TOKYO – Japanese publishers looking to import American games face a daunting task in a country that hasn't warmed to next-gen graphics and first-person shooters.
"Japan's never been very receptive to foreign games," says Gwyn Campbell, who works for a major game publisher in Tokyo and is the host of a gaming podcast with other expatriates. "The term 'foreign game' is traditionally an insult – it means 'low quality.'"
The anti-Western prejudice is deeply ingrained in the minds of Japanese gamers, who traditionally favor handheld devices like the Nintendo DS over high-powered consoles like the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3.
Yo-ge, kuso-ge, goes the saying: "Western game, shit game."
Still, partly because high-def game development is so expensive and partly because they see an undeveloped market just waiting to be tapped, Japanese publishers are pushing foreign games with increasing vigor in their home country, even though the domestic audience has historically been loath to try them.
"These companies want to make money," says Campbell. "They've got these games, these assets that exist, and they're trying to bring them over."
At the Tokyo Game Show, which runs from Thursday to Sunday here, many of the big games on the show floor are being developed outside Japan. Square Enix's most popular franchises – like Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts, games that move millions of units in Japan alone – are relegated to a small corner of the company's massive booth.
Instead, the majority of Square Enix's show-floor space is given over to Western-made games it is publishing this year under the label Extreme Edges, a new brand for "mature" titles. The games include Call of Duty, Deus Ex and Lara Croft, the kind of high-end titles that do well in the United States but haven't taken off in Japan.
Many other games at Tokyo Game Show, Japan's biggest videogame expo, are developed here with an eye on the Western market. Most are shooters, a genre that dominates the U.S. charts but is not popular here. It's all an attempt to reach a broader audience with next-generation games, something that Japan hasn't been able to do yet.
"The classic, traditional Japanese formula is not a moneymaker anymore unless you have "Monster Hunter," "Dragon Quest" or "Final Fantasy" in your game title," says James Mielke, a game producer at Tokyo-based Q Entertainment. "It's a real risk for a developer to make a game that's designed specifically for (Japan). That's not a safe strategy."
What Japanese Gamers Want
Japanese gamers have very specific tastes, often embracing the polar opposite of what sells in the rest of the world. Open-world games like Fallout and Grand Theft Auto emphasize the player's freedom to do whatever he wants, which doesn't fly in Japan.
"They want a guided experience," says Campbell. "They want their hands held. They want the familiar. They don't want new. When you go against that, they get angry."
Some companies attempting to sell Western games in Japan are attempting to turn that negative into a positive. Bethesda's advertising campaign for Fallout: New Vegas features a group of Japanese youths protesting the linear, on-rails nature of traditional Japanese role-playing games.
