Yakuza 2: Institutional Knowledge and The Virtual Classroom

February 25th, 2009

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I want to continue discussing Yakuza 2, but in a different frame of mind. Back in my article titled What I Learnt From A Stone Frog Spitting Coloured Marbles, I took the underlying principles of a post by Iroquois Pliskin regarding the way in which games teach players and adapted it to Zuma’s ball flinging frustration. This time around, I’d like to adapt the same idea (the process of how games teach us things) to Yakuza 2.

You’ll remember that in my previous entry I discussed a certain event in which I went into a bar (of sorts), chose a lady of my choice and then proceeded to eat fruit and drink beer with her while she probed me with cute questions. The whole premise of this place was completely foreign to me, as I mentioned in the post; Australia doesn’t have such places…well at least to bounds of my knowledge*.

As foreign as it was I found the whole excursion to be extremely refreshing in a way that a lot of games aren’t. Obviously the “wow, they do this shit in Japan” factor was in play, but so too was the education of “instiutional knowledge”.

As the name suggests institutional knowledge is the knowledge gained by someone who has interactions with an institution**. For example, I go to work and I know which door I have to enter in, how to swipe my card, how to speak to my superiors, how to avoid them when I want to, which people to suck up to and which people to leave alone etc. Institutional knowledge is something that is rarely taught, rather acquired over time. It’s like street smarts for an institution. Institution then can be define in many ways and not just the ones build on concrete and cement. Institutions can range from banks, restaurants and hotels to group seminars, friend relationships and catching public transport.

In the example of Yakuza 2 the game allows the player to acquire institutional knowledge on multiple instances. In fact, the gamey parts of the institutional interactions (you either select product/service, walk around or leave) to a certain extent ensure that it’s taught. Their choices provide you with some light contextualization. With this said there is enough opportunity for both realization and education of institutional knowledge within these environments.

For instance, at the bar place (it’s called Prime BTW) the game drops you into a situation where you must eat and drink. Your enthusiastic partner will ask you to select what you wish to eat and drink, with your choices affecting how well she likes you – incidentally determining if she’ll want your company again*** . The game turns these activities into smaller games which both teach and allow institutional knowledge to be self-educated. The verbal requests by staff colour the purpose of the institution, the way the staff and your lady friend respond to your requests allows mastery of knowledge to be slowly acquired. You soon figure out that buying the cheapest booze never makes her happy, or that accepting extra time results in a higher bill at the end.

Being a game set in a foreign culture, the cultural aspects layer on top of the institutional knowledge. Each country has institutions and the way that participants operate in those institutional contexts change based on cultural norms. For example; the cultural divide between the get-to-know-you-first Chinese and seal-the-deal Western trade approaches, as documented in this paper.

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Yakuza 2, being a game set in an overseas, day-to-day commodity environment not only teaches the player institutional knowledge, it shares the wisdom of Japanese institutional knowledge. Everything within Yakuza’s institutions are affected by Japanese culture; the way people react to you, the rules of the institutions etc.

So what’s the point of all this then? Well, consider this. Institutional knowledge is difficult to teach, it’s something gained solely through experience. Think of any company doing business in the increasingly global market, a local business dealing with migrant customers, multiple ethnic types in the work place etc. When dealing with any intercultural context these things matter! If a video game can teach a player not just institutional knowledge, but also that knowledge in an overseas context, then there is clearly more merit here than just entertainment value.

That’s the end of the post. I did just want to include a short ranting post script too, it’s slightly detached from the main piece though.

Within the niche of foreign language and culture, the concept of the virtual classroom has been discussed at lengths with the dominance of references pointing to online life-sim Second Life. From my observations of other people’s experiences, Second Life is quite a rudimentary and troublesome medium which relies on pre-made tools and the online attendance of participants. Particularly with different time zones, the prospect collapses in comparison to the breadth and depth seen in Yakuza 2.

Yakuza 2 in reference to the virtual classroom is by no means a perfectly just relation. The upsides include greater detail and attention to authenticity, the flaws come from the lack of pre-set educational elements. Whatever the case, the argument can be made that Yakuza 2 also succeeds as an educational tool for Japanese context and etiquette.

*If I had Powerpoint installed on my machine I would load it up and dig out some references to justify this nonsense.

**Maybe we do? I do think that if we did, the “after hours service” connotation would perhaps be less discrete, making it a different place. I don’t know, I’m not a Yakuza!

***Yes she gave me her email!

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Yakuza 2: The Cultural Dynamite

February 20th, 2009

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Yakuza 2 (Playstation 2) is a game that I probably would have overlooked if it wasn’t for the recommendations by several bloggers, billing this title as one of last year’s most overlooked gems. The recommendations alone piqued my interest, but the more I read into Yakuza 2 the more it revealed itself as the sort of game I’ve been looking to play.

For one, the game was caught in the trap of being a late release stuck on a console slowly on the software decline, the sort of game I can sympathize with. Secondly, Yakuza 2 appeared to adopt much of the detailed-world-and-exploration elements of Shenmue (Dreamcast); a game that I’ve always wanted to but never had the chance of playing. The most intriguing element though would undoubtedly be the cultural exuberance. As a student of cultural things I’ve always been keen to understand and discuss the ways in which culture is adapted to video games*. Yakuza 2 appeared to be a game which did this quite well. Appearances in this case are very telling as Yakuza 2 is cultural dynamite.

Yakuza 2 flaunts its culture on both macro and micro levels. The macro level implementation isn’t really worth talking about because it’s already very obvious from the outset – the game and all of it’s contents are made and set in Japan. But to just quickly form a small list of those, I’d include:

Japanese spoken dialogue during cutscenes
Japanese approach to detective/crime story telling
the setting; inner city Japan
Yakuza subject matter
authentic rendering of two respective cities including architecture, signage and products

Micro Level Implementations

I find the micro level stuff to be much more interesting as culture is most effective in it’s subtle undertones; the one’s that aren’t very often made aware to the reciever. In that respect, the mass combination of cultural subtleties are fundamentally Yakuza 2’s key strength.

Take the scene setting for example. In the frequent downtime between narrative based affairs you’ll spend a good deal of your time soaking up city life. The city environment likens itself to a real city by the way it connects the player to the street-side NPCs. Just by walking down the street, speech bubbles of text appear depicting the words of pedestrians populating the sidewalk. You can’t actually respond to the good majority of these people – and just like in real life, you probably wouldn’t intrude on the conversations of passers by – but their words create an air of atmosphere, rather than being rudimentary set pieces standing in for the sake of it. The sounds of city chatter and pictures of people grouped together in conversation complement the city vibe created by the text bubbles. Through these subtle techniques, life is injected into the city without way of graphic or sound.

The cultural relevancies of Japan are woven throughout those speech bubbles with people complaining about the differences between Osakan and Tokyo people or how the environment has changed from the way it use to be. These pieces of chatter (sometimes they are relayed through text bubbles or through player interaction) all act as a means to share cultural small talk with the player.

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Within the Japanese cities are interior areas such as restaurants and bars accessible from the city hub. The internal areas are more or less avenues for spending money from your healthy yakuza bank account in turn being rewarded by your mild consumerism with experience points. The products and services in this case relate back to the culture, but again Yakuza 2 strives in the details. When it comes to food and beverages, waiters and bar tenders are keen to talk in detail about the item, how it was made and what ingredients were used to make it. These brief info-bites are chocked full of information and are delivered to you when either selecting or after purchasing a beverage/meal.

Services on the other hand come in the form of escorts, a movie renting service (in which you sit in a room provided to you and watch) and a sort of escort-like luxury service. The latter in which you go to a bar, drink and eat with a lady of your choice for a few hours. The fact that I don’t even know what to call this service (since we don’t have them in Australia!) perhaps speaks lengths as to the cultural strength of the title and how it remained unmodified for the western release. Most of these services differ from their western counterparts, some Japanese only. The fact that the game allows you to play around in such instiutions, opens up huge opportunities for cultural understanding.

Yakuza 2 graphically has a very murky, darkened look to it. It looks a little fuzzy and unclear as well. Unfortunately it does damage the experience a little, but it’s also something that I think harkens back to the cultural elements of the title. Densely populated Asian cities like Shanghai, Hong Kong and Tokyo are all infamous for being surfaced with a layer of dirt and dust caused by the dense population and heightened industrialism. It’s hard to know whether the game is just a little dark or if it’s a reflection of one of the more menacing aspects of Asian cityscapes.

To finish off on my tour of subtle cultural quirks I want to talk about the game’s combat, specifically the animations and sound effects behind each punch, hurl and kick. Each attack available to Kiryu animates fiercely and with swift velocity. The rushed flow of animation combined with some cringe-worthy specials evoke a sense of style similar to the rough and tough fighting scenes from the GTO Early Years manga series and undoubtedly many other examples of Asian brawling media (Hong Kong action cinema etc.).

That wraps up my observations on Yakuza 2’s cultural quirks. I’ve still only scratched the surface of the game, so this post may be followed up with more of the same as I continue to play.

* Unfortunately there aren’t many culturally interesting games, nor am I much of a champion of the cultural games niche.

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