Culture Bred Through Game Design
August 23rd, 2008
There were two articles which inspired me to write this piece so I’d like to call them out before I begin. They are Wanted: World Games by Chris Plante and The (possible) Source of Classical & Western Game Design by Richard Terrell.
Culture can roughly be defined as a set of socially transmitted norms that characterize the behaviour of a community. Our culture affects our understanding of the world around us and hence dictates how we behave in this space. Therefore when games are created, culture is inevitably bred through game design.
At this point in time game development is largely polarized between Japanese and Western (read: American) game design (European culture if often misinterpreted by the larger audience and as a result is often unfortunately left out). So to begin with, let us analyze some examples of how American and Japanese culture is expressed through games and what the overarching differences are.
One comment that has often been leveled towards the divide between Japanese and American games is the question of violence. Japanese games almost always go out of their way to provide reasoning behind violence. Think of the samurai who fights for honour or to avenge a tragedy in his life (typical example; home town being burnt down). The ninja’s actions are justified as he is retaliating to the violence bestowed upon him and due to the importance of face value in Asian culture (respect to elders, naming conventions in language) he is allowed to create violence, he is allowed to kill those who stand in his way. Unnecessary violence then, pushes against those ideals: if the ninja was to attack people because he felt like it would be a fun thing to do, within the village he’d lose face. Examples; Street Fighter, Ninja Gaiden Metal Gear Solid, Onimusha.
Furthermore when violence is used in Japanese games it is often heavily stylized, reflecting a cultural side effect of the Hiroshima bomb disaster where animation and art was used to displace people’s trauma of the devastating attack. The threat of nuclear bombs is also evident in numerous Japanese titles.
Survival Guide for the Next Few Months
August 22nd, 2008
As I explained in the previous article I shall be embarking on my Chinese exchange early next week. Even though I plan on immersing myself right into the Chinese culture, I still need my ‘me’ time to relax. Which is why I have been preparing to continue my hobby while overseas. Here’s what I’ve done:
My main thrust of gaming will come from whatever I can squeeze into my aging, graphic-cardless laptop. I am fortunate in that there are plenty of wide holes in my PC gaming collection (and I have a twin with PC games to fill those holes). You see, I usually regard PC games as a optional second preference to the consoles. I throw them on the list of “I’ll get around to it someday” games along with collecting all the 386 Pokemon and so forth.
Getting games onto my machine actually involves numerous different methods of installation (that’s the PC for ya) so let me run through some of them and what games I plan on taking as they will undoubtedly influence what I’ll write about in the coming months.
Plain Installs
Ultimate Quake spearheads this category and is the only games, or should I say series of games which will install straight to the HDD requiring no CD. I’ve play perhaps too much Quake with my friends in the past few years but I’ve never finished the single player campaigns. My PC port of Resident Evil 3 (yes, as you may have guessed I am going back and playing the whole series) also installed straight to HDD although I did rip an image of the CD first.
Patches
Having friends that would turn socially inept on playing any game that ends in ‘craft’, I have naturally been turned off from everything Blizzard for years. My brother has pleaded with me to change by mind and embrace the phenomenon and so I will, with Warcraft III, Starcraft and their respective expansions being patched to my PC.
Research Topics for the Presence of Games in China
August 19th, 2008
In a week I shall be leaving my comfortable life in Australia and stepping out into one of the busiest and most insane cities on the planet; Shanghai (China). Shanghai has a population of approximately 20 million people and is the epicenter of China’s economic and trading boom.
My reasoning for traveling abroad is language acquisition. I’ve been studying Chinese for 7 years now and much of that has been a waste of time due to the hold-your-hand approach of Western language education. I realized how frustrated I was with the this early on last year and have since gone to considerable efforts to amend my wasted time, the exchange represents a large part of this.
I’ll be away for at least half a year, possibly a year and a half depending of if I can combine a second scholarship that I won for the same time slot. While I am over in China, I would like to use the time I have to extend my understanding of the impact of video games in the country. This is all part of an upcoming direction that I’d like to steer the blog in, where I begin to analyze games from a world perspective and not just an American perspective, as usually tends to be the case. Being interested in both games and Chinese culture, I am already familiar with some nuances in the country’s gaming landscape so I would like to investigate:
-the underground piracy economy
-the rampid success of online gaming
-opinion from older/parent demographic
-gaming and Internet Cafe Culture
-Chinese/English gaming language
Among other issues. ShangHai also hosts a number of game developers including the Ubisoft branch whom are working on the new voice controlled RTS EndWar.
The reason why I am writing about my travels is because I want to hear your opinions, I want to know if there is anything about Chinese games and gaming culture that you wish to learn more about. I’m hoping to do mountains of research by talking to locals, testing these online games, browsing through pirated goods posting my finding on the blog. So let me know if there is anything that interests you about this side of the gaming market and I’ll try and snuff it up.
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