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Japanese Survey Shows Tricky Market For Western Games
Thanks to GameSpot for their article discussing the results of a survey of over 1,000 Japanese gamers, conducted at this year's Tokyo Game Show. Among the more telling trends was a definite lack of interest in Western-developed games: "The percentage of respondents currently own non-Japanese software? Just over 1 percent. And only 4 percent expressed interest in buying such software in the future." The survey also revealed the true dominance of the RPG in Japan, as "...39 percent of respondents identified it as their favorite genre. This is far ahead of every other genre: strategy gaming, the second most popular choice, tallied only 7 percent of the votes." Finally, although it may be that Tokyo Game Show attendees "tend to be hardcore gamers", thus skewing the results, "ownership of [Xbox] ranked lower than five consoles that aren't even in production", including the Dreamcast and Saturn.
I can't say that I am familiar with many titles from Japan that are not written for the US market. Is this common or am I unique?
"Anything is possible with enough programmers, time and pizza." (Substitute caffeine for time as needed.)
Japanese players tend to like heavy storyline based games. (See : Entire FF series 4 and up, Dragon Quest/Warrior series, and Zenosaga)
Americans generally "go it alone" when it comes to games with or without teamplay. (See : A random public server of CounterStrike and Metroid Prime)
Japanese/Asian players tend to like heavy teamplay when applicable. (See : Lineage 1/2 and FFXI)
Until both sides are able to create a game that can successfully balance the differences in gaming preferance, both Japanese and American games/systems will always find a lack of preferance in the other's country. I think Square (not Square-Enix) tried to do this with Final Fantasy The Spirits Within but screwed up in the process. Why? Love based main characters (American favorite) , an "evil" leader (that military guy, both Japanese and American) , and the overly wrapped storyline and explanation (Japanese style). Either way you look at it, there has been almost no game that satisfies both cultures' style of gameplay. I think Square got lucky with FF7 and thats why people have been bitching about the series doing badly since then.
Just what the hell are you trying to say? You make no sense.
"IMHO the Japanese are really a big bunch of different people from much of the world culturally."
Your wording here is atrocious. I think you're trying to say that Japan is different from the rest of the world, but what exactly do you mean by the "rest of the world"? Try to realize that America is not "the rest of the world." Do you think that most Americans understand more than a few words of any language other than English?
This article isn't about translating games into Japanese. It's about how Western-style games are NOT INTERESTING to the Japanese culture. Or is that what you're trying to say?
I understand very well that America is not the rest of the world. I'm not from the Americas.
In my country there are 3 major cultures (all nonwestern), and a few others. The Japanese culture still seems to be significantly more different to me especially for everyday-life things.
I most certainly wouldn't say "excuse me" to my neighbour when I sneeze in my own apartment, even if my neighbour can hear me. And a non-japanese neighbour will most certainly not say "it's okay I didn't hear you".
Toilets in the "rest of the world" don't have a special button (amongst ten others?) to make a flushing noise (no water, just noise) in order to mask certain noises without having to waste water.
Where would you see a shop assistant bow to you and follow you still bowing (and thanking you) all the way out of the shop just because you bought a pencil or something.
They sure seem more different to me, than a Yank, Brit, Indian, Malay, Chinese, Korean, Aussie, Kiwi, German, French, South African.
So hey if they're not interested in the same games and other things I'm not surprised.
But seems a fair number like baseball of all things!
Good thing, neither would the Japanese.
I can see to some extent where you're coming from, though I get the idea that you think the Japanese are a lot stranger than they really are (I know I had pretty high expectations of weirdness when I came to Tokyo, which I realized were unfounded the longer I lived here). I'm not sure where you're from, but as an American, I'd say that Indians and Chinese seem the most different from me. And, somehow, I suspect that FPS are not the game of choice in India.
So, yes, the Japanese are culturally different than Americans, and as such like different games than the Americans.
What I think is a more interesting issue is: If Japanese don't buy American games because of the cultural differences, why do Americans buy so many Japanese games?
As an expat living in Japan for 8 years, and a former English teacher, I can say: it's partly the teachers, but mostly the students. I've taught kids that rocked in English. They had the same teachers, the same textbooks, the same resources. The difference was, they really wanted it. They studied with the goal of long term memorization, not just enough to pass the midterm test. They watched English language TV. They voluntarily talked to native speaker English teachers.
99% of Japanese will tell you that they want to be able to speak English. Suggest to them that they study vocab, or watch a movie in English, or practice speaking, or go overseas, and all of a sudden they don't seem so interested.
I've heard plenty of people blame the education system, but from my experience, it's more likely that they just weren't paying attention, and figured one day the language fairy would give them fluency in their sleep.
Any tips on learning Japanese (spoken form)? Enough to get around and not offend too many people. I don't think I can manage the written form :).
The Japanese language (spoken) hasn't been overly difficult for me to learn. Compared to english, it's much more regular, both in terms of pronounciation and the spectacular number of odd conjugations we have. I pity anyone who tries to learn english as a second language; our grammar is downright malevolent. I think a sticking point for many people may be the Subject-Object-Verb word ordering, but if you've ever programmed in Forth or used an HP calculator, it comes off as fairly intuitive. There's also a surprising (or not) number of english (and some dutch and german) loan words in Japanese.
In terms of the written language, the kana (katakana and hiragana, both syllabaries) are quite simple, and can be mastered within a week. The Kanji (the chinese characters) are obviously much more difficult, as you have to memorize around 2,000 of them to be basically literate, but it bears remembering that some linguists believe that learning it is no more difficult than learning english spelling, which boils down to memorizing arbitrary letter sequences with, in many cases, no relation to their pronounciation or meaning. The Nakama textbook and it's workbook are the best intro to the language that I've come across.
You asked: If Japanese don't buy American games because of the cultural differences, why do Americans buy so many Japanese games?
I think because the Japanese write certain games with the American and European market in mind, and the Americans don't write games with the Japanese market in mind. In other words, the Japanese are currently just better at crossing cultural borders.
Just because US companies are hugely successful in selling games, movies, music, etc. in many other cultures doesn't mean they are specifically designing products for other cultures. The US just has a huge internal market, huge budgets, and therefore good entertainment products. It also happens to have strong historical and cultural links with many other wealthy cultures. Japan has a sizable internal market, which translates to competitive budgets, and is therefore hard to be successful in. India and China will also get harder as they get wealthier. Many other cultures don't have that internal market and just adapt to a dominant culture.
(One of the reasons I like some low-budget European RTS games is that it gives me the opportunity to play the Dutch on a European map. Some US games go as far as making the Netherlands part of France on maps, for instance, and that is definitely a sales mistake in this particular market. US game makers make these Europe-centred games for the US market. Strong sales in Europe or former colonies of European countries are little more than a side effect.)
The relevant factors for success for entertainment products in foreign markets is 1) relative size of home market to foreign market (no control and anti-symmetric), 2) cultural affinity with foreign market (no control and symmetric), 3) effort in adapting to foreign market (under control). From the US point of view factor 1 is dominant in the case of Japan.
An example is movies: Dutch productions are some 10 times more profitable relative to budget than American productions inside the Netherlands. Still only 3 Dutch movies make the top 10 for the year on average, and producing a Dutch movie with a budget of a few millions is a highly risky exercise because you absolutely must reach a sizable proportion of the population to survive as a producer.
The most profitable movies made here are weird movies like Antonia that do pretty badly here, get an Oscar for best foreign movie, and lure a few million Americans and Europeans to the cinema to watch an 'art' movie.
Japan can be a very good market for westerners: The two biggest attraction parks in Japan are Disneyland Tokyo and Netherlands-history-themed park Huis ten Bosch in Nagasaki, after all. From the Netherlands point of view (again relative to home market size) Japan is a very important foreign market and no more difficult to access than the US or even France for entertainment products like music.
It is unfortunate that the Japanese are sometimes portrayed as 'xenophobic' just because they are capable of producing a lot what they like for themselves. In the Netherlands people would moan the loss of Dutch culture if an American attraction park even dared to compete successfully with the venerable Efteling. The Japanese are in fact remarkably open to exploring exotic Western culture if presented the right way. But you would probably agree to that.