Topic: 1Up: Why Japanese Games are Breaking Up With the West

1Up wrote:

"It's not you, it's me." That's the message the Japanese gaming industry is telling the world this week at TGS. "Our games are as good as ever, they're just not for you anymore."

Critics in the west have been crowing about the supposed death of the Japanese industry for years. And while their critiques have a certain degree of truth to them, they're missing the point. Japanese game development did run into trouble during this console generation, but their issues are so removed from the average gamer's experience (workforce and labor management) as to be meaningless. The games themselves are as good as they've ever been, but they're just not made for the entire world anymore. Japanese games are now by and large made to appeal almost exclusively to Japanese gamers. Rather than this being another piece that focuses on the alleged downfall of the Japanese industry, we thought we should focus on why Japanese games and western tastes have diverged so much in recent years. There's no single cause that can explain the phenomena — the possible reasons range from the social and economic, to the practical and mundane. Regardless, the fact remains that Japanese gamers are now seeking different experiences from North Americans and Europeans.

Gamer taste in both regions underwent a massive sea change in recent years. While the slow takeover of the AAA console space by former PC heavy-hitting franchises, genres and studios like Fallout, FPS games, and BioWare changed the tastes of the western market in the past decade, other forces have been working on Japan in the same time. The reasons for the shift in Japanese gamer taste are numerous, but there are three that western gamers in the country continuously note — a peculiar emotion called moe, the Japanese concept of hobbies and adulthood, and a tradition of disparaging foreign games.

moe

The concept of moe (pronounced MOH-ay) is incredibly important amongst Japan's indigenous nerd population, otherwise known as otaku. While there are train otaku, military otaku, and otaku of all kinds, a great many of them focus on the geeky triad of anime, manga, and video games; the three media influence each other and are often linked together. Moe is a word that Otaku will often use at the sight of a cute, large-eyed juvenile character, but when asked point blank "What does moe mean?" most are unable to offer a coherent answer. It is an amorphous concept.

The word is often used by westerners familiar with Japan to describe the lolicon (short for Lolita Complex) art style which focuses on young, often pre-pubescent girls, and seems to feature a disturbing mix of childlike cuteness with subtle and not-so-subtle sexual overtones. This definition is not quite right according to Patrick Galbraith, a researcher of otaku culture at the University of Tokyo. "Moe is an affective response to a fictional character or representations of a character. There are two things that are important to note about this definition. First, we are talking about a response. Moe is used not to describe a character type or style, but rather characters that are likely to trigger a response or are designed with that in mind. This implies that there are a range of different characters that appeal men and women or various ages and orientations. Second, moe is a response to fictional characters, not actual people. Without this distinction, moe is conflated with descriptions such as 'cute' or 'sexy.'"

Moe describes the emotions that otaku feel upon seeing, thinking of, or interacting with a certain kind of character. Depending on the person, this character may or may not fit the little girl image that western game critics have come to associate with the word. It may be used by female anime, manga, or game fans that enjoy "Boys Love" media which feature homosexual pairings between popular characters for example.

So what exactly does this mean for games? It actually depends on which ones you're talking about — for the biggest titles it means nothing, but it means everything to smaller publishers and developers. The business model for small games in Japan can only be sustained by catering to a small yet rabid fan base that's willing to pay a premium for content. AAA titles normally sell for between the equivalent of $40-$60, while smaller niche titles are usually priced at $80-plus. Small developers make their money by selling less at a higher profit margin, while major publishers sell more for less. If you publish small games in Japan you have to give your fans what you want, and since your fans are otaku who revel in moe, you'll give them games filled with the characters that elicit that response — which are usually young, childlike girls. Between August and December of this year there are a total of 35 games set for release in Japan which follow this exact model. There are more games like this than there are FPSs in the west. By catering to their fan base, smaller publishers have alienated many western fans.

Moe's effect on AAA games has not been as direct. If you want to make a massive hit, you can't sell it only to the small crowd who wants to ogle 2D characters, as Galbraith points out. "What moe game has as many players as Monster Hunter? What franchise has been as successful as Pokémon? What moe characters have had the cultural impact of those of Sailor Moon or Dragon Ball? The point is that they are not the majority of the audience, and the most popular and bestselling works in Japan are not those targeting moe fans."

If smaller games are catering to an almost exclusively Japanese audience, that still leaves mainstream titles for the rest of the world to enjoy, right? Well, not as many as there used to be.

Japanese Attitudes towards Gaming

Japanese culture has developed a reputation for being more accepting of traditionally geeky pursuits than the west. Because so many amazing games came from Japan in the past, many imagine Japan to be a place where being a "gamer' is accepted and considered "normal." In reality it's anything but. The west is far more accepting of adults playing games. While people will often play games on their cell phones, and though the DS made major in-roads into the casual market, particularly with women, admitting to playing games still carries a stronger social stigma in Japan than in Europe or North America. As such, many adults willingly give up games, keeping the market much younger overall than elsewhere.

Japanese work habits encourage this trend. Traditional corporate culture allows very little free time for their employees. A worker is expected to stay at work until his boss leaves for the day, putting a limit on family and leisure time. Since the bosses themselves have long since adjusted to such a schedule they stay late, forcing their subordinates to stay late with them and putting a stress on both their social and family life. Younger employees are expected to work long hours. Thirteen-plus hour days are not rare.

This leaves precious little time for hobbies, including gaming. However, it's societally expected that an individual will have one, and there are a limited number of socially acceptable options. When asked, Japanese men will often say that their hobby is golf, fishing, or gardening; women will often respond with shopping, English, and, in more recent years, golf. These activities tend to fall along strict gender lines and most people tend to name only a single hobby. While it's not unheard of to name gaming as one's hobby, to do so at a typical work place would make one stand out — something that is discouraged in group settings.

Adult gamers exist in Japan, but they're fewer in number for various reasons, including peer and work pressure. When Japanese adults do play games they do so more often than not on portable devices, and don't self-identify as "gamers." It's not a hobby, but rather something they do to kill time on a commute. In the past that meant the DS and to a lesser extent the PSP (the handheld's core market in Japan was always teenage boys, though Monster Hunter expanded the audience.) Today it means the iPhone and other smart phones. The 18-35 year old demographic that's hungry for HD experiences on their television doesn't exist outside a small group of dedicated gamers. That particular group overlaps to a large extent with those that are so fond of feeling moe. This has resulted in a market where the mass market audience plays on handhelds and the hardcore plays on consoles, which is quite different than most other markets in the world. Monster Hunter on the PSP is to Japan what Call of Duty on the 360/PS3 is to the west.

As Japanese gamers lost interest in console games, production dipped. At the same time, market forces prompted western PC heavy hitting developers to change their focus to consoles. Suddenly the console market was dominated by the west, and Japanese audiences have never liked western games. There's an old Japanese gaming proverb, yo-ge kuso-ge: literally, "western games are shit."

Gaming Xenophobia

The role and influence of western games on Japan after 1983 is minimal. While it's true that games like Pong and Spacewar did make it over to Japan, and that these were the first video games that Japan encountered, the country had a long tradition of producing traditional mechanical games for arcades, and these games (from companies like Nintendo and Sega) influenced early Japanese video games as well.

While Japanese arcades were blowing up in the '80s and the machines were becoming popular in America, a burgeoning home gaming market appeared on Japanese PCs. This period in the early '80s marks the only time where PC gaming was a force to consider in the Japanese gaming scene. Prior to the appearance of the Famicom in 1983, Japanese role-playing games were getting there start on these machines. Designers would liberally borrow from the Wizardry and Ultima series in their games. Wizardry in particular remains a cult favorite series in Japan, and the recent iterations of the franchise have only been released in Japan.

After this early era western games fell by the wayside. The rise of console gaming prevented Japanese gamers from seeing the best titles the rest of the world was buzzing about, and Japanese games developed in their own isolated ecosystem with Japanese publishers treating their popularity in the rest of the world as a bonus. At the time it seemed that video games were immune to what the Japanese call Galápagos syndrome, a phrase used to describe products made in Japan that fail to perform elsewhere. The term draws its name from the specialized adaptations sported by species of finches observed by Charles Darwin on the Galapagos Islands. These birds were only suited to life on their particular island. Likewise, products — particularly consumer electronics like cell phones — in Japan are often designed to suit the specific needs of Japanese consumers, and don't always perform well outside of the country despite being superior in many ways.

Without PC games Japanese gamers were only exposed to western console games, which were by and large inferior to their Japanese competitors. Given the skewed sample size, the conclusion was obvious: Western games were universally terrible, and the phrase "western games are shit," became self-evident.

The state of affairs slowly changed, but Japanese perceptions of western games hasn't. While there's a small group of hardcore gamers who import the latest titles from America, and designers like Suda 51 have acted as champions of foreign games, there are still many gamers and members of the industry who still cling to their old beliefs. One designer at a high-profile JRPG maker told us of the time he brought Bioshock into the office. While the younger members of the company were impressed, a high-ranking and well known producer played the game for thirty seconds, declared, "This game feels cheap," dropped the controller on the desk and walk away without another word.

The issue isn't that Japanese games aren't like western games. Japanese attempts to mimic western titles rarely meet with success, and when a developer in the country produces a worldwide hit, it's usually because they deliver an experience not found elsewhere. This issue is that many (but by no means all) influential Japanese designers refuse to examine western games at all. The result is that the Japanese gaming industry is currently suffering from its own version of the Galapagos syndrome, and the famed "Monster Hunter Claw" is its own specialized adaptation. While the west was busy fine tuning dual analog control from movement in a 3D space, designers in Japan were experimenting on their own methods of control that had to work on the single analog PSP. Monster Hunter's particular scheme required players to twist their hands into a very uncomfortable claw like shape. This claw eventually became the gold standard for 3D action games in Japan, and gamers expected and demanded its inclusion. So when Konami produced Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker they had to offer western players pseudo-dual analog (using the face buttons) and Japanese players "the claw."

It's not that Japanese games are bad and western games are good or vice versa, the problem facing fans of Japanese games outside of the country is that the tastes of Japanese gamers are diverging from the rest of the world, thus limiting the commercial appeal of even the biggest titles in Japan. The specialized habits of Japanese adult gamers have left the console space in the country to otaku and their moe. Meanwhile, the Japanese consumers are perfectly content with this state of affairs, because as far as many are concerned they're not missing out on anything. The gamers have changed more than the games, and while that leaves a lot of old-school fans in Europe and the Americas out in cold the vast majority of consumers around the world seem to feel just fine about the current state of affairs.