Ghengis John said:
When you get reports of japanese gamers considering an Xbox then painfully shaking their heads no and going "foreign... foreign." from unapologetic japanofiles it's not a difficult conclusion to draw. While it's fair to say that it might simply be a matter of taste there is clearly also a factor of stigma surrounding the adoption of western gaming.
But that would be to say that they adopt nothing from the west, which isn't true, if anything, quite a lot of the youth of Japan are INFLUENCED by the west, even to the point where Anime characters and Japanese game characters look more American than Japanese in most cases. They eat American foods at restaurant chains that have spread there, they adopt American devices such as Apple products, and of course they support their own which I would tell any country to do anyway, that's patriotism. So their perspective on Xbox could be a multitude of different factors, but I still think its mostly down to the fact that Xbox doesn't have the sort of games they enjoy in ABUNDANCE as it does western games. This is a different story to say PS3 and Wii. Saying that, we over here in the EU play both Japanese games and American orientated games and have never really complained, but at the same time, you'll find more developers, American or not in the western side of the world depicting the US in their games, which is cool, but I'd like for example more patriotism from our home grown developers because I can't remember the last game I played with the English flag in the background, that's just one thing though, beyond that, I'd like to simply play more games that don't always have to include someone from America or IN America, not because I'm fed up of it, but just because I'd like some diversity.
Well to be perfectly fair we do go to japan a lot in games, even American made games and likewise see a lot of Japanese protagonists. I think the question you're really asking is "why can't we go to Europe more?"
Well we go to Japan because Japanese focus heavily on their own culture and tend to disregard other cultures, but if you never played a Japanese game, the alternative is usually America and rarely anything in between, which is why games like Far Cry 2 and Resistance (before it went to America) (yeah, I'm specifically looking at FPS titles in this example) stood out a little. Saying that, I wasn't any more in love with Resistance then any other shooter just because it took place in the UK, but it was nice to see some of the places I know for a change and areas I've visited often destroyed. I think I could finally relate to that a little more then I usually do with FPS titles, so it was a little saddening to see Resistance 2 and 3 follow in the path of most other shooters when they started off in Europe.
Luckily that's not the case. We aren't exactly shaking our heads at games like katamari damacy or leaving playstations on store shelves simply for coming from beyond our shores. I won't say that xenophobia does not exist, but it's probably greatly reduced among western gamers who grew up on japanese products. For that matter I have never argued that market share is why we can't put fallout in another country. A far more sensible perspective is that writers should stick to what they know. If an american game developer tried to set a game in europe and what's more tried to satirize or lampoon the culture of any particular country there what are the odds that that attempt would come off as poorly executed and inflammatory? If you're going to set a game in a country it would be wisest to have it made by denizens of that country. This is why 4A's Metro 2033 and Lionhead's Fable both "work" respectively. They are genuine voices and not the unfamiliar, vaguely racist overtones of someone trying their best to ape a culture.
I want you to think about how many well intentioned western made games have had say, a china level and how many unintentionally funny youtube clips have come out of that. Cross reference that with cries of racism levied at the Japanese developed resident evil games and I hope you start to get the picture. It's hard for a foreign developer to depict another culture and not draw some criticism.
That's fair, I wasn't pointing out the fact that American developers in particular had to do it, but many of these same developers have European branches, Crytek for example, a German developer, why couldn't Crysis 2 have taken place in Germany rather than the overly used New York, usually when games ever took place in Germany, it was killing EVIL GERMANS in world war 1 & 2 games, which doesn't really bring the nature of the country into perspective, certainly not in a positive light anyway, there's a difference between a city being wrecked and trying to defend it from evil attackers making the city more interesting because it's what you are defending, than ATTACKING evil doers in a city, to which you'll spend more time killing than caring about the landscape. There are more than enough UK developers, but yet they feel they NEED to make a game based in the US to appeal to a wider demographic, which shouldn't always have to be the case. Which is why Rockstar never returned to London with the GTA franchise.
I don't think we'd learn too much about Indonesia's culture stealing cars or blowing up mutants. If anything I think the games you've listed really depict America in a negative light, GTA especially and you should probably be happier games like it are not set elsewhere. If you want games, good games, to be set anywhere else in the world then it would probably be best for developers from those countries to step up and handle the task themselves.
Its not so much the game at hand than the pulling power of attraction the game has, GTA4 does this exceptionally well, between blowing up cars and causing chaos, you can't help but admire the landscape, especially the first time you play it, and the pulling power it has MAKES you want to visit that place, many a reviewer and gamer has stated this, GTA4 makes you WANT to visit New York because it looks so grand. Games are supposed to be fun, so negative or positive, it shouldn't stop people from enjoying where it takes place and if games can be a stepping stool towards making people keen to travel just to see the game's landscape they played for real, then why not spread out more? Why not depict other spectacular and beautiful cities if you can and if you can avoid issues of controversy? That's the whole point of having multinational branches and this is exactly where Microsoft failed in Japan, they expected to appeal to Japanese with Western games predominantly, without having a branch there, how can they understand and relate to that culture in a way that is more effective then the methods they are trying if they didn't attempt?
My point is that games should be a platform of learning as well as fun, and I don't mean the boring reading sort of learning, I mean providing the ability to take up a keen interest in other places. If games can attract us to parts of America that we played in the games, why can't it be done for other places?
Heck, Just Cause 2 could have taken place on all the Caribbean Islands, it certainly wouldn't have been offensive to me in its form now and my family are all from the islands, if anything, had I not been to the islands, after playing that game and enjoying it as much as I did, I'd be pretty keen to visit.
