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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?
When I was in Asia over a year ago I bought a couple of them... Guess what? Turned out that more than one of them had very adult material in them. However, it was interesting nevertheless to see how they differ from us when it comes to taste in gaming. The biggest hits in '99 such as Unreal Tournament or Quake 3 might just've been as popular as a certain tentacle rape games in Japan (sorry, I just had to cram in "tentacle rape" somewhere in this post...)
I've only played a couple of English translated dating games, and they were also adult oriented. Kind of sad since I'd like to see these type of weird genres become more popular here for the sake of stirring things up in the market. We're too stuck in the moment where everybody wants bullet time, realistic physics and graphics with heavy guns and big, powerful explotions.
The Sims is a fresh breath of air, very revolutionary too. But... There's just too little experimentation these days in the market. Which is really sad. Oh well.... Maybe some day we'll see a company spawn a growing market of translated japanese dating sims. For once I'd like to play one without it ending up having sex with the girl in the end (and no tentacles!).
What's so bad about being lazy? What if there was a war and nobody showed up?
You may have missed the daughter raising sim Princess Maker 2
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other disgusting hentai games also reviewed
http://www.somethingawful.com/hentai/
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
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
My other post here says why I think Gamespy's assessment of dating sims is [censored], so here are some links for anyone who wants to find out about them from people who don't think they're only for the terminally weird:
The ren'ai games mailing list.
You already read Megatokyo, right? Check the forums: the "dating sims" forum there includes plenty of information, as well as a FAQ which covers the subject in some depth.
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.
Also, I'd be interested in a REAL perspective on who actually plays dating sims in Japan, as opposed to some blatantly offensive GameSpy article. Is it a publicly accepted genre? Or do people get mocked for playing them over there as they would inevitably be if they played them over here?
The last reason I don't think we should Americanize dating sims just yet is that the people who create mainstream entertainment in our culture still have yet to learn how to tell a good story. I mean, take a look at Hollywood for example, every now and then they turn out something decent, but for the most part its crap. Same with video games. And of all the types of games out there, dating sims require some of the BEST storytelling. You simply can't compensate in a dating sim with better graphics.
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