Stranger in a Strange Land (Part 2)
Last week I noticed that my playing habits were heavily slanted (on a measure of 10 to 1) towards titles coming out of the East (primarily from Japan) over anything from the West (North America and Europe). That sparked a seemingly simple question: Why?
There is no easy answer. It’s not “is this black and is this white”? It’s “why do I feel this way about games?” Of course, that doesn’t mean I won’t step up to the line and try to tackle it…
After some pondering, I’ve thought of a number of reasons. None of these answer everything, and of course I’m painting with a broad brush here… Certainly there are Western games that succeed on some of these points and there are also Japanese games that fail on some. That’s a given. First, some quick thoughts:
- I don’t care about online multiplayer. I like to play multiplayer with people in the same room, but online just doesn’t appeal to me. Unfortunately, that pretty much knocks out the appeal of most recent western games: Gears, Halo, CoD, Half-Life 2 (that is, primarily Counter-Strike Source and Team Fortress 2) all factor multplayer heavily into their value (or are entirely dependant on it in some cases). The problem is that since that doesn’t hold any interest to me, all these games just drop off my radar.
- Western Storytelling is Stale. Some of you may hate the writing that comes out of the East, and that’s fine… it’s a mater of taste. (Although personally, I gotta respect anyone who can make a guy named Cao Pi a badass.) The big deal, to me, is that it seems like we’re only writing modern war and horror stories in the West any more… Well, God of War and Oblivion at least do fantasy, and GTA has its niche, so all hope is not lost… but for every one of those there are four CoDs, Halos, Metal of Honors, and Half-Lives. It feels like they’re all war stories! Sometimes people shoot each other with an M1 Garand, and sometimes they use lasers. Sometimes they shoot aliens rather than Nazi’s. But in the end, it all feels the same to me. (Caveat: This is FAR more endemic to the top Western titles than all Western titles.)
- F*ck Realism. It’s the Bully vs. Persona argument… Both are games about high school. In one you go to class, cause mayhem, and such… maybe you kiss a boy if you want to piss off your local bible-thumper. In the other you go to class and then fight freaking demons in a secret extra hour of every day that only certain special people are aware of. Seriously: do homework vs. battle demons? Is this even hard?!? I’ll take the demons every time! It’s kind of a subset of the point above. Western games seem to be safe and grounded. Japanese companies are taking more risks and that’s a good thing. They’re doing way better at keeping things fresh. Seriously, try to pitch a game about teenagers trying to balance school, socializing, and battling demons in the US… Nope, never going to happen. Yet, it did well in Japan, and has reviewed very well in the States.
- Lack of Polish: This is particularly true of European development (sorry guys)… While there’s some really interesting things going on there, I find myself becoming conditioned to not trust it. There are ridiculously easy examples like Gothic 3 even Overlord, which I liked and played all the way through (almost twice since my save got corrupted!), but was plagued by issues that never should have made it to release. Hell, I’m on my third copy of the game and it killed my first 360! For the most part I’m just seeing a higher level of polish coming out of Japan. Certainly there are absolutely rock solid games from the West, but when I’m looking for a combination of something different and polished I can find it coming out of Japan… I almost never see it in the West.
Now, moving on, everything before this is just a tally mark… They are all little things that almost subconsciously direct me towards purchases coming from Japan. Imagine little tiny weights on my mental scale, where Japanese decisions tend to add to the buy side, and Western ones tend to miss the scale altogether. Again, it’s not that I don’t recognize that there are good games out there from any source, both quality-wise and commercially. It’s just that they hold almost no interest to me!
But this next point is the big one… practically a post in post. The number one reason I play ten Japanese games for every Western one is:
I don’t care about guns.
Though I’m sure the dozen guys around the office playing Team Fortress 2 over lunch as I write this will disagree, I’m going to come out and say it anyway: I’m sorry guys but gun combat’s just not that cool to me. I greatly prefer hand-to-hand combat… It’s just much more thrilling to me. Unfortunately, it seems like nearly every western game out there focuses on ranged combat. The core issue is simply that fighting hand-to-hand is cooler than fighting with guns. Spin your sword around your head in a flourish, don’t lose your balance, and BAM! …you look cool. Spin your gun around your head and fire and, well, you look like an idiot (even if you do keep your balance.) Beyond that, the characters are up close and personal almost by definition, so the player can see much more of the action. When I play Soul Calibur my opponent and I are face-to-face and take up a lot of the screen… I can really see and enjoy everything that goes on. When I play Halo, I often die to an opponent I don’t even realize is there. Yeah, okay, so I suck at FPSes… But wait! If sucking at a fighting game gives me a superior dramatic experience compared to when I suck at a shooter, isn’t that a critical distinction? And don’t even get my started on circle strafing and bunny hopping…
Perhaps one answer is an Equilibrium game… now that might be cool… Why? Well, because Christian Bale’s hot… no no no… wait, that’s not right… It’s because Gun-kata was actually a fairly successful attempt to import the style of hand-to-hand combat into ranged combat.
There might be some potential here in creating a really overly-stylized experience. But wait, there’s still a problem. If you’ve seen the movie, then truly consider the shootouts: all of the most effective scenes in Equilibrium occurred at a range of about, say, four paces (if that). They were basically melees, with guns. Badass melees with guns, absolutely, but even they didn’t solve the core problem. Equilibrium just dodged it instead. (Ed: Pun intended? –Patrick)
- My Solution
So how do we address the core problem? Well, not like you’d expect… I’m coming back to my thesis here: There are people who really like these games (seriously, just how many pre-order’s does Halo 3 need? It’s just not right.) So the answer of course is not to stop making War/Horror games with guns, the solution is making… well… anything else! There’s some danger in the Western industry right now and Halo 3 is only going to make it worse. We see Psychonauts fail and Halo pre-sell a couple million copies and suddenly people are saying “hey, let’s make Halo too!” The next thing you know, there are no Psychonauts being made… just Halo, Hahlo, Haalo, xHalox, Madden, and Haloo. When game development starts too look like the newbie zone of an MMO we’ve got a problem.
So, to all the gamers out there I say this: Support your art. Try to make a point of picking up a game every once in a while for the art. If you’re not doing this, you’re really missing out. Games like Okami deserve to be bought. Looking Glass should never have died. Even more importantly: get the word out to your friends. Lets face it, if you’re reading this you’re in the hardcore of the hardcore and you should already know about these cool games, but make sure you mention it to the people who don’t. A simple, “Hey, have you checked out the Eternal Sonata Demo?” could save us all from Hahloo 42.And to the industry, myself included, I ask this: Dear Industry,Please stop making the same f’ing games over and over again. Action movies are cool, sure, I get it… but so are comedies. Or Lord of the Rings. Or even f’ing Harry Potter! Currently I see my options as:
- Shoot Para-Military Guy
- Shoot Scary Alien
- Throw Pass
Until this changes I’m going to be playing for our competitors and buying Japanese!
Sincerely,
Rick
a squeaky wheel in the machine
[Ed: Check out Rick’s preceding article here. Patrick adds a followup article here.]
September 25th, 2007 at 6:35 am
Ok, I get that you don’t like Western games. A good follow up article for this would explain how your feelings on Eastern games influences your work at Surreal. Games like The Suffering and Drakan are about as far from the Japanese style as you can get. If a designer isn’t in the position to work on a game with no guns in it or one revolving around adorable demon slaying school children what should they do?
September 25th, 2007 at 7:47 am
I agree and I don’t. There are those “art-ier” games that we all hate to see fail, but writing off entire genres is a pretty fine line. To me I could easily dismiss Eternal Sonata as “yet another Japanese-style RPG” just as you seem to write off games as “yet another military-themed FPS.” It’s even true when you add swords into the mix, as there are plenty of rather uninspired games like Dynasty Warriors 13,402 Xtreme to choose from.
All genres will have countless “me-too” games as well as those that at least attempt to do something different.
But like I said, I ultimately agree - it’s sad to see attempts to do something different like Psychonauts, like every LGS game, like Max Payne 2 bomb commercially. But ultimately my personal judgement scale will always be “Is it fun? Is it worth owning?”. Psychonauts was a blast - due to length and difficulty though, I also have to admit that it’s a GREAT rental.
Keep up the good work though. I’m glad people are thinking (and writing) about games this way.
-Parker
September 25th, 2007 at 7:56 am
Interesting. I disagree wtih some of this, agree with some. Sounds like I’ve got work to do on a post of my own.
Hey, I like Western games, and I like Japanese games. While I understand that you are describing your own preferences, it’s just as easy to describe Japanese games in similar language. In many ways they fall into their own (albeit alien) ruts: The inexplicable rise of card-based game mechanics, the encounter-based RPG, gothic fantasy… Of course if you like that stuff over guns, that will certain put Japanese games over the top.
Stories are a topic worthy of discussion. While I’m not excessively knowledgable about Japanese culture, their stories tend to descend into their own cliches such as angst-ridden main characters, preachy monologues, misplaced ultra-cute sidekicks, and existential, introspective endings. However, as I grazed on in my post on Children on Men, Japanese game storytelling does have conventions that do make their stories more compelling.
While traditional western cinema might tell us that subtlety, slow tension-building and character depth are all virtues, these techniques are often hostile to an average game-player’s patterns. Delivering a punchline to a joke that was set up only ten minutes of cinema-time ago doesn’t take into account if the player quit and saved and waited for two weeks before picking up the game again. The player might miss the several subtle cues that told us that this character is already dead, or whatever.
Compare that to an average Japanese NPC… with few exceptions they tend to wear their heart on their sleeve and vomit forth their deepest desires completely unbidden. As crazy as that is, and whether or not it repels and Western players, it is effective in the game medium.
September 25th, 2007 at 9:19 am
I’ve also noticed a huge difference in Eastern versus Western storytelling approaches — in movies, TV and comics as well as games. Scott McCloud’s “Understanding Comics” — a book about the art of sequential storytelling, but insightful enough about design principles in general that it’s often used in classrooms as a how-to for graphic user interface design — devotes an entire chapter to the often subtle, often glaring differences between Eastern and Western storytelling techniques. A lot of it comes down to pacing (what is deemed important to the progression of the story), but interestingly, there are even huge differences in terms of character arcs (what the reader/viewer/player considers a satisfactory conclusion).
Look at the South Korean film Oldboy–it’s gained cult classic status in the West, but has a depressing ending no Hollywood film would be caught dead using.
September 25th, 2007 at 3:45 pm
Quick reply:
Well, yeah, this is one man’s opinion. Not the opinion of Surreal or Midway, etc.
But I’m obviously not alone. Final Fantasy moves a lot of copies in the West. Halo doesn’t move much in Japan however. There’s something there and it’s worth attacking. But you’re right that there’s just as much value in a Halo fanatic talking about why Japanese games aren’t their cup of tea than there is in an Okami/Final Fantasy/Dynasty Warriors/anything by Altus fanatic telling you that Western games are disinteresting.
But I’ll await Pat’s rebuttal, when he can get a few minutes, before I’ll attempt a full counter offensive.
Oh, but guns are still inherently less interesting than hand-to-hand violence. Nothing you can do about that. Case closed.
September 26th, 2007 at 9:51 am
Rick, you should sit by Ian and learn the way of the gun.
Here is my take: I love both! The East and West offer something different which is a very good thing. Thank god everybody doesn’t do it the same. I love American shooters like Half Life and Call of Duty, but I also love artsy Japanese games like Okami and Ico. I’ve loved Soul Calibur and I’ve loved Mortal Kombat. Solid Snake kicks ass, but so does Sam Fisher. Pac Man and Donkey Kong were awesome, but Defender and Asteroids were as well. Swords, guns - take it all in. Both the East and West have a lot of great things to offer us gamers. Dismissing either side means you are only experiencing half the picture.
East vs West? Nah. East AND West.
September 26th, 2007 at 3:22 pm
I’m having a lot of problems with this article because it’s not really offering a critical view of the differences between Eastern and Western game design. You’re not saying “Western games focus on X, Eastern games focus on Y, here are the strengths and weaknesses of both mechanisms for approaching game design…” as much as you’re saying “I like Eastern games more than Western games, and here is what Western games have to do (i.e., become Eastern games) in order to appeal to me.” Which is, perhaps, what you meant to do. But it does not address how to improve game design as a whole, and in fact narrows the whole thing down to “I agree” or “I disagree.”
All of the things you noted have extremely easy constructed and equally valid counterpoints from the other end of the spectrum. Especially for the storytelling point:
”
2. Eastern storytelling is stale. The stories almost always revolve around a bunch of kids or teenagers (variously with oversized swords or giant mechas) setting out to save the world. Rather than serving as interesting characters, most characters in such games can be reduced to over-used stereotypes. There are entire LISTS of such cliches across Japanese games, especially RPGS. On the other hand, we have games like Half-Life 1 & 2, hailed by numerous game designers and writers as a pinnacle of immersive storytelling in videogames, and Planescape: Torment, a game whose story dwarfs any JRPG in terms of scope and complexity.
”
And you ask at the end that Western game developers to stop making the same game, but that’s hardly fair. One could just as easily point to the absurd number of sequels made in Japan (Final Fantasy, anyone?) and the ridiculous over-saturation of JRPGs, that vary no more from one game to the next than the various kinds of first-person and third-person shooters made in the West. You can point to Katamari Damacy, Loco Roco, BitGenerations, Cave Story, La-Mulana; people who prefer Western games can point to Spore, Viva Piñata, Geometry Wars, the Trilby series, Knytt Stories…
To the extent that Japan is more creative, and I do think there may be some merit to that in terms of gameplay alone - particularly with the rise of the Wii - it’s a reflection of a number of things; the market, for example. The Japanese market demands different games than the Western market, and many times what seems quirky, fun Japanese games to us may not always be as successful as one might expect in Japan. Ouendan has gained endless acclaim from importers and review sites in the West, but never really gained much traction in Japan.
I don’t think Western developers lack imagination so much as they’re catering to Western publishers, who demand games that appeal to mainstream Western gaming sensibilities. But the fact that these games are being made or don’t appeal to you doesn’t in any way make them worse than their Japanese counterparts. It simple means you greatly prefer Eastern game design, which is, obviously, perfectly acceptable.
September 27th, 2007 at 1:05 am
I’m on the other end of the spectrum here. Huge swords, big eyes and crazy evil villains are not my cup of tea. I’ll take baldure’s gate over final fantasy any time. They have their own clichés that seem fresh to us. Like using little girls as horror elements. Seems new to us but comes from old legends and is as cheesy to them as our hitchhiker/crazy killer character in horror.
September 27th, 2007 at 11:03 am
Todd:
You get a free pass as you’ve backed me on Okami before.
But I was watching Matt play Halo 3 by your desk yesterday. I saw the intro and went, “Hey, that’s pretty cool. Maybe I should pick it up after all.” (Note: I have player Halo 1 & 2 to completion.) And then he got to the first fire fight: high res graphics reduced to making some particle effects obscure a tiny guy in the distance and then frantically spinning around wildly as a drop ship ambushed him. My interest just died and I went home and played Warriors Orochi (which I’m sure is pulling in 60% reviews to Halo 3’s silly 97% average or so).
Why is this? Meh. I don’t know for sure. That’s kind of what I’m trying to fully discover so that we can make use of it next time we make a game with lots of gunplay.
September 27th, 2007 at 11:10 am
TM:
It’s ironic that you should come to that conclusion as that’s basically the entire point of the post.
You can’t say Halo’s a bad game. You just can’t without being a complete idiot. The series gets the trifecta: ratings, fan support, and dollars.
But I’ll come out and admit that the only reason I played Halo 2 was because I was interviewing with Bungie. The real issue is not that we, as western developers, are making bad games. It’s that the games that come out and do well are so terribly similar. Grom mentioned Baldur’s Gate. I happen to consider Baldur’s Gate 2 the best RPG of all time (although the end has a stupid logical flaw *shakes fist at Bioware*). But name three RPGs that have come out of the west in the last two years that have done well?
….
You can’t. Because Oblivion is the only one. Yet there are a ton of FPS and third person action gun games. (Note: I’m using RPG as the easy example, not saying that everyone should be making them.)
That, right there, is the point. The question then becomes, simply: Why?
Is it that there are built in predilections in our heads as Western developers that we have to break? Is it simply that publishers don’t let the developers make anything else? Or is it just that marketing can’t figure out how to sell anything else? There are tons of possibilities. So what can we, as designers, learn from that.
How can we draw from some of those elements without alienating the millions of Halo players? My thoughts on gun play are one attempt to answer that. But it’s a hard quest. REALLY HARD because you’re trying to distill ingrained personal opinion and get something out of it that you can actually use. Since it’s my job though it’s worth doing; even though I’m pretty much set here at Surreal’s as our secret project is going to rock and break new ground regardless and the future looks just as bright.
-Rick
PS: I won’t go into detail so I don’t derail the point. But a big “thumbs down” on Half-Life 2’s storytelling.
September 27th, 2007 at 1:58 pm
Personally, I’ve found more fun and innovation since playing more indy games… I get just as easily bored with an ‘Eastern’ game as a ‘Western’ one!
September 30th, 2007 at 2:36 am
“Seriously: do homework vs. battle demons? Is this even hard?!? I’ll take the demons every time! It’s kind of a subset of the point above. Western games seem to be safe and grounded. Japanese companies are taking more risks and that’s a good thing. They’re doing way better at keeping things fresh.”
That’s hardly fresh or risky. Witches and demons in schools is the theme of half of japanese anime comedy, action and especially porn. It’s been done to death and then beaten with a stick. It might be something new to you but I wouldn’t give credit to the developers.
“Final Fantasy moves a lot of copies in the West. Halo doesn’t move much in Japan however. There’s something there and it’s worth attacking.”
Japanese consumers are less open to different experiences than western consumers?
September 30th, 2007 at 10:35 pm
As for Half-Life 2’s storytelling, this is the sort of thing I was getting at:
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20060426/noyle_01.shtml
Although there are, of course, different approaches.
October 1st, 2007 at 10:45 am
I have to say I’ve thought about the same subject before, only from the “other side”, if you want to put it that way (and after all, what would be the point of replying if I agreed with you?
)
To me, the difference between Eastern and Western “Gaming Cultures” is, at least in origin, a consequence of the different development of PCs and consoles troughout gaming history. If you think about it, older games like chess, checkers, Go, rock-paper-scissors and the such were played everywhere, even before the first computer ever existed. But then, around the 80’s-90’s, the west sort of “preferred” PCs and the east sticked to consoles.
Then, games got specialized according to the favorite platform of the time being (for example, most japanese RPG’s don’t requiere a mouse to be played, whereas most western RPGs do, the same as the “Tactics” type of games vs Starcraft, etc)
It is my belief that with the internet’s spread, people became aware of that divergence, and bridges are beginning to form. Maybe it’ll take more time for Japanese people to accept the “American-Way-of-Play”, but that’s because they are still a very insular country…
Also, I must say that your statement “Western Storytelling is Stale” doesn’t quite suit me. I feel you’ve confused “Story” and “Storytelling”.
Storytelling is how the story is conveyed, whilst the Story is the “message”, if you want to.
For example, two “Save the Princess” series (Zeldas vs ICO/SotC) have roughly the same story, what sets them apart is their Storytelling, litterally the way the story is told.
And as far as storytelling goes, i’ve yet to see examples, west or east, outside the range between “terrible” and “meh…”
Anyway, just my two cents…
October 1st, 2007 at 3:07 pm
Interesting stuff, which I mostly disagree with - but more from what’s excluded than what you say. A piece which notes pros/cons of different approaches would get more of the truth.
Main ones:
- Storytelling. As Balthazar has noted up thread, you’re confusing storytelling and stories. I’ll agree that the more faux-cinema-realism can sacrifice emotional impact. However, in terms of methodology, there’s far too many Japanese games which are absolutely tied into the compartmentalisation of story and interaction via cut-scenes. There’s not enough Eastern games which use the environment as the primary storytelling route - say what you like about the relative merits of Bioshock and the latest Final Fantasy, Bioshock doesn’t betray the medium.
- Guns versus HtH. The reason why people like guns compared to fighting is fairly obvious - games implementation of firing a gun bears is a higher fidelity to the real action than fighting. Clearly, nowhere near 100%, but you aim at a target, a projectile fires and BINGO! Fighting in videogames bears no relation to anything but fighting in videogames.
Of course, I agree 100% with the conclusion of the comments. Everyone should try as many things as they can.
KG
October 2nd, 2007 at 9:38 pm
You should keep an open mind!!!!
Halo’s most powerful weapon, if used correctly, is a melee weapon.
Some West game’s story is a bit boring. Like MoH, and CoD, they are all in WWII. WWII games are so fucking stale. Oh my god!! At lest do one about WWI! But Halo is different. The story is quite good for the genre. Half Life is more unique, there are twist. Look at Splinter Cell, the story on the newest one is very surprising, there are many twist.
But look at some Japanese game that are also Stale. I used to love Dynasty Warrior but it just too god damn repetitive. And almost all Gundam games are also redundant. Most anime games suck because their story are exactly the same as the anime itself. It hard to put good game play and levels while following the story word by word.
But some redundant games work. Look at Zelda. Every games are almost alike. You are Link, you rescue Zelda, and defeat Gannon. I know there are few different Zelda games too, but you get my point.
I like graphic, logic, physic realism. For graphic, I want things to look real. I have a thing for cell-shaded graphics, but I would want to see realistic graphic with cell shading.
The logic realism is for any games. I don’t get why the hell does female characters in any games have very less armor/clothing compared to their male counterpart. You can have as much fantasy (magic) or sci-fi as you want, but I don’t want to see some one in a bikini fighting a dragon. Samus is a good example of logical realism. She is sexy but wear heavy armor, right for fighting big monster. I want bikini keep away from the battlefield, but near civilian places or a fighting ring (DOA).
Physic bugs me in all games. They don’t follow the law of physic. I know games are not supposed to be that real but some things really annoys me. You don’t bounce back when you get shot. Breast does not bounce like it made of Jello. And Laser or ranged magic weaponry should not have recoil!!
I want to see a GTA set in the future or a fantasy world. I want to see a fantasy FPS. I want to see a documentary (educational) FPS and RTS games about real wars. I want to see a Ninja game that don’t have magic. I want to see a shooting game that need to conserve ammo so you have to smack enemy with your guns in a very stylish way. I want to see a MMORPG with real time combat, not the turn based one like WoW. I want to see a good anime game. I want to see a anime based FPS. I want to see an INTERNATIONALLY developed game.
October 6th, 2007 at 10:35 am
East vs. West: On Gaming Preferences…
Oh, what would good ol’ Eddie Said say? From Sexy Videogameland comes a rather interesting discussion by Rick Luebbers of Midway’s Surreal Software on differences in Japanese and Western game design and gaming preferences. Some (most) of the general…
October 6th, 2007 at 11:16 am
East Versus West: East vs. West: On Gaming Preferences…
Oh, what would good ol' Eddie Said say? From Sexy Videogameland comes a rather interesting discussion…
October 6th, 2007 at 11:42 am
I don’t agree with the argument that the level of quality is higher in japanese games versus western ones. Trust me alot of the stuff that gets released over there is so unpolished it’s not even funny.
October 6th, 2007 at 12:35 pm
How can you tell the American industry to stop making the same games over and over when, Japan has made 13 final fantasies? (At least they were all innovative and different) 8 dragon quests (they were all basically the same) and dozens of 2d fighting games in which a projectile special move is activated by pressing down, toward, punch?
Then, you bash Bully, a game with an innovative subject mater, in favor of a game that has your fighting demons. Because no video game has ever been about fighting demons before…
October 6th, 2007 at 3:17 pm
Some other dings against western games:
1. They haven’t all mastered the concept that the music should continue when you open menus or maps.
2. I’ll take Crazy Taxi’s “bad graphics” (actual comment from western reviewer) that let me distinguish, say, the player from the background, over the 65,000 shades of brown, green, and tan of a western title. Memo to US Developers: Alien was filmed almost 30 years ago. Get over the greasy gunmetal already.
3. Sometimes I play during the day, in a well lit room. In Arizona. Perhaps if I moved my rig into my walk-in closet to approximate the workstation environment you have when you develop the title I would better appreciate the mud-fest of greens and tans that greets me when I boot up a western title.
October 6th, 2007 at 8:37 pm
Great feedback on this so far. While Surreal is full of people that fall on either side of the fence (and I support any of them posting here), I think that the values of the games from each culture are different… and a player’s preferences for certain mechanics or storytelling methods will determine whether they think that one country’s product is “superior” to another. To say that Japanese titles doesn’t get into ruts or have genres is totally wrong.
I call out some of these differences in this followup post.
October 6th, 2007 at 10:58 pm
“But name three RPGs that have come out of the west in the last two years that have done well?”
I’m too busy playing World of Warcraft.
Games like Lost Planet and MGS4 are showing that Japanese developers can make shooters too. They differ in that you can see your character on the screen. American FPS games don’t show the character because American’s would rather believe that THEY are the character. Even with Master Chief and Samus, you’re still faceless and could be anyone in that suit. In the event that you can see your character, it’s often the case that you can create them to look however you want. Individualism all the way.
Japanese players prefer to have a character created for them that they can play as. MGS and Lost Planet both have the character displayed on screen. They have back stories and/or interesting personalities. This is why so many memorable video game characters come from Japan.
October 7th, 2007 at 4:05 pm
How delightful. A “cerebral” discussion about video games. I thought it would never, ever happen.
First off, let me say that I am a well-seasoned video gamer who enjoys games from both “West” and “East.” I lean toward Japanese games mainly because I am a student of that culture, and I have been enamored with the Japanese aesthetic since I was very young.
That being said, let me clear up some misconceptions many posters seem to have about the idea of “feminine” or “effeminate” males in many Japanese games. It did not start with Visual Kei (what some people were calling J-rock) phenomena — that was something influenced by the West’s own “Glam Rock” era if anything, though the Japanese have always had pretty young men singing and dancing on stage for a very long time. The idea that the Japanese seem to market toward women more may be true in the very modern day, but when one looks back through history, it is easy to see that the idea of pretty boys (called “Bishounen” in Japanese) was primarily for male enjoyment, because male love, or male depictions of beauty and eroticism were considered the highest form of erotic love. By no means is that a Japanese-only thing. We in the West also have threads of that very “male” culture. The Greeks, the Romans and the Egyptians also thought the same way, and male-male love occupied a high place in those cultures as well. (Arguably, those three are the cornerstones of modern “Western” culture today) The advent of Christianity subverted and suppressed many of those views later on (and that is by no means a denigration of Christianity — I’m a Christian myself) but it still survives in Western culture in the “drag” and transvestite scene that is largely lumped under “gay culture” in the West. In Japan, that old style male-male loving culture was kept alive because of Japan’s insular policies that barred all outsiders from the country for 400 years. Because of this, the “beautiful male” aesthetic survived, and has been incorporated in games and anime since the very beginning. Representations of pretty men may have been sub par in games because of graphical limitations, but pretty guys were always there, trust me. Only NOW (and by that I mean the last 10-20 years) has there been any real scholarly and marketing research on how much women enjoy playing as, and looking at pretty men, and in modern Japan (and the West too) stories, fan-fiction, comics and art about male-male love has been the craft of women, but the those ideas were started, and largely cultivated by men. So the next time you see a “pretty boy” in a Japanese game and wince, remember that there was probably a man behind that idea. So go ahead and enjoy, if that helps at all!
~David Minor
October 15th, 2007 at 9:50 am
I agree in particular towards the end. I’m finding a particular issue that seems to occur with the video game industry in terms of groundbreakers: the new concepts are just too new.
With that stupid remark said, allow me to explain: it seems that the groups that brainstorm something insanely genius tends to make people wary whether it can be worth playing or not. When Thief came out, I remember telling people all about it trying to convince them the genius of an FPS that really didn’t emphasize it, and they were uncertain if it made sense. I’ll even admit to being a fool by thinking that Deus Ex may not have been worth buying if I did not hear that the man god Warren Spector was behind it.
The fact is that if you want to try something new, you need to build the brand so casual gamers will recognize it. There are very few game companies in the West that have a strong brand name and are still alive. Those that are have a tendency to disband or crumple up, perhaps due to the scale of their operations, or their resident genius went off to do other things. Whereas most game companies work on a handful of projects over here at the most, overseas it feels like they’re always pushing stuff out the door.
By the way, the character designs and storylines for Eastern games are definitely watered down to the point of exhaustion. As much as people may praise the story of Xenosaga, I’ve found myself skipping much of it for soap opera lines, characters that don’t seem interested/ing, and being downright slow without reason. Give me Half-Life’s Stephen King-like style over that Star Wars-esque way Xenosaga ran anyday.
But don’t get me wrong, either, I know the East is equivalent of novelty too; Katamari Damacy is a good example of why I’ll even touch a console.
October 26th, 2007 at 10:18 pm
I’d like to just remind everyone that if Hahlox 10 comes out it will still have a long way to go to get to Final Fantasy levels of repetition. East and West game programming is a capitalist venture and we all know capitalists pander to n00bz0rs (because they are noobs themselves). Success breeds imitation.