20 Feb, 2012
Something keeps getting lost in translation, and it doesn’t just pertain to language. The language of style between Western and Japanese cultures are incredibly different as well, and sometimes, looking from one side of the world to the other won’t give you the answer to all of your problems. A quick glance at Japan’s culture reveals a deep love (or maybe even unhealthy obsession) with manga, overly exaggerated emotions, and emphasis on over-the-top style.
And then you have last year’s reveal of Capcom’s beloved devil hunting series Devil May Cry being turned to Ninja Theory’s Cambridge-based studio, which generated a lot of discrepancies between what should and what should not be done to the franchise. That’s only the tip of the iceberg, according to Dynasty Warriors‘ boss Kenichi Ogasawara.
In the current western gaming market, we like innovation. Beating the same horse to death again and again? No, that simply won’t fly for us. We like new things, and we especially appreciate when someone tries to shake up the formula just a little bit. While Japanese studios like Omega Force has been trying hard to do so, Ogasawara said in an interview with Gamasutra that what fans love the most about things like Dynasty Warriors are the characters, and while they try to sneak in some new gameplay elements now and then, it’s that core audience that they’re trying to satisfy with more character development as opposed to new elements that may or may not necessarily appeal.
With a game set in ancient China, loosely based (and we really do mean loosely) on the old historical novel set Romance of the Three Kingdoms, some Western players are intimately familiar with the story, characters, and backdrop of Dynasty Warriors‘ source material. However, as a whole, the general gaming populace isn’t too deeply concerned with the actual historical content. It’s an idea that Japanese studios are struggling with — do you keep focusing on what you know how to do best, like character portrayal in this case, or keep trying to add things that don’t make sense to you and your audience?
With fans loving the characters the most, Ogasawara said that they’d much rather focus on something their fans love, and something that they know how to do well. “We’ve been trying to make the character personalities better, focusing on the story and overall sphere of the universe more through character portrayals than anything else,” he explained.
While looking to western developers for inspiration might be a good idea, it really won’t solve anything. Try as they might have, Omega Force just wasn’t able to grasp the magic that big studios have, like Rockstar Games. “We’ve looked at the way Western developers make and present their games, in terms of the cut scenes, the graphics and all of that, and we’ve tried to take that approach in development,” said Ogasawara. “Unfortunately, we weren’t able to get the result that we wanted.
“I think as a Japanese developer, we have to think about how we can actually improve the original game system, rather than copy what other people are doing.”
There’s always been that saying that the popular answer isn’t always the right one. Perhaps in Omega Force’s case, this is exactly what the answer is. It might take some time for western gamers to catch on to the quirkiness and odd habits of Japan’s games, but some of us can appreciate Japan’s oddness.
Whether it’s titles like Dynasty Warriors that inspired third-person hack n’ slash games like God of War or vice versa, it’s quite clear that nowadays inspiration can be found everywhere. What really sets Japan apart is their culture, but they’re hesitant to show everything off to the rest of the world “In Japan there has been a rise of third-person action games, but something Japanese developers still have as a huge treasure in our industry is our culture,” said Ogasawara. “There are a lot of elements of our culture that we still haven’t shown to the world; a lot of things are still kept at home. These are things that we can actually show in a proper way, that the global market can understand.
“We’re looking for ways to portray our culture in an easy-to-understand way, in a captivating way. Obviously in the action market there are influences from the Hollywood industry in the presentation, and it’s very hard for us to compete with that. For us, I think the best way to stand out in the competitive market is to use our culture to our advantage.”
It certainly wouldn’t hurt, especially if it would bring Japanese games back to the forefront of the industry.
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