Master's Thesis
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Virtual Worlds Apart A Comparative Study on Digital Games in Japan and the West Taija Kanerva Master’s Thesis University of Helsinki Department of World Cultures April 2015 Supervisor: Professor Rein Raud i Acknowledgements I would like to take this opportunity to gratefully acknowledge the help and contributions of the following people. First of all, I’d like to extend my heartfelt thanks to Mr. Shintaro Kanaoya for irreplaceable and professional insight to the game industry both from a Japanese and Western point-of-view. Furthermore, big thanks go to the following gentlemen of the Finnish game industry for answering my interview questions; Joonas Laakso, Antti St. Stén, Antti Szurawitzki, and Antti Sonninen. I humbly bow to Patrick W. Galbraith, Masashi Harikae, Tsubasa Hirasawa, Yu Yabiku, Daisuke Shiina for spreading and answering my survey directed to Japanese gamers. Thank you to Daisuke Shiina and Sanae Ito for checking my grammar! Your help has been priceless. Moreover I thank Johannes Koski for some useful source material and for a fruitful discussion about Japanese games. Finally, I am forever grateful to Karri Kiviluoma. His support during the making of this thesis has been irreplaceable. Thank you for the endless amount of patience, strength and encouraging words! ii Abstract This thesis is a comparative and qualitative study of Japanese and Western digital games and gaming cultures with the focus on the Japanese video games market. The objective is to find differences between Japanese and Western games and gaming cultures, and the thesis falls into the academic fields of game studies and cultural anthropology. This study attempts to give essential information for a Western game studio attempting to create commercial success in Japan, and to researchers of digital games or Japanese culture. The mechanics and in-game elements of 18 critically acclaimed and commercially successful Western and Japanese video games published between 1996 and 2014 are analyzed, and various other game titles of various genres are used to support or to counter the findings. To gain an understanding of game design, Japanese and Western cultural values, character design and other factors, several books, academic researches, articles, sales data, and different web pages related to the issue are studied alongside these games. Several games industry experts are also interviewed. According to sales data studied in this thesis, Japanese and Western gamers seem to prefer different gaming platforms and game genres. In addition, according to the case studies and other games studied, there are several differences between Japanese and Western digital games regarding game-mechanics, gameplay and other in-game elements. Firstly, Japanese games use a third-person camera whereas the ratio between first-person and third-person perspective is somewhat equally divided among Western games. In most of the Western games studied the player is offered significant freedom in the form of dialogue options, avatar customization and development, and choices which changed the course of the storyline and game-world. Instead in the Japanese games researched the protagonist is pre-determined, the game offers no dialogue options, and the player is not able to affect the storyline. There are also significant differences between the pre-determined player characters of Western and Japanese games. Furthermore, Western games seem to offer relatively photorealistic graphics and realistic or fantasy-realistic creatures and settings while the graphics in Japanese games are commonly cartoon-like and the games are recurrently situated in fantasy settings with imaginative creatures. Combat situations are also handled differently. Japanese games frequently use turn- based combat situated in a separate combat mode whereas Western gamers seem to prefer seeing the enemies on a map and issue commands in real-time. Saving mechanics also differ in that Western games commonly allow the player to save the game at any point whereas there is an equal division between saving points and being able to save freely among Japanese games. In addition, the characters in Japanese games are likely to co-operate and help other characters within the game while Western games seem to emphasize individual prowess. Moreover, there is a clear aversion to crime, graphic violence and sexual themes in Japanese games whereas some Western games include this kind of content. Finally, a lot of Japanese games seem to promote mechanics related to collecting creatures or objects, and characters suitable for cross-media commodification, making character design in these games extremely important. iii Table of contents 1. INTRODUCTION: JAPAN AND THE WEST – VIRTUAL WORLDS APART? ........................ 1 2. THEORIES AND DEFINITIONS ..................................................................................... 4 2.1 DEFINITION OF A VIDEO GAME ......................................................................................... 4 2.2 GAMEPLAY, MECHANICS, DYNAMICS AND AESTHETICS .......................................................... 8 2.3 SOCIAL NETWORK GAME MECHANICS ............................................................................. 14 2.4 VIDEO GAME GENRES .................................................................................................. 17 3. MATERIAL .............................................................................................................. 21 3.1 PREVIOUS RESEARCH .................................................................................................... 22 3.2 INTERVIEWS: CONDUCTING AND USE OF DATA .................................................................. 24 3.3 JAPANESE VIDEO GAMING TRENDS ................................................................................. 24 3.3.1 A brief history of Japanese games .................................................................. 24 3.3.2 Gaming Platforms in Japan and the West ...................................................... 27 3.3.3 Sales data of Computer and Console Games .................................................. 29 3.3.4 Social network games in Japan ....................................................................... 32 3.3.5 Genre variations in Japan and the West ......................................................... 37 4. CASE STUDIES ........................................................................................................ 42 4.1 ROLE-PLAYING GAMES .................................................................................................. 43 4.2 ACTION-ADVENTURE GAMES.......................................................................................... 50 5. DISCUSSION ........................................................................................................... 56 5.1 GAME MECHANICS AND GAMEPLAY ................................................................................ 56 5.2 THE 6 “C”S OF JAPANESE GAMES ................................................................................... 60 5.2.1 Cultural elements ............................................................................................ 61 5.2.2 Creativity over reality ...................................................................................... 71 5.2.3 Character design ............................................................................................. 74 5.2.4 Co-operation ................................................................................................... 82 5.2.5 Collecting ......................................................................................................... 84 5.2.6 Cross-media Commodification ........................................................................ 86 6. AFTERWORD: BRIDGES AND BARRIERS BETWEEN THE VIRTUAL WORLDS ................ 88 iv 7. REFERENCES .......................................................................................................... 96 8. APPENDIX ............................................................................................................ 104 8.1 APPENDIX A: GAME ANALYSIS – ROLE-PLAYING GAMES .................................................. 104 8.2 APPENDIX B: GAME ANALYSIS – ACTION-ADVENTURE GAMES .......................................... 114 8.3 APPENDIX C: INTERVIEW QUESTIONS FOR GAME INDUSTRY PROFESSIONALS ......................... 119 v 1. Introduction: Japan and the West – Virtual Worlds Apart? The Western world has witnessed many hugely popular game titles from Japan, such as the Final Fantasy series, Super Mario Bros and Metal Gear Solid franchises, while having Pokémon showing on television and carried around on portable Nintendo consoles. Traditionally, Japanese video games and technological products have fared well inside as well as outside of Japan, and Ryûkô Tsûshin, a magazine revolving around Japanese cultural trends defines these products as “global commodities” (sekai shôhin), describing them as products that carry universal or transcultural appeal while still bearing the creative imprint of the originality of a producing nation (Iwabuchi, 2004:54). It seems like digital games are immune to what the Japanese call Galapagos syndrome, a concept that was originally used for a species of birds that were discovered by Charles Darwin and which could only survive on the Galapagos Islands, which is also used as a term to describe the Japanese products that fail to perform elsewhere. However, during recent years it has seemed