If you need evidence that gaming is alive and well in Asia, check this out: at the Osaka Aquarium, you can download information to your DS.
I spent a few years in junior high living in Hong Kong, which were major formative years – in my gaming life. After playing NES, SNES, Famicon, Super Famicon, and Street Fighter in arcades with my cousins, I was a gamer for life. When Mrs. cmfl3x and I decided to take a trip to Asia this summer (Taiwan, Japan, and Hong Kong), I was curious as to what the gaming scene looks like over there these days – to my more adult eyes. Hit the jump from my impressions.
A Different World
espion4ge has written a bit about the difference between Eastern and Western gaming design, but to be honest, I was still shocked at how different the culture of gaming is on the other side of the world. Here in the States, I think there still is a little bit of a stigma about being a gamer, even though the Wii has made things more mainstream, gaming is still considered nerd territory. But over in Asia, and especially in Japan, gaming seems to live more inside the general cultural landscape.
Case in point – Akihabara. There is an entire DISTRICT in Tokyo dedicated to gaming and electronics in general. Hong Kong has Wan Chai 188 (and a few other places I used to visit as a kid) – a building basically dedicated to games: three stories of stores selling video games, computer equipment, and manga. Oh, and some GIGANTIC Starcraft 2 posters. I can’t think of any equivalents here in the US. Those areas are awesome and any gamer visiting Asia (or any fan of electronics, really) should check them out.
Perhaps the most interesting difference to me was the fact that game pricing isn’t as regulated as it is in the States. Funny story perhaps only to me: I was eating with my cousins after not seeing them for about 6 years. About 5 minutes after pleasantries were exchanged, the next most pertinent question was: “Did you pick up Dragon Quest IX yet?” There was absolutely no context, and the three of us haven’t spoken about games for years. I was actually wondering if I was going to find out that they had outgrown video games, and pondered this with my wife before we met up with them. But I guess some things never change! But I digress…
As I was saying, game pricing isn’t as regulated as my cousins told me. Especially in Hong Kong, games sell for different prices, even at release. I think this is kind of awesome, since there are plenty of games I wait to hit the bargain bin before I buy them. But if they started in the bargain bin, maybe I could pick them up earlier!
The culture is just so different over there: many of the games I saw were completely unfamiliar to me. In Japan, there are a bunch of dating sims on the DS, and even a stripping game (or so Mrs. cmfl3x told me, I wasn’t allowed to look at the box). In Hong Kong, my cousin was telling me about Nier for the Xbox. I had never heard of it, but apparently it’s bigger over there.
I thought that with importing and the like we have a lot more access to Japanese games, and in one sense that’s true. Yet part of having access to games is just having the knowledge about them, and the fact of the matter is there are games we don’t even hear about. It’s tough to import games unless you have some kind of prior knowledge. That got me thinking…
Great games like Captain Tsubasa never made it to the US, or flopped when they did
A Different Culture
Being back in Asia made me think about games that I used to play as a kid that I couldn’t find when I moved back to the States. Aside from the Dragonball RPG I used to play (and love), the games that I loved the most were the Captain Tsubasa series. For the unfamiliar (probably everyone), Captain Tsubasa is a soccer game with RPG elements based on a popular Japanese manga series. The games were all in Japanese, but they were amazing. Your players level up, learn special skills (think Shaolin Soccer, which came after Captain Tsubasa), and you use these awesome skills to win soccer games.
Few people in America have even heard of the soccer RPG genre, but it is pretty big in other parts of the world. The fact of the matter is, Eastern and Western gaming cultures are separated by more than just an ocean. Despite the perception of gamers as loners, there has and always will be an element of community in gaming. That’s what causes “sleeper hits” to happen, word of mouth spreads and a game becomes a legend. Over in Asia, the culture has created an atmosphere where Captain Tsubasa became a huge hit, over here, Tecmo Cup Soccer, the Americanized version flopped.
For some reason I find this fascinating. I guess I kind of thought that with the global economy and that little “internet” thing, things that are popular in Asia could still be popular here. We all eat ramen, don’t we? But obviously that’s not true, because Inazuma 11, the latest soccer RPG in Japan on the DS, is selling like gangbusters and I’d never even heard of it here. I picked up a copy of the original (the third game in the series just came out this July) and will share my impressions later.
So how do the Eastern and Western gaming cultures affect us as end users? Well, last week I wondered where the innovation was. I guess I found a little bit of my answer in Asia. Maybe the games they release out there aren’t innovative, since they’ve been releasing them for ages, but for people in the US, there are still innovative gametypes that we haven’t tried out. So if 3D doesn’t work out, at least I can import!
Same Console Wars
My last, brief thought, is that the console wars exist in Asia as well. In Japan, obviously, PS3 is king of the hardcore stuff, while Wii and DS have a huge following. In Japanese stores, the Xbox sections are like one row, while there are three or more rows dedicated to the other consoles. So in Japan, perhaps the console wars are more like the Seven Hour War from Half Life 2.
Hong Kong is a different story. According to my cousins, the console wars were just as fierce over there as they were here: complete with fanboys and everything. There is also the strange fact that Xbox games generally sell for cheaper, leveling out the playing field a bit. Anyway, I just thought it was interesting – you can fly halfway around the world, but you can’t escape the console war!
I assume Guitar Hero and Rock Band aren’t as popular over there.