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Strangest Japanese Videogame Genres Discussed
Thanks to GameSpy for their column discussing a number of videogame genres that are popular in Japan, but not in the West. Picks include the more obvious such as dating sims ("Players look through the eyes of a young man and try to woo a variety of girls by making the proper dialogue choices"), pet raising sims ("where you raise and, uh, feed an everyday hamster... or a rhinoceros beetle"), and even voyeurism-based titles such as Primal Image, where "...poorly constructed 3D women with frightening facial features played brief animated sequences while you took pictures before the time limit ran out." Have Japanese-only genres such as dating got the capacity to take off in the States?
Pity Gamespy chose to take cheap shots at "those wacky Japanese" instead of actually taking an in-depth look at an interesting genre.
I quote: let there be no mistake that Japanese gamers are a sad, lonesome bunch. Taking advantage of their sheer desperation, the Japanese game market is full of dating simulations.
You might as well say, "let there be no mistake that American moviegoers are a sad, lonesome bunch. Taking full advantage of their sheer desperation, Hollywood regularly releases romantic comedies, and some adult movies even contain pornography!"
Or maybe we should try assuming that American gamers are sad and pathetic because they feel a need to play games involving guns and, in some cases (Postal anyone?) mindless killing sprees? I reckon they're compensating, if you know what I mean?
Well, actually no I don't reckon that. I reckon that people playing violent games can be directly compared with people watching violent movies, and likewise that people playing romantic games can be directly compared with people watching romantic movies.
I'm willing to bet dating sims will take off in America sooner than later. Despite what GameSpy authors would have you believe, they aren't all lame games.
..." articles linked here on Slashdot, I'm tempted to never click a GameSpy link again. Am I the only one?
On a somewhat unrelated note, can someone who knows how to write good articles go work for GameSpy for us? Quote from article: "I didn't like this game, and you won't either. So, there, I'm done." Wow, thanks chief. Honestly between crap like that and their previous 3 or 4 "Top 25
-Rabbit
For dating sims to be popular in North America, they have to be produced from the ground up in English and have competent voice actors. Most dating sims actually have very low production values, which is redeemed by a good story. I imagine translating a game for the western market is actually more expensive then producing it from the ground up. This is the main reasons dating sims are not going to be translated over to the US, however, cultural/linguistic differences in the game itself make it difficult to accurately translate anyway.
I'm willing to bet dating sims will take off in America sooner than later.
Perhaps - but, as your parent suggests, they'll need to be Americanised first.
The problem is that these games are written by Japanese, in Japanese, for Japanese. Let's be frank - most Americans would be hard pressed to point to Tokyo on a map of Japan. How are they going to react to a game which relies on them knowing about, oh, Japanese Valentine conventions, to pick an example which crops up in a lot of dating sims? You can get some way by providing notes - explain what all the foods are, what the national holidays are, and so on. But that will only help for those Americans who want to learn about Japan.
So you Americanise your games. You set them in small-town America; you replace the clothes with American school uniforms, the chopsticks with knives and forks, the shrines with churches or whatever. You don't even bother to translate the tens of thousands of words of text, because it's easier and cheaper to write your own script from scratch. And you end up with a game that fans of the genre will hate, because it isn't Japanese, but American gamers will also hate, because it doesn't have guns and state-of-the-art 3D.
So many things that a few years ago seemed like something only those wacky Japanese would be into (Tamagotchi, Kareoke, Shonen Jump, 60 hour work weeks) quickly have become part of American culture. I was surprised when the concept of "Idol Stars" and game shows revolving around torturing people quickly became part of American television.
Saving Private Ryan : When people talked about that movie, they talked about the Omaha Beach scene. No, they didn't talk about how they went through the dog tags or how the sniping scene ended with the German sniper getting shot through his scope.
Titanic : What guy went to see the love story? Guys went to see the boat sink. Girls went to see Leonardo DiCaprio.
The Two/Twin Towers : The huge battle for Helm's Deep. Nuff said.
That said, how many Japanese games do you see trying to replicate a Doom/Serious Sam-style of gameplay? We get slow action paced/FMV action scenes in the Final Fantasy series, we get small simple battles in Zelda which end up being a bore, and hack-and-slash FPS/3rd-person shooters like Kingdom Hearts.