An interesting article I found on Japanese and American game design philosophies

johnnydo · April 27, 2012, 8:44pm

http://www.1up.com/features/clash-cultures?pager.offset=0

The last page gets very, very relevant

tataki · April 27, 2012, 9:02pm

How is it relevant?
As it sounds, FGs cater to a crowd that’s totally different from the one described in the article. Like how Cave danmakus cater to extremely skilled players who look for extremely challenging games.

Mr.X · April 27, 2012, 9:13pm

More appropriate for GD than FGD.

johnnydo · April 27, 2012, 10:11pm

The variance in attitudes towards game difficulty is yet another important difference. There seems to be a misconception that Japan is the land of video gamers – and if all one ever looked at was pictures of Akihabara, Tokyo’s electronic district, it’s easy to get that impression. But in reality, the nation’s market is segmented much like it is everywhere else – a small group of hardcore gamers who love their games filled with gigantic quests and complicated mathematics and teeth punching difficulty, and the much more dominant casual gamers, who enjoy playing video games but don’t want to be assaulted by overly complex gameplay.
On this same note, it’s also not entirely true that the Japanese prefer their games to be more difficult. Many Americans seem to think that Japanese games are dumbed down during localization, either to make them easier to understand or easier to beat.

This falsity probably stems from the RPGs of the early 90s, where the English market got the simplified version of Final Fantasy II. (To be fair, this same downgraded version was also released in Japan as Final Fantasy IV Easytype, so a wider audience could play it.) Since then, a number of games - especially action titles - have been made more difficult for the American market. The now-defunct Working Designs often increased the difficulty in their localized titles. To this day, Capcom still gives the Western market more daunting experiences – the original American release of the PlayStation Resident Evil went through slight modifications to make it more challenging, and Westerners initially got a much harder version of Devil May Cry 3.

Konami even implemented extreme difficulty levels for the European market in their Metal Gear Solid games. “I’m not sure that it’s so much that Japanese gamers prefer easier games, but rather gamers overseas tend to like more challenge,” explains Kobyashi. “It’s a slight difference in nuance, but when making a game, we don’t intentionally make it easier for Japanese gamers. For years, we have always received requests from users overseas to ‘make the games harder,’ and we have been responding by adding challenge to the games we release overseas.” “There are two reasons for the difficulty changes,” says Inafune.

"The first one is from a business perspective. Western markets also have rental markets. [Renting games is illegal in Japan.] If you make a game that is too easy, it will become a rental instead of a purchase and the game’s sales will suffer. Thus, those on the business side of things often request that games be made harder to counter-act the rental market.

"The second reason is from a design standpoint. Western gamers like to challenge things. If a game is very difficult, they view beating it as a triumph over a sort of foe. Japanese gamers will quit if a game is too hard. They want an RPG where you never die. If you play an RPG correctly, you should not die.

That is the point. Most RPGs are not concerned with raising your skill, they are concerned with raising your experience points. I think that Japanese companies are slowly losing the ability to make hard games that still appeal to Japanese users, and this is evidenced by the decline in sales of action games as Japanese users lose interest in challenging higher difficulty levels."

tataki · April 27, 2012, 11:40pm

2nd bolded paragraph is not true. Western games are becoming easier as well, and you can’t die in them too. (I mean technically you can die but there’s no penalty whatsoever)

Now how does this relate to FGs and what made you open this thread in FGD?

XtraKurrikula · April 27, 2012, 11:48pm

Gotta put it somewhere

Infinite · April 27, 2012, 11:50pm

I posted this article in that Phil Fish thread in GD.

Zidiane · April 27, 2012, 11:55pm

I don’t understand. Why is this important again?

johnnydo · April 28, 2012, 2:10am

It relates to FGs in the idea that maybe (just maybe), some of the newer Capcom games weren’t really made for us in mind

I thought you guys would’ve figured that out sooner.

Hecatom · April 28, 2012, 2:13am

tell us something that we didnt know since 2009

Negative-Zer0 · April 28, 2012, 2:15am

At least we don’t have sakurai.

johnnydo · April 28, 2012, 2:15am

When I say “us” I meant a western/non-Japanese audience… Goddamn…

Hecatom · April 28, 2012, 2:24am

and again

johnnydo · April 28, 2012, 3:00am

If they made these games for us (us being all non-Japanese gamers including casual), they wouldn’t be as “easy”

Hecatom · April 28, 2012, 3:09am

hahahahaha

johnnydo · April 28, 2012, 3:39am

its true:rofl:

I’d like to think that western casuals would like just a little bit of difficulty in their games (just enough to keep your attention for a few minutes). Wishful thinking.

“Casual” doesn’t have to mean super easy, in my honest opinion. But do continue being smarmy

it pleases me

Valkerion · April 28, 2012, 4:20am

Article seems to bounce around the idea that difficulty is based on region more than depending on who is making it. Ironic that on the other side it always seems like Japanese players complain they are making games to easy to appeal to the western audience haha.

Either way it depends on the game. In general though, Ive always found western games to be a lot eaiser since, well forever. Maybe its down to playstyle/skill level.

johnnydo · April 28, 2012, 4:37am

You hit the nail on the head.