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Video Games - Lost in Translation?
MikeDawg writes "No, it's not a case of 'All Your Base Are Belong To Us'. MSNBC is running an article about the relative popularity of some game hardware and software in the West vs. the East. This article covers the phenomenon of games vs. culture and why video games that do well in the U.S. generally don't do well in Japan, and vice-versa." The piece notes of the Japanese market: "American-made consoles such as 3DO (released in Japan in 1994) and most recently the Microsoft Xbox (released in two years ago) never seem to attract consumers in large numbers. Games such as 'Enter the Matrix' from Atari, and 'The Lord of the Rings' by Electronic Arts, both released [in Japan] last year, often vanish... without leaving a trace."
Games such as 'Enter the Matrix' ... often vanish... without leaving a trace."
:/
I wonder why
Karma: -2^0.5 . Mainly due to the imbibing of dihydrogen monoxide
... The Legend of Zelda. As I recall, that game was made in Japan, by a Japanese developer, even based on many elements from his real life.
Also, as I recall, the game was wildly popular in both regions. Granted, it was a Japanese game ported to the US market. But, aren't most of the best games in the US? My experience with "enter the matrix" was that it sucks!
IMHO, this is another case of results being skewed to some agenda.
bash: rtfm: command not found
Games such as 'Enter the Matrix' from Atari, and 'The Lord of the Rings' by Electronic Arts, both released [in Japan] last year, often vanish... without leaving a trace."
Yea, well, there is a reason. Both of those games were crap here in the U.S. as well.
The reverse is also true, but to a lesser extent. Nintendo are not doing so well with the Gamecube (at least in the UK) and this is sometimes down to the perception that the more cartoon-like graphics visible on Nintendo hardware, like the recent Zelda game, are childish. In the west, violence, aggression, sport and speed sells bucketloads more.
Hmm.. Maybe the writer didnt notice that the 3DO did horrible in the US too... Which might be an indication of why it did bad in Japan. Crap is crap, if you send it to Japan its still crap.
Moo!
Maybe Japanese people are less obsessed with blowing things up pointlessly and hence prefer better quality entertainment with a solid story and more things to do. They consider video gaming much more of an art, an investment, almost a career. Extremely talented video gamers are close to worshipped, especially in strategy games such as StarCraft. Maybe they also like and want to support their own video game industry.
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In addition, "Enter the Matrix" and "The Lord of the Rings" were abysmal games developed quickly to take advantage of the sucess of the movies their based upon. Of course, these movies are exceptionally popular in the US, and it is sure that rabid fans will buy them because they feature their favourite charachters. However, in Japan these movies are not so popular and without playing on the success of the movies, they really do not appeal to many.
Even American game networks such as GameSpy, GameSpot and many others rated these games poorly. As usual, most games that are spin offs of movies suck, god I still get nightmares about the Survivor game. [http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/survivor-ultimate-editi
Don't be suprised that games which base their success on culturally dependent factors such as how well a movie is received, rather than how good the gameplay is don't do well in other places than where the movie is popular.
In Japan, stuff like animae and manga is wildly popular, it features intricate storylines, often times fantasy based. That's one thing the Japaneese get that I've noticed western audiences never seem to notice: You can do ANYTHING with games, movies, stories, or art...so why stick to simulating real life?
The western world, on the other hand, has Hollywood fever, we like car chases and action, we like sports events watched by millions, we like reality. Kind of depressing if you think about it, almost like we're so fed up with REAL reality we find it amusing to play in a pretend-yet-realistic world. Either that or I've also noticed that some Americans, especially the current generation of teens, seem to feel like they're "retarded" or immature for using their imagination. A shame, to say the least.
I won't speculate on what this means culture-wise anymore than I have done at the risk of trolling, but if game-makers want to sell well internationally, they need to realize they'll either need to rely on seperate product lines tailored to the specific culture of the region, or (and this I'd like to see) start to bridge a cultural gap and create a game with elements of both cultures' preferences, and see how well that sells.
I think Japan would enjoy some more excitement action-wise in their games, and the western world needs to learn to explore their imagination more and do some problem-solving/puzzle type stuff. A nice healthy blend.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
My thats taking two stereotypes to extremes. But for argument's sake lets accept them. I would much rather live in a society where sex is open and taken to excess (except rape of course) than one where guns are open and violence is taken to excess.
Obviously the US is not a country where everybody carries guns and shoots everybody else, nor is Japan a country with only perverts and gropers.
but those games sucked. 3DO, while an excellent console, was poorly marketed and suffered from poor business decisions as well as lack of game developers due to Nintendo's monopolizing practices. XBox...come on. The dang thing isn't really doing that well here either is it? Yeah it is surviving, but barely. We were all surprised when Sony was able to make a good console. Xbox is a nice unit to be sure, but it is basically a full fledged computer, not a console.
Who is this that even the wind and the waves obey Him? Surely this computer must submit also!
I'm not trolling, I'm looking for a sincere answer here. I'm one of the many who grew up on Nintendo, but have long since left (since the SNES) because Nintendo seems to be unconscious of our gaming needs.
Why "except rape"? Rape is certainly an excess, as is gun violence. There is no such thing as a society "open" to sex yet immune to rampant sexual violence, pedophilia, and diseases.
I'm not saying violence is better, only that I wouldn't be so quick to choose one over the other. Sex sounds nice, hell who doesn't like sex, but some people have some wicked sexual vices.
Bullshit filter? What are you talking about. Japanese games are every bit as much bullshit as American games. You're telling me Tekken isn't bullshit? And that it focuses on the "art of fighting"? Say what? Japanese fighting games are completely unrealistic, with no relationship to the "art of fighting" whatsoever (sole exception being Bushido Blade).
If you want to focus on the differences in cultures, the article pointed out the much more major one: Americans like to have no boundaries and Japanese like to have clear direction. Japanese players get confused with a lack of defined goals.
As for another one of note, Japanese gamers tend to prefer a sense of community, while Americans tend to prefer a sense of personal success. That only really shows up much in MMORPGs, at least as far as I've seen. Look at Legacy of Blood: it is doing very well in Asian areas (particularly Korea, I think) but has done jack squat in the US. This is most likely because the play requires that you interoperate with other players on a massive scale. You need to have some sort of community. For similar reasons, Japanese MMORPG players are more likely to use something because it looks cool, while American players are more likely to use something because it is useful.
Is it just me or has this horse been beaten enough already?
I'm pretty sure that by now, everyone knows that certain games and genres just don't translate well.
>>"You can head in any direction, 360 degrees. They say, 'What am I supposed to do?
>>Give me hints. Provide me service instead of just throwing me into this arena
>I guess that in Japan, society is a lot more regimented and order-driven than in the
>west, and so they'll seek games that are similar.
I dunno...Mario 64 is pretty `there you go - do what you want`, and that's Japanese AND it was pretty popular.
I take it you've never seen Battle Royale, Suicide Club, and Dead or Alive(all very popular with Japanese youth). Please do not portray Japanese culture as more violent then The States, it is just plain wrong.
Creative Demolition
either. So what?
Has this auther ever considered the possibility that the consoles were designed with certain markets in mind?
Microsoft and Sony could have planned to make systems that would sell most heavily in the US while Nintendo planned to make the GameCube the champ in Asia.
From the introduction of the original PSX until the demise of the Dreamcast there were 3 big players in the console game market. They all did fairly well for most of that time. Because there are enough customers to go around. One could even argue that if a company tried too hard to get all of the customers, they'd lose the ones they already had by taking too many resources away from the things that they were doing well.
MS, Sony and Nintendo are each getting a slice of a really big pie. So what if they targeted their products towards different segments of the market?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Interesting point. But I would offer that they do actually like things that aren't order-driven. A lot of japanese anime focuses on a person who gets tossed into a situation where they have no idea what to do, and they have to figure it out. And I wouldn't be saying that if it wasn't such a stereotyped plot, its ridiculous.
Perhaps, they would prefer a game which didn't make it seem like someone was rating them on how they did (ie. points, score, etc). A pure simulation, but as crazy as they wanted.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
This is the great divide in Japanese versus Western cinema as well. Western/American cinema is representational in that it follows a definable logic, that there are rules that the entertainment follows. One of the greatest crimes an artist can do is "cheat" (i.e. break the rules). The killer chasing the coed is trapped in the sewer, now he's in front of her! This would cause Western audiences to throw a fucking fit. Even the highly fantastic (The Matrix) are judged about being "fair" to their own logic.
In Japan it is the opposite: logic is derived from what is presented to the audience. So if a character walks through a door in his house and ends up on Moon, that is fine since the director is trying to say something. American audiences will expect some sort of rationale for it happening (i.e. that he has some sort of To-the-Moon teleportation door in his house). Japanese art design is authoritative from the creative design of the artist.
This thirst for "realism" based upon some ruleset drives the Western aesthetic. Look at the games listed as most popular in the US: crime, sports, shooters. These are genres that attempt to capture some authenticity of an experience.
On the other side you have the Incomprehensible Japanese Videogame Plot: starts reasonably, long character expository dialogue, wierd imagery, enemies dying, enemies revealing their "true form" . The Japanese game is a vehicle for the gamer to experience the designer's 'vision'. The gamer is along for a ride, and his role suppletory to that. The gaming experience improves by how much the gamer can live up to the creator's designs: how well he can sneak and run around in a box as Snake, how totally he can learn the techniques of Forrest Law, etc.
The US saddles the player with the primary responsibility. He is the engine of the storytelling (generally. Only recently have open-ended games allowed a full realization of this).
What is music when you despise all sound?
"A lot of people [still] resent the idea of shooting people in games.", in Japan and other places that is.
See, here in America, home of 12,000 gun murders a year compared to less than 100 in Japan, this makes complete sense. Saying we Americans are a violent group would be an understatement of the ages.
Liking violent video games is merely a result of the asinine, violent way of life we propel here.
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel Boorstin