A little while back bloggers at Destructoid debated the broad topic of “East vs. West.” Given Ryan Winterhalter’s recent 1up feature and the 2011 Tokyo Game Show, now seems like a good time to rehash some of the arguments I made then with regard to Japanese Games.
In his feature, Winterhalter gives some interesting reasons for why the Japanese gaming industry has said to the West, “It’s not you, it’s me,” and turned inward to focus more on their domestic audience. He concludes:
“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.”
While I think Winterhalter is correct in his analysis of the modern Japanese gamer, I’m not convinced that the tastes of that audience are, “limiting the commercial appeal of even the biggest titles in Japan.” On the one hand, what’s big in Japan won’t necessarily be big in the West, and specifically the U.S., but at the same time, many of the biggest and most acclaimed gaming titles in the U.S. continue to be products that originated across the Pacific.
In fact, it’s quite surprising just how popular Japanese titles remain in America. Despite its size and location, Japan continues to be a relevant and important force in American gaming.
If you look at the 50 top selling video games of all time, the majority were all created by Japanese studios. Even after you remove previously bundled titles, the Japan’s cumulative success is astounding. The first Western game on the list is Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas at number 18. Take out those titles that were once bundled and add the sales from Xbox and PC, and it still only makes it to the 16th spot. What about Call of Duty? Combined software sales from all available platforms and it still only sits at number 7.
Indeed, even though they are exclusive to one system, Nintendo’s titles have outsold the competition historically, with more recent titles like Mario Kart DS still making it into the top 10 despite only being released on one platform. But that was yesterday some will say. What have Japanese developers done more recently?
On the one hand it appears as though the critical achievements of the past several years have all been developed in the West: Bioshock, Fallout 3, and Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. For instance, in 2010, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences declared Mass Effect 2 game of the year. GDC Game Developers Choice Awards gave 2009 to Uncharted 2. In 2008, Game Informer’s choice was Grand Theft Auto IV. And Gampro declared Call of Duty 4 the winner in 2007, while in 2006 Spike TV’s VGAs granted the highest honor to The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. All Western developed. All high achievements. And all great games.
Indeed, even though they are exclusive to one system, Nintendo’s titles have outsold the competition historically, with more recent titles like Mario Kart DS still making it into the top 10 despite only being released on one platform. But that was yesterday some will say. What have Japanese developers done more recently?
On the one hand it appears as though the critical achievements of the past several years have all been developed in the West: Bioshock, Fallout 3, and Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. For instance, in 2010, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences declared Mass Effect 2 game of the year. GDC Game Developers Choice Awards gave 2009 to Uncharted 2. In 2008, Game Informer’s choice was Grand Theft Auto IV. And Gampro declared Call of Duty 4 the winner in 2007, while in 2006 Spike TV’s VGAs granted the highest honor to The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. All Western developed. All high achievements. And all great games.
But there’s another side to the data. Score aggregating sites like GameRankings and Metacritic, though loathed by video game journalists, offer a valid metric for approximating a title’s success, and both point to the continued achievement of Japanese developers. According to GameRankings, four out of the last six years, the game of the year was developed either by Nintendo or Capcom. Metacritic arrived at the same results.
One nation still dominates the platformer, racing, and fighting genres. And if you’re looking for a novel take on the conventional puzzler or action title, look no further than this summer’s Catherine and El Shaddai. When looking at the critical acclaim of games like Super Mario Galaxy, Demon Souls, and Xenoblade, it makes me wonder if perhaps Western tastes are actually changing . Hit titles from Japan still sell amazingly well overseas, but any decline in just great sales are probably has less to do with overly catering to the idiosyncratic tastes of the Japanese audience than failing to correctly cater to the current thirst for bro-shooters and survival-horror in the States.
One nation still dominates the platformer, racing, and fighting genres. And if you’re looking for a novel take on the conventional puzzler or action title, look no further than this summer’s Catherine and El Shaddai. When looking at the critical acclaim of games like Super Mario Galaxy, Demon Souls, and Xenoblade, it makes me wonder if perhaps Western tastes are actually changing . Hit titles from Japan still sell amazingly well overseas, but any decline in just great sales are probably has less to do with overly catering to the idiosyncratic tastes of the Japanese audience than failing to correctly cater to the current thirst for bro-shooters and survival-horror in the States.
But though I think Japanese games still have wider appeal that Winterhalter’s piece implies, I think he makes a crucial point when it comes to the global gaming industry: “Gamer taste in both regions underwent a massive sea change in recent years.” And so while I think it’s important to remember just how successful Japanese video games still are world wide, it’s increasingly apparent just how subjective our notions of “progress” are when it comes to game development. And though I thoroughly believe in the ability of critics and gamers to make objective claims about the medium and what comes out of it, we have to be vigilant against confusing low quality titles with culturally different ones. Just because a game is trying to appeal to a non-Western audience shouldn’t be reason enough to write it off or call it the product of backwards development philosophy.
Cross-posted from 1up.com community blog, "ethangach."