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Japanese Not That Interested In Online Videogaming?
Thanks to Video-Fenky for its weblog entry detailing the results of a Japanese survey about online gaming. When asked: "Have you ever played a premium online game?", 54.3% of the 300 Japanese net users surveyed said "No, and I have no plans to", increased from the previous year's survey and "now the majority." In addition, the question "What do premium online games need to become more popular?" elicits 56.0% suggesting "Better prices", and 20.3% want "Better payment systems." Apparently: "The [Nikkei-relayed report] concludes that while Japan's net infrastructure has improved greatly over the course of a year, work remains to be done on more useful payment systems and more interesting content."
(See subject.)
Game companies were all going nuts over the obscene amount of money they could make via MMORPG subscriptions. Why Americans can put up with that crap, I'll never know.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
The survey actually says that 50 some odd percent of japanese are disinterested in "premium" online games. "Premium" online games include Evercrack, Unfair Online, etcetera. This does not include XBox live, by far the best thing that has happened to online gaming. You'll note that XBox live is also not as successful in Japan as it is in other places, largely due to the XBox not being as successful in Japan. *
Overall, though, I can't say that I disagree with the assertion... The American MMPO premium game (with a few exceptions) was refined perfectly into The Sims Online: a game where social interaction collides with repetitive, trivial tasks to produce something roughly devoid of fun... certainly not fun enough to warrant a monthly fee. Now, if you take a Japanese consumer and put them down in front of Everquest, a largely english RPG appealing to American sensibilities about personal responsibility, bootstraps, yadda yadda, do you think it will resonate with them? Do you think it will resonate with them enough to convince them to pay A: 50 dollars for the application, B: 15 dollars every month, and C: 50 more dollars every 6 months for the expansion pack?
Furthermore, if you look at Japanese RPG's vs American RPG's, the American RPG's are about hard work and character building through self-improvement. Japanese RPG's on the other hand are about fulfilling the destiny of becoming the savior of the world. I've played a lot of Role Playing Games in my day, and I can't think of a single Japanese developed game in this genre where the character wasn't pre-ordained to become the savior of the would through birthright or destiny... A Superman complex, if you will. American RPG's are filled with characters that rose to heroism in the face of adversity. Like Batman. Characters that are normal people who do extrordinary things because of the circumstances they find themselves in. This distinction, while slight in a movie or single-player realm, is significant in online RPGs. You can't have 100,000 characters running around who are all Jesus. Even in City of Heroes everyone is just a normal, hardworking crime fighter.
I'm not saying that no games have cross cultural appeal, but delivering what the Japanese normally want impossible in a MMPORPG. Add in the fact that MMPORPG atrophy is high (most of the people I know have played a MMPORPG, and gave it up due to waning interest), and we can't even get right what "we" want. I'm sure that Japan will someday become a bastion of online gaming equivalent of Korea, but they need more Japanese developers than just SEGA and Square trying to push the boundaries and explore what makes the games appeal to the Japanese gamer.
* Full disclosure: I've come to respect the XBox, but I would hate to see my favorite pastime handed to a serially convicted monopolist.
The ______ Agenda
I'm a bit bewildered by how we got from the figures in the article to the conclusion that "the Japanese aren't interested in online gaming".
54.3% wouldn't be interested in a "premium" online game. I can only assume this refers to subscription based titles such as Everquest, Star Wars Galaxies and Final Fantasy XI. This leaves 45.7% who potentially would be. These figures do not sound massively out of line with the figures in the US and European gaming markets. By their very nature, as well as their reputation, subscription-based massively multiplayer games are going to exclude a pretty large section of the gaming market. In particular, penniless students are going to be put off by the price, under-18s are going to be put off by the fact that many of them require a credit card for subscriptions (which usually then involves getting dad to pay) and then you've got the people who just plain prefer another genre.
Final Fantasy XI has a huge Japanese player base, despite broadband being pretty much essential for it. I've said for some time that the reasons that the Japanese don't tend to play online games as much is that they just don't get online games marketed at them. The PC and the X-Box, which are far and away the most popular (and in my opinion, the best) platforms for online gaming have a negligable presence in the Japanese market, by virtue of the nature of the games sold on them. When Sony/Squenix finally sold a game that both appealed to Japanese tastes and required online play, the results were spectacular. For Nintendo to continue to ignore the potential of online gaming in Japan is nothing short of madness.