Recently picked up this article by Rick Luebbers of Midway's Surreal Software, at the group's Surreal Game Design blog, that attempts to explain the rather common phenomenon of American gamers who vastly prefer Japanese games to Western titles. It is an interesting issue -- everyone knows someone, or maybe you are someone, who skews very distinctly in gaming preferences to one cultural sphere or the other. For me, it took having to pay attention to the industry enough to cover it when I became a writer to subvert my own favoritism of Japanese titles, and while I now have a more balanced appreciation, I've always been curious -- it's easy to pick out, for example, differences both subtle and overt between Eastern and Western culture, but how those cultural qualities translate into game design is a bit harder to pinpoint.
Luebbers theorizes he plays one American game for every ten Japanese titles he enjoys, so for him, the disparity's huge. The first reason he cites? He's not interested in online multiplayer.
I've said something similar before; neither am I, a large reason why Halo, which thrives on its multiplayer gameplay, has never appealed to me much. I like a certain privacy of mind when I play, with a few exceptions. But why is it, exactly, that online multiplayer should be a differentiating factor between American and Japanese games? After all, MMOs are an even bigger deal in the Eastern market than they are here -- though I'm mainly aware of the market in China and Korea, and confess I don't know what it's like in Japan specifically.
Next, Luebbers makes a pretty stark assertion: Western storytelling is stale. He blames Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, Half Life and their ilk for this, and while he notes that an epidemic of Halo clones is characteristic of the top, and not all, Western titles, I believe what he's indicating is in fact a genre preference in general; Luebbers' view seems to be that fantasy titles are less derivative and more interesting -- he goes on to say that he prefers Persona 3 to Bully because the fantasy element makes it more fresh. Though I, too, lament the current FPS oversaturation in the market and am in general disinterested in war games (despite my favorite series being Metal Gear), and, while I also tend to prefer fantasy titles, one could just as conversely express similar fatigue with the repetitious Japanese RPG format. If a glut of war campaigns is evidence of staleness, then a parade of heroic summoner children is equally mossy. Persona 3 is fresh, and also very Japanese -- but I have discussed at length what I found interesting about Persona 3, and I'm pretty sure that it's not due to the relationship of one to the other.
Most of Luebber's arguments as to why Japanese games are more pleasing to him than American ones could just as equally been delivered in reverse, indicating that his "differences" are more subjective, based in his preferences, than factual. He does add that Japanese games reflect more polished design, which I'm not sure I can speak to, and that he's noticed that Japanese games tend to focus on hand-to-hand combat, which he prefers, while Western games tend to feature ranged combat. Perhaps that's true -- though 20-foot swords and magical spells seem pretty ranged to me, now that I think about it.
Is it safe to say, though, that Japanese games are more fantastic while Western games are more realistic? What would a realistic Japanese game look like? Moreover, is Western fantasy doomed forever to Tolkien derivatives? If you prefer one to the other, what does that indicate about your personal taste?
25 comments:
I've always felt that the main advantages of Japanese gaming were a) they have better controls and level design for some kinds of action game and b) they're more capable of producing charm in a certain way
That said, there are a few western games that are well ahead of anything Japanese I've seen in terms of storytelling, they're just the exception.
I think, in the end, Japan is better at linear experiences, and the West at those which offer more freedom of choice. Bit of a generalisation, I know.
Where some see "charm" in Japanese games, I see cloying cuteness and that I can only handle in very small doses, if at all. Not that I'm all "space marine gritty" 100% of the time, but I'm more into the art direction of something like Psychonauts than most Japanese games.
I suspect some of the appeal of Japanese games to non-Japanese gamers is their exoticness, which may work in reverse in Japan to some extent. And they're less popular here, so they have some "I dig more obscure shit than you do" cachet.
As for quality, we get most of the best Japan produces here, and see all of the North American drek.
It's a bit like people who say they prefer foreign films to US ones. Sure, we produce a lot of crap cinema, but we also get only the rest of the world's best movies, skipping the 90% that likely sucks And we're often drawn to them because they explore less familiar cultures and archetypes.
I do think that it's subjective, but I'm also leaning towards the Familiarity Breeding Contempt explanation. Japan's customs and memes are very much different than here in the US - maybe not the ENTIRE US, since I live in Hawaii & it seems that every other person is of Japanese heritage - and thus more appealing to us as out of the ordinary.
@ Steve - You said it better than I did.
Steve:
"As for quality, we get most of the best Japan produces here, and see all of the North American drek."
totally nails it.
That said, as someone who does generally prefer Japanese games, I'm sick to death of epic-fantasy-as-pioneered-by-Square. I tried watching trailers for Lost Odyssey and White Knight Story from TGS, games that I've generally been really excited for, and found myself completely bored. I think this stems from a desire to play games, rather than watch them. At this point, I'm not even sure how excited I am about Final Fantasy XIII, or the pile of new Kingdom Hearts games that are currently in development (though I do quite enjoy the original world Kingdom Hearts brought to the table, and am happy to see the new portable games focusing on that).
The main effect of this is that my favorite publish has switched from S-E to Atlus. I've been putting off finishing Persona 3 because I don't want it to end, which has never happened before. And right now, the only game I'm really looking forward to is No More Heroes, though Ar Tonelico 2 (a rather old school, not so fmv laden rpg) is starting to edge it's way up there as more media is released.
er, that should read "favorite publisher", not "favorite publish".
Oh, and to answer your question Leigh, I think most of Japan (and I) are still playing Final Fantasy XI. I can't speak for others, but for me, the reason I still play this outdated, unpopular, and really quite broken in many ways MMO is because of the group of friends I've built up over the last four years, and also because I've become quite attached to my silent (hot catgirl) protagonist, who has gone on epic quests to save the world at least 5 times at this point.
Done with the commentspam now, sorry!
Yeah, J games have more polish..Riiiiight....He should pick up some games from D3, which puts out cheap but serviceable games, with such high concept titles as ambulance vs. zombie, giant bikini woman and or Aya, everyone's favorite bikini clad woman with a cowboy hat and samurai sword vs. zombies, from the Onechanbara series. I loved how on one level of US version of Earth Defense Force 2017 for the 360, I wandered around for half an hour because I had failed to destroy a certain ship in necessary time frame and the ship left the game area but there was no indication that the mission could not be won.
Yeah, there is so much creativity and variety in all those J shumps and hack and slash games. Dynasty warriors is soooo deep, man, cuz you can jump and then slash or slash, jump, slash, or really push it to the redline and go slash, slash, slash.
I believe Okami did better in the US than it did in Japan, and it is a game that based on Japanese myths that US folks have zero knowledge of. Or take God Hand, which looked not so great, but had a very fun style and breeziness that you generally don't find in US games. But what happens to the supposed monolith of J gaming style when you look at Clover's output and then Tecmo's Team Ninja games, which look fantastic but that, in my opinion, generally aren't so fun to play. Or games by Suda 51's which seem to baffle a fair number of people in both countries.
I think there is more specific gaming subcultures that cross national lines rather than specific traits that say 'Game X is a ___, so it will do well in country Y and not so well in country Z'. US folks love them sports games, but soccer games crash and burn in the US but they sell like gangbusters in countries where sports games are generally less popular than in the US. Yeah, Halo is going to sell big in the US, but it is going to sell pretty well in fair number of other countries too.
Tip of the hat for the mecha musume picture too.
Online is a big factor, but that has more to do with the genesis of western versus Japanese developers. Most Japanese developers come from arcade development and later console development. Most big western developers got their start on the PC before starting in on consoles. PC gaming was huge in the US and Europe and still exists where in Japan it seems to only exist because console makers won't allow hentai games on their systems.
I would say I play an even mix of western and Japanese products. Then again I tend to play a decent amount of PC titles so thats to be expected. To say storytelling is better in one form over the other really means that people only focus on one type of game. Yes FFX has more story telling than Serious Sam but thats an incredibly facile comparison.
I like fun fake shit. Not realistic shit. I mean shit. I didn't fully read the article so sorry....shit.
Japanese games definitely have a certain "art" in terms of their charm. They're generally cleaner cut, even in grittier games such as Final Fantasy 7. Story-wise, I think one key factor is the Japanese typically set Man vs Himself. Characters are constantly struggling with their own emotions, growing, progressing, and learning. Whereas North American games are typically Man vs Nature (or endless waves of stormtroopers).
A lot of it has to do with culture. North America is typically about the prosperity and power of the country. How "our guys are better than your guys." We like guns. We like blowing stuff up. Our whole economy thrives on wars. In Japan, the culture is totally different. Schools grind kids to the ground with homework and studies. Companies expect workers to work long hours. There are cultural identities and molds that society expects. It's no wonder many of them identify and reflect with their inner self represented in a video game character.
One thing to keep in mind is that North America only sees a small fraction of the available Japanese games. Only the best are localized. There are just as many garbage games if not more in Japan compared to America, that also follow the same formula of North American games.
A big part of the difference in styles between Western and Eastern game design and game storytelling has to do with the trends the people who fund the games and manage the development staff think should be chased. Japanese companies tend to be less willfully stupid in this regard, although it must be said that cluelessness is by no means limited by nationality.
To open up some discussion, I would say that the thing that separates the US and JP markets and the type of games that people play boil down to 'competition', from a market aspect and from a end-user aspect.
How many of the top-shelf JP games actively pit you against anybody but yourself and the computer aside from fighting games (already established as a hardcore genre)? If anything, most JP games that have multi-player aspects are based around co-operation rather than competition. If there is competition, it's typically nonviolent (see Bemani, puzzle games, etc.)
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It could be that both markets are playing very conservatively - to that end, we will see derivative games and sequel after sequel pf popular franchises until the end of time.
From an investor standpoint, why would you throw all this money at a game that has a high chance of being rejected by the market? You're going to put it on a sure thing. The next Starcraft, or Halo, or whatever. It's rare to see the mold broken, simply because of the risk involved. That's why it's so rare for big budget titles to even attempt anything new out of the fear of huge losses.
Whereas people in the US are tired of their domestic games, they yearn for something different. Not everybody seeks to compete against their peers. A lot of people do, but not everybody. People love more of the same, which is why sequels typically do very well. Alter only a little bit of the formula (if at all), re-skin and fluff the game, release as the number 2.
Does this mean to say that Japan is satisfied with its current pick of games? Well, either that, or the games in the US simply do not interest them as much because they aren't into the types of games we have to offer.
Well, I can't keep going since I'll just keep repeating, but there you go, food for thought.
"Western storytelling is stale."
The problem, as I see it, with American, and even European, video games is that most try to emulate the storytelling style, the visual syntax, of Hollywood movies.
When I first started to see games that did this, I thought "wow, that's very cinematic". It impressed me at the time, and it made the medium seem somehow more legitimate, something that you can show non-gamers.
Unfortunately, for the most part things have stopped there. Western video games borrowed the gloss off an already vapid part of another medium and failed to discover their own unique ways of telling a story.
With Japanese games I don't think they fall into this trap. They've devloped their own style, particularly with Jrpgs which have their own well worn tropes and cliches, they didn't need to borrow any from Hollywood.
I can't really speculate on how game development is informed by Japanese culture, but I'd imagine the storytelling in their games owes a lot to manga and anime, as well as their own cultural traditions.
Their seems to be a perception in the States that big marquee titles like Gears of War or Halo are engingeered to appeal to the lowest common denominator among gamers (lots of flash, cliche-ridden, little to no innovation), I wonder if Japanese gamers might feel the same way about Final Fantasy?
"Unfortunately, for the most part things have stopped there."
While you're correct that movies have been the primary source of storytelling in games, I'm fairly certain you're shortchanging the narrative innovations found in games like Half-Life and glossing over the cinematic pretensions of games like Final Fantasy and Metal Gear.
And even if everyone agrees that Japanese games are more formed by manga and anime, how is that "discovering their own unique form of storytelling?" It's just borrowing from a different source.
(And let's not forget that Japanese RPGs borrowed mostly from early Ultima and Wizardry games.)
But if you look at most Japanese games, their actual narrative---not the literal storylines, but how it's played out in-game---is considerably less evolved than their North American cousins. Most of their storytelling is conveyed through lots and lots of non-interactive dialogue and movie-like cutscenes. There's little choice and almost no emergent narrative.
From where I'm sitting, much of the innovation in narrative style is taking place in the west. Sure, it's not found in the single-player campaign for Halo 3, but I think that's looking at it wrong.
We're still thinking of games delivering a linear, single-player story. But if narrative is simply a description of "what I did in the game, and how it reacted to me," how can you ignore multiplayer, MMOs, and other games where players are constantly creating their own unique narratives based on what they've done in the world, and how the world (and other players) s reacted to their actions?
We're moving to a point where people are less concerned about telling linear narrative stories and instead creating spaces for people to create their own. That's where all of the excitement is; we get to discover our own, unique stories and share them with each other instead of everyone experiencing the exact same story.
And the West is way out in the lead on that front... well, excluding Korean MMOs.
"...shortchanging the narrative innovations found in games like Half-Life and glossing over the cinematic pretensions of games like Final Fantasy and Metal Gear."
Yeah, you're right. I was simply saying that most games don't push the envelope like Half-Life or my current fave Bioshock. That's one thing I think the first person perspective brings to the table is that, with the expection of oddities like the Philip Marlowe potboiler "Lady in the Lake", movies aren't shot from that perspective and it makes designers value immersion over any movie-making aspirations they may have.
My frustrations with American games lie mostly with stuff like Saint's Row or Gears of War. When your contribution to those particular genres are an altered mini-map, better damage modeling or making "we didn't want our aliens to come from space" a key part of your design ethos then it just gives you an idea of how much the industry has grown in on itself. It's like the generation of comic book artists that flourished in the 90s. They learned how to draw from reading comics, not from formal training or life drawing like the artists they were imitating.
As for the narrative traditions of jrpgs they probably are shamelessly aping a different source as much as some Western games are. I'm just not familar enough with that source to easily recognize it. Not to mention what the whole genre still owes to plain old pen and paper Dungeons & Dragons.
Not being an MMO fan, I've never thought about them in terms of storytelling. You raise an interesting point. Some of the best experiences I've had gaming (like in Bioshock) is where I've found my own emotional throughline and an open and communal setting could offer that opportunity as well.
See this is where I think lots of problems arise. First the whoel idea that the Japanese don't like violence seems to only be based on their videogames not being bloody. Of course they're not bloody, if they were they get an AO rating in Japan.
The second is the focus on story telling. Save for perhaps survival horror (well some of them)we're talking about RPGs. But Japan brings us Mario too. If you want to talk about the story there...
I don't think I'd agree - assuming we're talking specifically of game narratives - because to be stale, Western gaming narratives would have to have been ripe to begin with.
I think the problem is that Western game design is based on pinball, whereas a lot of Eastern seems to be based on comics.
If I get a lift from the antihistamine cloud I'm under, might follow up on that on Cathode Tan.
I thought this one would provoke some good discussion. The distinctions are definitely worth pondering; I don't think we've got 'em pegged yet. Nor do I agree with Luebbers that one is necessarily better than the other, although clearly people have a preference for one style versus the other, maybe based on their personal favorite aesthetic.
Aw, feel better, Josh! Let us know if you follow up at CT.
I guess Shenmue is an example of what a realistic Japanese game could look/be like. I became completely absorbed by this game, even though I personally tend to gravitate towards the more "charming" ones. Shenmue is quite stark in terms of storytelling/character development/music etc.
However, I must admit, if the story took place in 1980's Denver Colorado, I probably would not have been quite so interested...
That is the personal taste that informs us beyond simply chosing any game that is excellently realized. Gears of War has amazing presentation, and plays very well, but huge grizzled dudes in bulky armor just doesn't appeal to my personal sensibilities.
Both East and West produce gems, but the games still need to resonate with the individual on some level. I haven't been into FPS games since the Goldeneye era, then Bioshock came out, and Metroid P3.
We can talk about large movements, games like Madden being huge in the US, and not in Japan, and dating sims being a very niche market, but on a personal level, it all comes down to something more subtle that can't be 'designed' for.
The thing is, there is a growing segment of gamers who don't like Japanese games at all.
Anime has become the new furry so to speak.
When I play a SRPG I do NOT want an underdressed Etna type from Disgaea on my screen. Its.. well its PRETTY CREEPY and it sort of makes me wonder when Chris Hansen is gonna do an otaku edition of his Predator series.
I prefer the noncasts of Pathway to Glory and D&D Tactics, which are either player created, or barely there personalities I get to flesh out in my head just like I did back in the Commodore 64 days. (The gameplay in both titles is also LIGHT YEARS above and beyond your average J SRPG but that's an entirely different topic. Then again, X Com was light years beyond where the J SRPG genre is..)
I like freedom of choice and stuff to have a suspension of disbelief to it. Most J Games have barely ANY to the level of a Michael Bay movie.
J Games are just as predictable, with their RPG casts hitting every genre trope/sexual fetish (gotta give the dojinshi artists fodder or something I suppose) and all playing about as same and as tired as your average western FPS or RTS does. (Except of course for some SPECIAL FEATURE most games have these days which usually make the game suck worse than what came before.)
Plus the whole mindset of J gaming seems to be "We know what's best for you!" with limited options and choices from the player even going so far as to not permit you to switch control settings or audio settings. (I couldn't get into Metal Gear Solid 3 Sub(stuff) because to me, bottom button of the control pad is SHOOT. Its natural. I have trouble with plenty of DS games that use that as the backout option, and the right part of the diamond as action. Its WRONG.)
I generally don't listen to in game music, something I again basically trained myself to do back in the C64 days as I was more interested in getting the sound effects, then listening to classic rock radio while playing.
The Doors, Led Zeppelin, Ozzy, ect > Uematsu or any other JRPG composer.
I'm probably harder on this stuff as I used to be a Weeaboo but have changed as anime and J games get increasingly annoying and creepy.
Or maybe they always were but I never noticed it.
Though to be fair western gaming has its own breed of suck too, though it tends not to be quite as creepy about it...
The Japanese ride around in commuter trains, while westerners like to drive their cars. I think this key difference has some signifigance in the differing schools of game design.
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
Here's my take on it:
I'm of Asian descent. Western games don't interest me because they usually don't have characters that look or act like me. And when they do it's usually in the form of horrible stereotypes derived from the racist, sexist Western hegemony (Oh hey, there's a slant-eyed Jap to kill! Oh hey, there's another hot Asian slut to fuck!).
Fuck Western games.
I have more of a preference for genre then specifically American or Japanese. What I enjoy about american games is a willingness to be senselessly violent, and still having the violence make sense when it has to. Bioshock is an example of an American game that manages to do everything just right. The different and, at times, excessively brutal combinations you can unleash with the plasmids and weapons are there for entertainment, but the idea of harvesting the little sister, an act so violent that they couldn't really show you what your character was doing, was a meaningful thing within the game, due in large part to its brutality.
As for Japanese games, I like the aspect of effort becoming the reward, kind of in and of itself. You really shouldn't be able to sit down and pick up a game and just be able to muddle your way through it, and there are some distinctly Japanese games that manage to hit this nail on the head quite well. A great example is Devil May Cry. Sure, easy mode is somewhat insulting, but for the American release of DMC3, the automatic difficulty increase, pushing easy to normal and normal to hard, forces the player to not go haphazardly into battle, but instead to learn from the enemies. I can muddle my way though most American games on Normal, and I'm even tearing my way though Bioshock on hard.
In that respect, I can have gripes with games that fail to meet this kind of expectations. Xenosaga 3 was so rediculously easy, that I never got a game over screen. It had a good story, but there wasn't enough effort to feel like I earned it. In that same respect, I really have no intention of playing GTA in any form. I just have this thing against some of the stuff I would have to do to continue on with the game, some of the violent acts I would have to commit. Even the sensical ones.
Also, I'm a big fan of strategy games, RPG or otherwise, and I'm seeing more of those come from Japan that I can enjoy compared to the American ones that are coming. I have a lot more I could say, but this is getting long, so I'll stop here.
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