Browsing by Author "Kanerva, Taija"

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.