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."

Re:Different markets, thats why

[Killjoy_NL]

Yes, there are some anime that have tentacle rape in there, those anime are for the fetishists (sp?) that like that stuff.
It's sad that one of the first anime to come out of japan was Urutsokidoji - Legend of the Overfiend.
It was released in the UK and the Netherlands under the Manga label and after a lot of people saw that, they thought "WE MUST PROTECT THE CHILDREN FROM THIS CRAP".
I think this is a shame because there is so much GOOD anime out there in all genres.

Comedy: Urusei Yatsura, Ranma
Action: Noir, Cowboy Bebop
Drama: Saikano, Grave of the fireflies
Kiddy: Pokemon, Digimon, etc

Well, you get the idea. And it just now dawned on me that you were probably trolling.
Ah well, I got to write a nice piece anyway :)

Re:I used to LOVE to play

[ErichTheWebGuy]

Ever look at the credits for most X-Box games? Yeah, names like Chris Jones and Alex Johnson are pretty Japanese my friend :-)

Music?

[aitsuda]

Any article which starts "despite the success of american music and movies in Japan" has got to be questionable. Japanese music and idols dominate the charts; a few foreign groups / singers hit a niche market.

Re:I used to LOVE to play

[Anonymous Coward]

It was created by Shigeru Miyamoto, the same person responsible for the various Mario games (i.e., Donkey Kong,) which have also been quite popular in the East and West.

Re:Obviously

[Hast]

I recommend that you play Max Payne and/or Prince of Persia instead. Both have a similar "time dilation" mode and both are vastly more playable than EtM.

The idea with EtM was pretty good, but it was extremely poorly made. The models looked like Max Payne 1 era, and that game is pretty old. The animations were so bad it was funny. Watch a guy "climb" a fence and you'll see what I mean.

If they had developed it for a few more months it could have been a good game though.

Re:Think about it

[Jameth]

Anime isn't wildly popular there. That's a myth. Anime is also for children in Japan, just as it is in the US.

Also, much of Hollywood is hugely successful in Japan. It is the gaming industry which has trouble, not the Movie industry, the Music industry, or the TV industry.

Why the Xbox failed in Japan

[kir]

I've been here (Japan) for 8 years. I was here when the PS1, PS2, and the Xbox were released. IMHO, the XBox failed in this country for one reason:

Sony has completely saturated the market here. I can rent/buy PS2 games in pretty much every conbini (convenience store - 7-Eleven, Family Mart, Sunkus, etc.) in Japan -- even in "remote" areas like Yatsugatake, Aumori, etc. Hell, I think one can buy a PS2 in Doit (think HomeDepot, Lowe's, Wilkinson). I've been to some stores where they only carry PS1/2 goods (Kotesashi Seiyu in Tokorozawa for example). Of course, right before the Xbox was released here, Sony opened the spicket (sales, promotions, etc.).

Re:On Xbox's lack of success in Japan

[Lord_Dweomer]

For those who don't get Simoniker's good joke, allow me to explain.

Samir Gupta is a /. personality who makes what seem to be very insightful and informative posts.....if not for the fact that they are completely discredited by his claims of working at Nintendo, which unfortunately he does not (this has been verified). I'm sure if they hired him however, he would make an excellent marketing person.

Perhaps this famous Slashdot troll is not really a troll, but rather one man on a quest to get a job at Nintendo, and pulling a big, illegal, fraudulent stunt to get their attention.

Re:HAHAHAHAHA

[BlackHawk-666]

I've seen all of those except for Dead or Alive, and can also add Battle Royale II, Audition, Ichi the Killer (Anime and film) and can definitely say that the Japanese can do violence exceptionally well. They can also add far more atmosphere to their films and don't usualy feel the need to fill every moment with sacrine music, which can add more tension. Tarrantino is quoted as saying he released the Kill Bill film with the major fight scene in black and white for the US audience because they can't handle the same level of violence that a Japanese audience can.

The main difference I suspect is that the Japanese movies are not simply about kill counts. They have storylines, deep characters, and are often more insightful into the people they portray. US films on the other hand seem to me like they spent all the budget on explosions and special effects and forgot to pay the script writers to put in a plot. This is telling to me of the cultural differences between the two nations. Both enjoy a spot of violence, with Japanese violence being the more horrifying for me personally, but the Japanese want a story to go with it and some characters to play the story.

Actually, they do.

[EnsilZah]

Actually, McDonalds does sell cheeseburgers in Israel.
I just depends on the religious makeup of the city.
You might not get one in Jerusalem, but if you go to, say the central bus station in Tel-Aviv you could certainly feast yourself on cheesy goodness.

Re:I wonder if...

[Anonymous Coward]

Headaches are often due to the freqency of the monitor being too low, 60hertz is very low end, and causes me headaches, 75 hertz is better, playing Farcry with a 9800 pro at 1280x1024 at 75 hertz. But still causes headaches or vertigo now and then, 100 hertz is very good, for the most part no problems then, but 120 hertz which most monitors do not support is where you want to be if you have lots of issues with gaming. That or get off a crt and move to a different monitor even though none of the other monitor solutions work for FPS gaming currently IMHO.

Re:Obviously

[-brazil-]

Usually the reverse, in fact. There's far more anime based on games than games based on anime.

Re:Culture differences.

[-brazil-]

Another reason for the people looking so young is that pubic hair is censored there.

Hasn't been for over 10 years.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:United States of Japan

[Some Bitch]

There is no such thing as a society "open" to sex yet immune to rampant sexual violence, pedophilia, and diseases.

*cough*Holland*cough*

Seriously, there's less sexual crime in Holland than just about any other western country.

Re:I wonder if...

[Jussi K. Kojootti]

Maybe it doesn't make all Japanese sick but maybe we just aren't built for it.

Some industry people agree with you. This is from Scott Millers (3DRealms) blog [typepad.com]. See especially point 2.

Compared to Europe, the Asian territories (specifically, Japan) are more challenging for selling Western games. There are three high barriers for us to overcome to be successful over there:

1) aesthetics - you've probably noticed a predilection for cuter anime style characters in Japanese games. Namely, there's a preference for characters to have slightly larger heads and larger eyes, and for environments to use a high contrast color palette. This is out of sync with the more realistic style that most of us Western game designers employ. Crash Bandicoot is one of the best selling U.S. developed games ever because they designed their characters from the ground up to be compatible with Japan.

The disconnect we have with Asian-style aesthetics is only going to be exacerbated as the average age of US gamers (currently 28 years-old) continues to increase. As adults we're obviously going to want more realistic and less cartoony games.

2) camera - games that have fast moving cameras severely limit their audience in Asian nations because people there have a tendency to get dizzy or sick from jerky movement. First person shooters are almost impossible, and 3rd person action games with simplistic follow-cams are just as bad. I remember a specific instance when working at a development company in Yokohama where I was playing a game of Descent and my Japanese co-workers had to avert their eyes from my screen because they were getting nauseous!

Games like Ratchet and Clank 1 & 2 are huge in Japan partially because their camera spin speed is very slow, and they use smart, well dampened algorithms to avoid jerkiness. This was intentional because these guys were thinking about the Japanese market from day one.

3) difficulty - games that are too difficult or punish the player too often have trouble in Japan too. People tend to get lost in complex 3D space, so I remember reading a post mortem on Sly Cooper (I think) where they said that they added lots of infomration sign posts, arrows, and clues to help guide Japanese players through their levels.

But we play all their crappy games

[TwistedSpring]

So they don't like our stuff, and I can understand that, the cultures are different. What I cannot understand is the western adoption of all their games like Pokémon, Zelda, etc. The voice actors (if they exist) are dreadful without fail, the character animation is ugly, the plots are simply missing or stupid or full of the sort of crackpot magic and legend nonsense that the japanese seem so keen on, and it's only in recent years that they've even managed to get the English translation sort-of right. Some arcade games like the latest incarnations of Tekken still have japanese text in-game. They clearly just don't care about the western market, but throw their products at it anyway, where geeks lap it up because it's all mystic and oriental and looks like anime which has pretty girls in, and kids lap it up because they don't know any better and it's the only stuff available for their N64/GameCube/GBA/Saturn/Dreamcast.

The reason the Playstation is seen as a little more "badass" or mature than Nintendo's or Segas consoles is because it does not try to sell itself explicitely on a flagship character. Lara Croft is a possible example, but Sony didn't adopt her as a mascot, they also don't seem to shut out developers as much as Nintendo or Sega did. It's pretty much impossible for a smaller company to ever get a game released on a Nintendo system because Nintendo are such control freaks when it comes to content and finance, and their media is stupidly expensive to produce.

In Japan, they don't like our games because they have games made for their tastes over there which they prefer, which is pretty damn obvious. The two examples of western games given ("Enter the Matrix" and "Lord of the Rings") were both movie tie-ins and thus are really crappy examples. Perhaps UT or Q3 would have been better. I don't care if Japan doesn't like the games the west produces, so what? I care that the balance in console gaming is Mostly Japanese vs. Western Shoddy Attempts By BAM! Entertainment. It's a real shame the market is swamped by all these different Pokemon and Bomberman games that are all the same game in different coloured boxes, and are about as inspirational as a paving stone.

Multiplayer

[svallarian]

Multiplayer mode was what made the game a real classic.

Steven V.

Re:Obviously

[katarac]

Goldeneye didn't use the 4MB expansion. Perfect Dark did.