Western and Eastern Games

[asciibard]

I recently heard the Japanese phrase "yo-ge kuso-ge" which means "Western game, shit game." It sounds like many Japanese gamers have similar predispositions to games made on my hemisphere that many of us have about theirs. I just take it to mean that people from different walks of life are accustomed to different paces, tones, and rhythms of storytelling and gameplay.

I'm a ravenous, dedicated, lifelong gamer. I think most games in general are likely to be kuso-ge, and there are specific genres I am very unlikely to enjoy, but when I find a game I like I latch on to it and get lost inside of it. I was never big on JRPGs until I played Grandia 2, and I've never enjoyed another JRPG since, but I adored that one. I never cared about visual novels until I tried Phoenix Wright, and hated every other one I tried until Digital: A Love Story.

The moral of the story for me is that there's exceptions to every rule. Life's sweetest moments are often when something wonderful catches me off guard so I push myself not to be a pessimistic hater enslaved by my prejudged assumptions.

[ushikun]

Personally I think the biggest difference between Japanese Games (JRPGs and what-not) vs. Western Games is the fact that Japan has this other sort of BIG industry called the Anime industry on their side. And for most Japanese developers, the Anime industry has always been key influences in their story-telling style and development styles.

SquareEnix for example, even in the pixel art days (NES, SNES), has been influenced by Anime-styled characters.
(no coincidence that games like Chrono Trigger or Dragon Quest happens to be drawn by this famous Manga artist dude)
SquareEnix is obviously a very big sponsor in many Anime series, and they also have their own manga magazine.
(GanGan Comics, where stuff like Soul Eater, Full Metal Alchemist, etc is/was published)

Obviously, Visual Novels have never hidden their relationship between the Anime industry either. (Art style, Voice Acting, etc)
And I think a lot of modern Japanese Games (story-driven games) are basically becoming a sub-culture of the Anime-side more than the Gaming-side, which is why a lot of western players are growing distant from them.

I kind of strongly noticed this playing FF13 (Japanese version), where there's a moment where Hope is mumbling in his sleep 母ちゃん(mother~), and Lightning replies 誰が母ちゃんだよ(who are you calling your mother), which is basically an inside joke because the Voice actress for Lightning (Sakamoto, Maaya) is actually the same voice actress as Aerith (FF7: Advent Children) and she pretty much says the same line to Cloud. And I thought to myself, man there's pretty much no way the English version is going to translate this inside joke properly.

And I feel there's a lot of these kind of subtle sub-culture references in many of modern Japanese games that just can't be enjoyed by most Western audiences, which I think is the biggest difference between the two worlds : P

[Auro-Cyanide]

@ushikun
And western games... don't?

I'm not entirely sure of the point you are getting at, maybe that the Japanese use a lot of cross media? Anime is important to gaming and the western lack of it means what? Cultural references (which happen on both sides)?

[alexwhite]

I think games recently are a merge of wrpg and jrpg. If you look at Deus Ex: Human revolution, Batman: Arkham asylum and arkham city, you'll notice that the title credits state Square Enix as the graphics people and Eidos as the story. No one argues that Square has some of the best graphics ever, so they now work on graphics for a lot of "wrpg". Maybe they've lost sight of their narrative skills, but they are still good at something, and if both companies play to their strengths, you can create beautiful engaging games that everyone can enjoy.

One of the most dramatic character driven third person shooters is the Metal Gear Solid series, and that is in a jrpg narrative style, just with a shooter element more influenced by action shooters. Games that have achieved universal acclaim are not often clearly defined in one genre or another, you can't say its eastern or western, because it rises above the labels we like so much. It takes the best of both worlds and merges them into something awesome.

[Obscura]

This is fantastic video series. Thanks for posting it!

[ushikun]

@Auro-Cyanide
Well yes, I agree that Western games have their cultural references embedded in as well.
And I was making the point that I think that these cultural influences (whether it be other media like Anime or the Film industry, or historical references) make a big impact in the way stories are presented, because the developer's interests and their target audience's interests are rather different.

Which I thought was part of this "Why do/should JVNs (games) differ / take different routes than WVNs (games)".
Or may be it wasn't..in which case, ignore me and carry along ^^