Japan and the West
Posted on Jul 14, 2011 in Rants
There is a reasonably obvious trend with most Japanese games, and that is the intended audience. Many Japanese games never get any exposure outside of the country of origin, as it is believed that the target audience of these games is exclusive to the land of the rising sun.
Games that do get western translations (or just simply releases) only come out after a significant delay - two years is a very common waiting period for a lot of games. But at least it's better than no release at all, which happens all too often.
I find this extremely annoying for several reasons.
Missing Entries
The first case is when some games in a series are translated, but others are not. A notable example is Mother 3 - the sequel to EarthBound in the west - which looks to never be getting an English release. One that affects me a bit more is the recent announcement that Gyakuten Kenji 2 (Ace Attorney Investigations 2) is not going to be translated - despite 5 other games in the series all getting faithful English releases.
One-Way Street
Another reason is that the reverse situation doesn't usually apply - a significant number of western games are translated and released to Japan with hardly any delay at all. Today Kotaku posted this week's game sales figures in Japan - and the top 2 games? L.A. Noire and Infamous 2. Both western-developed games, both released in the west less than two months ago. Already topping the charts in Japan. In the meantime, we are still waiting on the fourth Professor Layton game, which will finally get an English release at the end of this year, two years after the original release in Japan.
One thing that I must mention as well: Translations can be handled badly. I'm not talking about bad translations - though they do happen - I'm talking about poor planning and management of said translations. My best example is Intelligent Systems' Advance Wars: Days of Ruin. This game was developed in Japan - as with pretty much every Nintendo game - so, of course, it was developed in Japanese.
After development was complete, Nintendo of Japan sent copies of the game to both Nintendo of America and Nintendo of Europe - who then both translated the game independently. As a result, the game is named differently between Europe and America, many characters have different names, and most of the text is ever-so-slightly different between versions. To cap it all off, the game was then cancelled in Japan. Just think of the wasted resources involved with all the unnecessary translations!
Industry Motivation
My last - and most important - argument, is that the state of gaming right now is pretty terrible. Western games are getting more and more "samey" - Call of Duty clones, World of Warcraft clones, and the remainder picking up the scraps. There is little innovation in the western games industry right now - to get anything meaningful, we need to look to the indie developers, who, as great as they are, simply do not have the resources to realistically create a game on the same scale as the big studios.
I know what you are asking: "How do Japanese games factor in on this?". Here's what I think. The industry needs a big kick in the butt, and huge amounts of concentrated exposure to Japanese games may be just what is required. Why? Japan has taken a very different direction to the west when it comes to games (it extends to the film and print mediums, too, but let's focus on games). Gamers are crying out for something new, something accessible, and something different. Sure, Japan may be in a similar state as the west with genre stagnation, but at least they're a bit more exposed to western games than we are to Japanese ones.
Some fantastic and unique games have come out of Japan. Trauma Center, Ace Attorney, Final Fantasy, Advance Wars, Golden Sun, and Professor Layton are just a small sample of some of the great games and series that have come from Japan. But this list only includes games that have been translated to our native language - even taking my obvious bias towards DS games into account. Imagine, for every game that gets translated to English, let's take a guess and say that ten games are not. That adds up to a lot of missed gameplay for us, and the whole industry is worse off for it.
Wrapping Up
Japan has never been too warm to other cultures, though they have been improving. Western culture is usually a bit more welcoming, but they aren't doing all that much to help, either. So what's the solution to the great language barrier preventing our respective cultures from missing out of so many great games? I do not think that the solution is for everyone to learn a different language - it's a bit of an unrealistic and unfair expectation to ask on anyone.
A good way for us to start is already staring at us! It's the Steam platform. From what I understand, PC gaming is a lot more popular in Japan than you would think. I believe that Japan has a large number of "professional indie" studios - groups making smaller games that can be made at a faster pace than the big AAA titles of today. Now imagine that some of these games get released, translated, on Steam for free. What has been lost? A bit of cash for an English translation (or no cash if the game has already been translated by the community), and a bit of time to get the game published on Steam. That's about it!
Who wins in this scenario? Everyone! The western gamers get exposed to some Japanese games, meaning that the Japanese developers see more profits when their games start getting more popular. The popularity gets noticed by other Japanese and developers, who proceed to translate more and more games into English. Western developers see the popularity of these Japanese games, get their much-needed kick up the butt, and start innovating again to compete with these new game types.
Another way to start getting some of these games to the west is for western companies to take action. Instead of waiting for the Japanese developers to request a translation, maybe some western developers can offer their translation services to the Japanese companies in exchange for a percentage of sales? Again, everybody wins - Japanese games get more exposure, developers get more sales, the industry gets motivated again.
The way I see it? Good stuff happens if you stir the pot. Right now the pot is sitting, forgotten in a corner somewhere, growing mould and getting a bit smelly. Let's mix it up and get some excitement happening, because right now the industry is doing nothing. And that's just not cool.
